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The Quiet Man > The Grey Suit
A part of the city between the financial zone and the waterfront. Smell of the ocean behind tall glass buildings which give way to brick built warehouses and weed grown streets.

Once this was a busy neighbourhood. Now quiet and neglected after the demise of the docks. Still a couple of grocery stores, pawn shop, shuttered bar, a barber shop.

You can only find this place by drifting. It is impossible to walk directly here. You must first surrender yourself to the tides of the city. Takes years to do it. Slowly the tides will take you here.

One day you will find yourself looking into the window packed with racks of clothing. Overcoats, shirts, jackets, suits. Silvery grey dust on the glass. Proprietors spectacles reflecting dim yellow light as he moves around behind the counter.

You go in. Look down the racks of clothing. Find a grey suit. It always fits.

You take the suit back to your apartment. Put it on. Somehow the light is behind you in the mirror. You are only a silhouette. Feel a sensation of stillness. Something has shifted. Sounds of the city humming outside. Traffic. Voices. Faces.

You do not realise that you are lost, adrift. Been like this for years without knowing. Slowly things moved away. Bit by bit. You barely noticed.

You go out, tides moving you down the avenues. Sit in a cafe watching the patterns in passing crowds. Waiter never comes for payment. After a while you seem to fade out. Sky reddens over the city. You do not need to move much. Traffic swirl stills. Intermittent cars passing. You move off. Along the lit avenues under broad Summer trees. Disappearing in the dusk.

Next day you examine the material of the suits sleeve in clear morning light. It looks grey but if you look very closely in good light you can just see that the threads are all made up of brightly coloured fibres. Red, green, violet, yellow, blue, orange. All in various combinations. Millions of colours. Together they all look grey from a normal viewing distance.

When you wear the suit, you begin to disappear. You can go anywhere and you will barely be noticed. After a slight initial interruption in everyones field of awareness, you fade out.

You come to know that the fabric is a map of all movement in the city. Everyones criss crossing journey all through the streets, corridors, rooms, subways. Feel the effects as you move down the avenues. Endlessly shifting and repeating patterns and rhythms. Tides moving through you. You walk the streets woven into the fabric. Feel them somehow. The suit shows you how to move. Translates. Transmits. The tides move through it. You go on a voyage through the streets. It is the lost suit. The great forgotten book of the city. It is woven all through you. You are incorporated into it.

Misty morning. Breakfast in a glass fronted coffee shop. Then you go down 5th Avenue through the atrium up to the rooftops and look out over the great city. You will get lost many times in your life and you will find this suit and wear it until it fades. It will always fit. It will weave itself into you and you will make its fabric more complex. The more complex the weave, the more tiny colours in the grey, the more it makes you disappear.

Vast illuminated city. Glowing streets from above. Moving over intersecting roadways. Glass fronted parades. Figures walking, crossing roadways, passing in and out of buildings. Long layers and sections of structures. Looking into passing floors of buildings. Colours of carpets, walls, flooring, clothing. Transparent, translucent structures. Dark and lit internally. People streaming through the architecture floor to floor. Escalators, elevators. Some way through all these cities. Sometimes you forget. You lose your way.

He looked down at his hands. The suit in a dim shop. You will wear it and pass unnoticed through the crowds. For many years you will live like a shadow. Then someone will see you. Will touch your hand and you will begin to reappear. Become more distinct. Face less blurred. Slowly begin to notice the change of a season. The weather. Become more visible.

Years later you will be living somewhere else. In some suburb of another city. The sun will be shining. You will have forgotten the suit. It will be overlooked. In the wardrobe somewhere. Thrown away. Given to charity.

When you tried it on once, you could barely remember it. Marginal episode, rapidly fading. The colour was dull and it did not fit very well. Fabric looked worn. Time for a change now. The ghosts go out and fade in the sunlight. The person who wore the suit is now gone.
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