Storm's Thunder by Brandon Boyce Page B

overflow of shirt cuff, but there is only a half-inch sliver, like icing on a cake. I shrug my shoulders, raise my arms, even throw a punch, all with freedom of movement that belies sculpted tailoring. “Feel like you got all the sizing dang near perfect.”
    â€œHarlan, you happen to have the exact stature of the best-selling mannequin in the entire Montgomery Ward catalogue. I knew there was something special about you. The prototypical male.”
    â€œThe what?”
    â€œIt means when a tailor dreams up a suit, it’s your body he builds it for.”
    Just then a clap of thunder splits my ears like a hammer blow. Glaring back at me in the reflected glass is a vision, bleak and violent—the fine suit a tattered version of itself, streaked with char and blood and shredded here and about to the bare skin. And the wearer, a hollowed ghost of man I don’t know. I turn away from the mirror, all this self-gazing and preening getting the better of me.
    â€œWhat a man dreams up ain’t always pretty.”
    â€œEh, for some, I guess. But what’s the point of dreaming otherwise?”
    I leave his thought unanswered and set down in the chair to pull on my boots. “How much I owe you?”
    â€œYou wearing it out of here?”
    â€œDon’t see why not.”
    Pete finds a pad and starts scribbling, his brow furrowed, as if the tabulation of cost was more annoyance to his higher goal. But his mind is not finished. “You’ll need a couple more shirts.”
    â€œWhite, not so white,” I add, Pete laughing.
    â€œThey’ll come in handy, I promise. And I’ll put in maybe three or four different ties, and a second waistcoat, black probably. All those combinations, it’s like an entire new wardrobe.”
    â€œNot like. Is.”
    â€œFor everything,” Peter tallying the numbers, “comes to one hundred twenty. I need to cut the shirts, but I’ll do that tonight and drop them off at your hotel first thing. Where are you staying?”
    â€œAcross the street at El Dorado, I’m hoping, if they got room.”
    â€œYou walk in the door wearing that, head held high, they’ll make room. Shoot, old man Rawlings will be falling over himself to put you up.”
    There’s a doe-eyed innocence in the young tailor’s view, coupled with a healthy confidence in the power of his creation—two things in scarce supply around the Territory, but I find no heart to correct him, offering only, “My history has at times proved otherwise.” I parcel out a hundred in gold and find his hand, holding back the last two coins, but sure he sees them. “A hundred now. The rest on delivery.” Striding to the corner, boot heels clomping the plank floor, I ball the denims into a fist and stuff them into the saddlebag. These weathered bags—chapped and faded as my boots—look like they have been run over by a train. Here it is, the brushwork still damp on Pete’s canvas—the oils unset—and my two meager adornments dishonor it like a cheap, ungilded frame. I hoist the bags up, careful not to further sully the pristine jacket with a coating of desert dust, and loop my other arm through the strap of the Spencer—doubly mindful of dripping gun oil.
    â€œHarlan,” his clear voice breaking the silence. Turning back, I am soaked in the watery blue spill of his gaze. “Your history is whoever you say you are. So is your present. Don’t ever forget that.”
    â€œI won’t.”
    We part ways, tethered by something unspoken. I step out into the street, straight across the muddy wagon tracks and toward the warm gaslight of the El Dorado, where a tinkling piano beckons like birdsong. Night has fallen, blanketing, in its veil of darkness, the sorry state of my leather along with any reminders of my former self. Grateful for the masquerade, emboldened by its power, I see no reason to represent otherwise. I