Friends Who Look the Same Way
I have never been the sort to care in the slightest what the people around me think. I hadn't been slighted for being East Asian, either. Let them, if they mean to. Once I was enrolled, I could pay them back in kind.
Perhaps it was because I walked up so calmly that the whispering only grew louder. Let it. I took my time looking over the tailor's shop.
Through the plate-glass window I could see three mannequins, torsos only, lined up in a row. The clothes looked superb—not merely the cloth, but every seam. Well, of course they did. This was a tailor the royal household had chosen itself. Fine quality was a given.
That aside. Was I imagining it? The shop felt strangely familiar. I nearly let the feeling go—tailor shops all look the same—and then I didn't. I had seen this somewhere. Where had it been...
I was still chasing the memory when the door clicked open. Green wallpaper above, wood below, the two meeting along the wall, and beside them mirrors whose thick wooden frames caught the eye. That's it.Queensman. The high-end tailor's shop that had served as the agents' secret base had looked exactly like this. Or near enough.
Customers were waiting in line, so I had a good long while to study the place. The conclusion I reached was simple. Certain. This was unmistakably the tailor's shop I had seen in the film.
There was something else remarkable. On one stretch of wall hung a single painting, sealed behind acrylic. What could possibly deserve security that tight? Wait. That looked like a Caravaggio. A painting that belonged in the National Gallery, hanging in an ordinary tailor's shop? How?
I crossed the floor. Up close, the work's true worth struck even more fiercely: a power to seize the eye even in a simple composition, the stark concord of darkness and light, and the overwhelming touch that held all of it together. I couldn't have said how long I stood there, drawn helplessly in.
Tap, tap. Only when someone patted my shoulder did I come back to myself.
"The painting seems to have pleased you."
An old man in an impeccable suit, tape measure in hand. One glance was enough. This was the owner.
"Everyone who comes in is too busy fretting over their uniforms to notice anything else. I understand. Admission to the Royal School—of course they're excited."
I said nothing.
"Perhaps that's why they almost never spare this painting a glance."
At that he turned toward me.
"It's been a long time since anyone took an interest in the work."
"Is it a Caravaggio?"
"Oh?"
His eyes lit.
"Do you mean to study art history?"
"No."
His face asked how I had named the painter from the style alone. Because I'm living my second life. Ahem. But how was I supposed to say a thing like that?
"I just like Caravaggio."
I brushed the excuse aside and hurried the subject on.
"But how do you come to have a work this extraordinary?"
"It might be a copy, might it not?"
"Impossible. The touch alone..."
He smiled, one corner of his mouth lifting.
"You are certainly no ordinary gentleman."
"Ah, well..."
"You saw it exactly. It is genuine. A piece from the royal collection, lent specially for the students."
"By the Queen?"
"Yes. Every year the new students of the Royal School come pouring in. She was glad to lend a few works, in the hope that this place might become a small gallery for them."
So there were paintings besides the Caravaggio.
"Shall I show you?"
"Yes. Please."
"Good. Come this way."
The old man led me into a small room inside the building, the sort of place where a fitting would be done. On one wall of the narrow room hung a large painting.
"Botticelli..."
"You knew that one at a glance as well."
The manner was very close to the famous Birth of Venus. I could hardly help guessing.
"There is another in the back."
"Will you know this one too?"
"Diego Velázquez..."
"My goodness. You said you were particularly fond of Caravaggio, and yet you have every work you meet at your fingertips. It seems you love art itself."
Sorry as I was, I had no attention to spare for the old man's reaction. I was too busy marveling at the painting in front of me. What I was grateful for was that he said nothing more while I was sunk in it. He simply waited a step behind, so I could look my fill.
How long passed that way?
"Ah, I'm sorry. You must be busy, and I've..."
"Not in the least. That you recognize the worth of the work is thanks enough."
The gentle smile did not feel like something offered for courtesy's sake.
"In truth, I chose these works myself."
"You chose them..."
"I was the one who sought out these three—what might be worth recommending to the students of the Royal School."
"I did think it strange, how all of them carry the image of a beginning..."
"Ha. That you noticed."
Pride soon joined the same gentle smile.
"Precisely. To be admitted is to set one's first foot in a new world. I chose them as a way of cheering their journey. Have they been of any help?"
"More than I could ask."
We must have gone on quite a while after that, talking of art.
"I think the two of us could be rather good friends."
"Friends? With a difference in years like this..."
"What does it matter, the number of years a man has lived? If we can look toward the same place, that is a friend."
It felt like meeting a splendid adult. I could almost see why the royal household had chosen this shop. Thanks to him, an errand that had been nothing but a nuisance felt perfectly happy.
"In my pleasure I rambled on far too long about nothing. Forgive me."
"No, no."
He soon brought the tape measure.
"We might have talked while I worked, and yet I seem to have lost my head."
So it was time to return to his real trade. He checked my upper body. A suit does not come of measurements alone; again and again he confirmed the lines of my frame.
"Are you an athlete?"
"No."
"Then?"
"Just a hobby. A little..."
"A remarkably solid, well-balanced body. One might say it feels as though it were made with long and careful labor."
Hm. Was it that much?
"The frame you were born with is excellent as well. The line that falls from the shoulder into the arm, especially, is astonishing. You are the sort of model any cutter would covet."
Then make it in the finest cloth. Something like a hundred thousand dollars... Well. It wouldn't be anything like that.
I was nursing a light suspicion at the steady praise when he spoke.
"The clothes you are wearing now..."
"Yes?"
"Did you choose all of them yourself?"
"I did."
"Converse Chuck Taylor. Levi's 501. A Lacoste polo..."
He went on, taking in what I wore.
"Every one of them has been baptized by time."
Baptized by time. He certainly had a handsome way of putting things.
"Designs that have already endured fifty years at the least, and products that will survive another fifty with room to spare. At that point one may fairly call them humanity's inheritance."
He was right. By the standard of the 2020s I had lived through, even the Lacoste—the one with the shortest history—was already ninety. The Chuck Taylor and the 501 had cleared a hundred years and then some. Classics among classics.
"I'm grateful you recognized my clothes."
"I make my living by clothes. I ought to know at least that much."
It was then that a murmur rose outside, a noisy stir. Naturally the old man caught it at once.
"The customers seem to have crowded in."
"Don't you keep any staff besides yourself, sir?"
"Of course I do. I have two skilled apprentices, but one of them has stepped out for a moment."
Stepping out, when they're this busy?
"What can one do."
"...?"
"Wherever one goes, there are those who want to be treated as special."
With those words I couldn't quite read, he gave a small, bitter smile.
At the same hour, Grosvenor Castle.
Tennessee Grosvenor, who was to enter the Royal School this year, had no need to go all the way to the tailor's shop. The reason was simple. In the name of tradition, the upperclassmen were sure to gather at dawn and raise a racket.
Of course, if the heir of the ducal house appeared, they would shut their mouths of their own accord. Even so.
No need to get myself tangled in a nuisance.
And why would there be? When the House of Grosvenor called, the cutter came out to the castle.
"Why has Sir Lewis not come himself?"
The voice carried from the end of the corridor. Tennessee's tutor. As if in a fury, he was dressing down the cutter.
"Busy or not, this is beyond the pale! If you remember who recommended Sir Lewis for his knighthood..."
"That will do."
At Tennessee's words the tutor turned, startled.
"Forgive me, young master. I didn't realize you were here, and I..."
"Isn't this the very hour when the students come pouring in? Of course he would be busy. It's all right."
The voice was far too gentle. Perhaps because of it, a smile of relief rose on the cutter's face, which had been frozen stiff.
"But, young master, the state has its order of precedence. How dare anyone, when a ducal house summons..."
"I said it's all right."
At the sharper tone, the tutor bowed his head.
"In the end, it's nothing but clothing."
The tutor was silent.
"Clothes are no different from a shell. Why grow so angry over something that matters so little?"
But that, too, lasted only a moment. Tennessee turned to the cutter.
"Ah. And yet there are those who have given a whole life to that shell..."
"I spoke too far. There was no ill will. Don't let it trouble you."
The cutter wanted to answer. Not a single word came to mind. In the brief instant their eyes met, he had the illusion that Tennessee's eyes, gleaming like a snake's, had caught him hard by the nape. An illusion, clearly. Even so, he could not master the fine trembling in his legs.
"What are you standing there for? Weren't you busy?"
At Tennessee's words, the cutter's throat rose and fell, hard.
The fitting was over in a flash. While the old man put his chalk away, I looked at the frame on the wall.
"You've been knighted."
"Yes. Live long enough, and even that happens."
Well, he was the cutter the royal household had chosen. That much might be only natural. I was turning the thought over when Sir Lewis came toward me.
"Ah. This is only a small suggestion. Might you hear it without feeling any burden?"
"Yes?"
"What you are wearing now carries a deep meaning of its own, but..."
"...?"
"Since the chance is here, what would you say to having one fine suit made? I don't offer it as a merchant's trick..."
"I'd like that."
"You would?"
The Armani I'd bought a few years ago? Far too small now, of course. I'd been thinking it might be good to have one set aside, and if the man making it had a knighthood besides, I could hardly ask for better.
"Then I shall take only the cost of the cloth."
"...?"
"No, please. Even if I outgrow it and can't wear it, I don't mind. I'll keep it the way one keeps a work of art."
"...A work of art?"
"Of course. A suit made by the greatest tailor of the age. Obviously it's a work of art."