Chapter 5: The Tailor

Rosalia drove me to a tailor the next morning without saying why.

"You can't sit across from five capos in a flannel," she said. "It insults them."

"Do I get a vote?"

"No."

The shop was on Atwells Avenue between a bakery and a shuttered shoe store.

An old man with pins in his mouth looked at me, looked at her, and went to the back without a word.

Rosalia took a tape measure from his counter.

"Arms up."

"I can dress myself."

"You can't dress yourself for this."

I put my arms out.

She stood in front of me, close enough that I smelled her shampoo, something plain with lemon in it.

She ran the tape across my shoulders.

Her knuckles brushed my collarbone and neither of us said a word about it.

"Fifty-one," she said, writing it down. "You've got a lot of shoulder."

"I carry engines."

"I know. I saw you carry a man into a drink machine."

"You saw that?"

"I see everything."

She stepped around behind me and measured the length of my back, her palm flat between my shoulder blades.

I wasn't sure if she did it for the number or the hand.

When she came back around to the front, her eyes were on my chest and her mouth was set in its usual straight line.

"This is all coming out of Papa's account," she said. "I'll invoice you, and you'll pay it back with interest when you're running the family."

"With interest?"

"I'm not a charity."

"Neither am I."

"You were, on Allens Avenue."

I couldn't tell whether she was teasing me.

It was the first time I thought she might be.

The tailor came back with a charcoal jacket and a white shirt.

He put the shirt on me and fussed with the cuffs.

When he stepped away, I looked in the long mirror and almost didn't know the man in it.

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