The Special Order

A story very loosely based on Matthew Six

By Bob Freye

The weathered brick and dark stained woodwork at the entrance of the store promised an upscale merchandise inside. Surprisingly though, there was no sign of any such high-end stock in any of the display windows. They were hung with nondescript shirts and blouses, khaki pants, pullover sweatshirts, and simple shift dresses. Muted colors. Functional designs.

Jonathon Parry stood on the sidewalk, stymied by what he saw in the windows. His need for a wardrobe upgrade had brought him to the door. But his feet remained stuck to the concrete, glued in place by his own vanity.

If they wanted to attract more business, he thought, they would have to do a better job of reaching out to the young and aggressive capitalists who hurried past the store window every day on their way to another golden opportunity. It was their world. They owned the city. And it was clear to Jonathon that they would never shop here.  

Unfortunately, he didn’t have the same luxury of choice. This was the only place that he might find something in his price range, which was low. Very low.

The door of the shop opened, and a woman stepped out. She offered a cheerful farewell to the man who held the door open for her. Then as she breezed past Jonathon, she smiled. Unusual, he thought. He would rarely see such a wide, easy, engaging smile here on the street.

The man was still holding the door. He leaned out and beckoned Jonathon with a discreet wave of his hand. He was an older man, somewhat paunchy around the middle. He wore a suit that fit him perfectly, dark jacket open at the middle, an understated pink tie with flecks of darker blue that matched his jacket and slacks. A measuring tape draped itself around his neck and fell like a perfectly matched accessory along the front of his pale blue shirt.

He surveyed Jonathon’s cut-off sweatshirt and ripped chinos, then asked, “May I help you, sir?”

Jonathon didn’t know. He said simply, “I was sent.”

“Of course,” the man said. “Then you should come in.”

The inside of the store was packed with clothing. Some hung as if for display. Some sat neatly arranged and tagged, waiting to be claimed. They must have done a lot of special order business. That might explain the out-of-date window displays. Some places didn’t advertise. They survived by providing just the proper style for their clients, an individualized approach. Upscale. Uptown.

Jonathon fished a small plastic card out of his pocket and held it out toward the paunchy salesman. But the man waved it away with a smile.

“No problem, Mr. Parry.” the man said. “We have your order ready.”  

“But I didn’t place an order yet,” Jonathon explained. “I just came to—to—get a feel for the place, to see what you have on the racks.”

“Feel free to browse,” the man offered. “But you have a special order waiting. I’ll go get it.” 

“Odd,” Jonathon thought. And as he looked around at the inside of the store, he thought, “Mysterious.”

The store was stately, but plain. The décor was modest, but at the same time it hinted of something else. The walls glowed with a hint of gold, though he could not identify them as anything except off-white. The doors and frames and moldings were dark but shimmered with just a suggestion of a richer, more reddish tint.

The fixtures were plain, for the most part, but heavy. Good thing, too. They were loaded down with a treasure of clothing, some of it piled nearly to the ceiling.

“Strange,” he thought.

He ran a hand over the surface of a sweater, richly woven out of soft wool. That would be nice. A shirt caught his eye, hanging loose at the edge of the aisle. It was wispy, gaudy, and meant for the beach. He could see himself strutting through the hot sand, the sun glinting off his shades, every eye fixed on the bold tropical flower print of his flimsy new shirt. That would be nice.

He turned away from the shirt to examine a dark grey suit. Alone, it would have been elegant. But the vest had been cut from a wine-colored material and trimmed with dark grey to match. It was brazen, he thought. It would be perfect for the world outside the store. That’s what Jonathon needed. To be noticed. Or maybe to be respected. He needed one or the other. It didn’t matter.

The salesman with the dark suit and perfectly matched tie came to fetch him, and they walked together to the main counter. A long coat hung from a rack nearby. The salesman took down the coat and held it over one arm for Jonathon to examine.

“This is yours,” he said with a noticeable admiration for the garment. “There are a few other items to complete the order, and we can examine each in turn.”

The coat was a heavy oilskin duster, very old-west looking. The collar turned up very high, and the coat itself hung very low, below Jonathon’s knees. The color was a dusty brown, very much like dirt.

“It’s not really what I’m looking for,” Jonathon said, “but can we talk about that suit?”

He pointed back down the aisle, where the wine-colored vest hung in plain sight. But the salesman did not budge.

“I believe that you will find this coat infinitely more practical,” he explained.

“For what?” Jonathon nearly laughed. “A trail ride? What do you think this is? I need something that I can wear to a board meeting.”

“And what board is that?” the man asked.

“What?”

“Which board meeting do you regularly attend?”

It had been a figure of speech. He wasn’t really on any board. Not yet.

Okay, he thought. Not ever.

“What I meant—“ he mumbled.

“Before you are invited to sit on a board, you need a job,” the salesman said. “And before you get a job, you need to interview. And before you interview,” he held up the long coat as he made his point, “you need to get across the street.”

“Look, I’m sure you know your business—“

“I do,” the man said without a hint of bragging. “The suit is out of your price range.”

“How do you know?”

The salesman just smiled. Not a cruel smile. Like an uncle who is teaching a favorite nephew to cast a lure out into the lake. The smile of someone who didn’t mind the thousand questions or the first few pitiful attempts to understand something new and difficult.

“And how much is this?” Jonathon asked, pointing to the hangers and bundles that apparently went along with the coat.

“This is free,” the man explained.  

“It can’t be free,” Jonathon objected. “Nothing is free. You know what they say. You get what you pay for.”

“At this store,” the man said, “you get what someone else paid for.”

Strange.

“Someone has already paid for everything in your special order,” the man continued. “And if you are wondering, this is top quality merchandise. Very expensive. So yes, they paid quite a bit.”

If he had not been so desperate, Jonathon might still have said no.

But the special order was extensive, and he told himself that there might be pieces that he could salvage. So he walked out of the store with new jeans, a button-down oxford shirt and conservative tie, leather pull-on cowboy boots, the heavy duster, and a weathered cowboy hat with a wide brim.  

The salesman held the door open, and for just a moment, Jonathon turned back. Now that he had his new clothes, he might tell the old man off. He might say that the feeble-minded coot was hopelessly out of touch with the real world, that the store was miserably controlling and cruelly spiteful. They certainly didn’t know what he wanted, and he doubted that he would ever come there again. 

“I’ll make a note about the suit,” the man said. “Perhaps when you come back, the suit will be set aside for you.”

“I didn’t think you cared about what I wanted.”

“We care very much for what you want,” the man chided, “but the coat is what you need—for today.”

The first hint was just a tap on the top of his head. Then another.

Tap, tap, tap.

A raindrop splashed on the concrete at his feet, near the toe of his waterproof leather boot.

Jonathon glanced around. A sudden storm boiled in the sky overhead, and raindrops were already impacting the street all around him. 

“You have a hat,” the salesman said.

Jonathon looked down at the hat in his hand. He settled it on his head just as the sky let loose a furious sheet of rain. The drops splatted against him like snowballs, but they simply rolled off the heavy skin of the duster. The wide brim of the hat funneled water off his back, keeping his head dry. Instinctively Jonathon turned up the collar of the coat.

“Come and see us tomorrow,” the salesman called out over the noise of rain splatter. “You’ll need something different for tomorrow.“

People were running across the street, splashing through puddles and holding their suede jackets over their heads. A woman bolted past Jonathon. Her designer leather coat was permanently stained as if it had been held under a faucet, the color now turned from its camel brown to almost the exact shade of Jonathon’s duster.

“Tell your friends,” the salesman called out.

Jonathon stepped out into the street. At the gutter, the runoff was ankle deep. But his boot simply pushed the water aside as if it had been parted in the middle. The man next to him was not so lucky. The water ran over the top of his shoe and soaked his foot. He grimaced and glared at Jonathon’s out-of-this-world outfit.

“Where’d you get that?” he asked.

Jonathon pointed back toward the store. The salesman held the door open and waved discreetly for the man to bring his soaked foot inside.

He took a step and looked back at Jonathon.

“Are they any good?” he asked.

The rain beat against the dirt-colored coat and rolled off. Rain splashed around the brim of his hat, and then poured harmlessly off the back of the brim. His boots stood unperturbed by the river that now flowed through the city street.

Jonathon looked at the paunchy salesman with the dark suit and the perfectly coordinated tie. And he smiled.

“They knew just what I needed,” he said.
 

 ##

A last word:

In Matthew chapter six, verses twenty-five to thirty-three, Jesus warns his disciples that worry is a distraction. Using some poetic license, you could paraphrase his words like this: “Don’t worry about what you will wear or what you will eat. Some people do, but it doesn’t do them any good. Your heavenly father knows already what to provide, so keep your eyes on the kingdom and let God plan your wardrobe.”

 
[-] © 2007