Grey

“Are you…” she began.

“Am I what?” I asked. She didn’t reply. “Am I marrying Elle? No! I’m not. I’m not going to.”

“Are you…” she repeated.

“No, I’m not!”

“That’s it!” said Xavid. “Your minute’s up. Let’s go.”

“I’m staying here with her.”

Xavid rolled his eyes far up in his glasses. “It’s been more than a minute.” Pointing a thumb at the satin, he said, “He will be happy to drag you back to your apartment.”

“I want more time.”

He stepped closer. “I used to watch you dance on the channels. I thought you were just wonderful. But now that I’ve gotten to know you, you’re as selfish and stupid, as your father says.” I could have hated him—I probably already did—but wasting more energy on him seemed futile.

Behind, I heard Joelene say, “Are you…” again. An instant later, I understood.

Twelve

As I hurried through the long spiral to Mr. Cedar’s showroom, I again remembered the times when I had stopped to admire his displays, contemplate the exhibits, and learn from his interactive experiments. Today, I even passed what looked like a fascinating exhibit on the history of pockets, but I had too much to accomplish before midnight. As I neared his sugar maple and hammered-palladium doors, though, I felt compelled to act civilized for at least one moment and stopped before a wood and glass display.

Inside was a large swatch of charcoal fabric held vertical and flat by several robotic

arms.

When I pushed the single red button on the front of the experiment, a mannequin’s hand, representing the wearer, rose on the right side of the fabric and a metal rod lowered on the left. A fierce spark jumped from the rod toward the hand, but as indicated on a series of meters, the fabric’s electronic network reflected the lethal shock.

I stood before the experiment for several beats as I thought of the Miniature city flickers quote and the woman in the alpaca-silk and platinum dress who was covered with a thin, vaporous layer of flame, the necktie from Mr. Cedar I had thrown at the floor that burned, and the wedding blocking I had just seen at the PartyHaus, where Father and I were to stand alone on the stage.

“Michael,” said Mr. Cedar, his voice startling me, “do come in.”

Last time I’d visited, the gallery was filled with posing mannequins. This time it was empty except for his sketching board and a large sports screen, tuned to the AppleBoard Shirt Ironing Invitational. I couldn’t believe that I had forgotten about one of my favorite events. Last year, my tailor and I had attended in person.

“It’s the last round,” said Mr. Cedar.

“Fanjor versus Ise–B again.”

Competitive ironing was the oldest and most prestigious sport played among the fashionable. In my dressing room at my apartment, I had my own speed and sleeve boards and several competitive irons, but of course, I was nothing compared to the people who made it their life. For the past several years, one man, Fanjor, dominated the tournaments. In the beginning, I had admired his ironing, but gradually, as he kept winning, and got more and more arrogant, I got sick of him.

Now my favorite was Ise–B. He was a handsome, wiry man with short-cropped, dark hair, stern russet eyes, and always had a five-o’clock shadow. Unlike the rest of the ironers, who used modern, souped-up, Intel-Sunbeams, Greikos, or Jaun-Tees, he preferred a coal-powered Schiaparelli-Firemaster 77, with duel chimneys, and a customized Steam-Jet 188. It was incredible to watch him work that thirty-two pound-hunk of polished iron over crisp white shirts, as it spat clouds of steam and belched black smoke. And while he was truly a brilliant ironer who regularly won the smoothest-in-show and wrinkle creativity awards, he had yet to beat Fanjor head to head.

The channel was showing a replay from Masters Trophy last year, where Ise–B had lost by a twentieth of a second. After being awarded the coveted Golden Cuff, Fanjor, dressed in his signature yellow, pranced about the stage, chanting his own name.

“How’s Ise–B doing today?” I asked, as Fanjor, now in slow motion, leapt into the crowd where his fans began licking him as though he were a lemon candy.

“He’s two hundredths of a second behind.”

That wasn’t good. In this last speed round, Ise–B needed a lead to have a chance.

“So,” said Mr. Cedar, turning his attention to me.

“Another suit?”

“I suspect my last.” He raised an eyebrow as if concerned I might be changing styles or tailors. “I have an idea,” I began. “You see, yesterday, that neck tie you made for me, Love

Alone

… burned.”

“The stolen silk was juxtaposed with a small amount of nitrocellulose.” With a grimace, he eyed my neck and asked, “You weren’t injured, were you?”

“Not at all,” I said, contrite that I had thrown it at the floor in a fit.

“You need it replaced?” he guessed.

“Not that.” After an exhale, I looked him in the eye and said, “Since Nora and I can’t be together, we’ll have to be apart.” I swallowed and asked, “Can you make me a whole suit of nitrocellulose?”

He stopped twisting his beard. His eyes fell to his sketching board, and his expression turned somber. While I knew my request was extreme, now I feared I had overstepped the bounds of our relationship. How could I have asked my tailor, of all people, to help me kill my father and myself? Frantic, I tried to think of some plausible way to claim I was joking.

He asked, “Your situation is that dire?” and I saw the calm gravity I had been hoping for.

“

It’s

worse,” I answered, thinking of Father’s freeboot.

He began rolling his beard hair again. “Yesterday… I saw something new by Pentagon-Straus in The Official Fabric Guide.” After he manipulated something on his table, he nodded toward the screen. “It’s quite dangerous and curiously comes in a single color—a luminescent orange licensed from the famous suits in the Bang epic, Adjoining Tissue.”

During a commercial for a vacuum-pressing table, he ran highlights from the Tissue movie, which I hadn’t seen in years. It opened in an eerie moonlight garden filled with long walkways, beautiful marble fountains, and dozens of perfectly trimmed geometric bushes.

One by one, the forty band members of HammorHeds enter, sing, and begin having sex (simulated sex, I suppose) with the shrubs.

As the drums fire and the organ plays, they sing of loneliness and desperation. Then the garden is lit on fire and the blue is burned away so that it becomes daytime. Now, wearing big, bright orange suits, they are happy, they punch each other and scream about the band’s glorious future. In the last sequence, each member cuts off the ends of their pinkies. Doctors stitch all forty together—pinky

stump

to pinky stump. The epic ends as the camera spins above and they have become one big, human volvox.

“My old anthem,” I said. The song I associated with my first death would also be connected to my second. “Perfect.”

He switched off the video. The screen returned to the ironing competition and a buzzer sounded—the ironers were to report to their boards. I watched Ise–B step onto the stage. He added several more embers into his iron, primed it, rolled his shoulders and neck, and then stared at the heated vacuum table. What I loved about him was that he existed in his own perfect world, concerned with nothing but cotton, heat, and steam. I longed for such

a purity

, such a singularity of mind.

“He doesn’t have a chance, does he?” I asked, trying to be lighthearted as if that might temper yet another second-place finish.

My tailor was busy at his drawing screen and had finished half a dozen quick sketches. The drawings disturbed me. And the way the material shimmered and smoldered made it look like fire. Worse, the silhouette was large, bold, and muscular like something a satin would wear.

Before I had time to figure out how to express my displeasure without insulting him, the commentator said, “They’re off! This is the final heat for the gold!”

Fanjor and Ise–B stood beside two parallel ironing boards arranging their white cotton shirts. Fanjor started