au courant

The last toga sold in Blue Ruby… over a year, and deep into the 2nd year after togas went out of style.

AFTER BEING LET GO AS the rackmeister at the Blue Ruby Billiards Emporium for his refusal to stop wearing “them g__damn togas and them lace-up sandals with half-moon heel taps,” Brutus Blue, the big blue-skinned buck from some educated country in Africa, gets hired — after nearly two months of looking — by, wonder of wonders, Blue Ruby Bespoke.

On his first day at work, Brutus thinks (when Mr. Verlon tells him employees get a 35% discount on discontinued clothes such as the giant snooker-green velveteen toga in the window), Carpe diem, Brutus Blue, carpe diem. For almost the entire first two weeks before he gets paid, Brutus can be heard humming, sometimes mumbling, “I feel sorry for anybody who ain’t me today (using ‘ain’t’ being Brutus’s way of prepping to get down and dirty once he gets his toga), and who won’t be me tomorrow.” Brutus hums and sings country music to himself to practice talking and thinking like the natives of Blue Ruby. When he’s excited and happy he talks to others in the singsong creole spoken to English speakers in his native country.

When he gets his first paycheck he endorses it, goes into the office, does a full twirl, and releases the check to flutter onto the desk as half payment on the Big Green — his own green, every-day toga had gotten past shiny in the seat from sitting down and getting up during all those interviews for exactly the right employment opportunity after he was let go by BRBE. Mr. Verlon snatches up the check with his right hand and measures Brutus with his left hand and with his mouth tells him the toga will be ready by close of business tomorrow.

The toga has remained in the window, hanging from the sleeves, spread out like the German eagle, for over a year to provide a regal backdrop for that year’s new lines. Mr. Verlon has left it there so long to prevent permanent creases that would make it unsuitable for use to cover the pillows on his sun room furniture. Too, his wife wanted paisley. Brutus buying it is manna from heaven; Mr. Verlon doesn’t see togas coming back in style any time soon.

To forestall a return for defective coloring, Mr. Verlon takes a moment to admire aloud the subtle coloring of Big Green, the nearly invisible lighter shades where the sun daily touches the rippling folds of the unshaded breast. He needn’t have bothered: For Brutus the ripples of sun-bleached green and the almost forest green of the inner folds reminded him of his daily view of Lady Liberty, particularly the sunset view, when he worked for the Statue of Liberty cruise company.

You could say it was the toga’s tug that kept Brutus in Blue Ruby. But for Big Green, who’s to say Brutus wouldn’t have been more ambitious about getting to Atlanta from New York?

In Washington, DC, a few weeks before Brutus arrived in Blue Ruby he’d had his handkerchief — with his second- and third-leg bus tickets from DC to Knoxville and Knoxville to Atlanta hidden in its folds — stolen. He worked for a month sweeping up at a seedy pool hall in DC to save the money for a cheaper bus ticket to Atlanta via Knoxville. The local bus run from DC to Atlanta included a two-hour layover in Blue Ruby. While stretching his legs during the layover, he encountered The Blue Ruby Billiards Emporium just around the corner from the bus stop.

Brutus, or ‘Blue’ as Blue Rubians have since dubbed him, decided to extend his layover for the maximum 30 days the ticket permitted so that he could replenish his pocket money enough to make his start in Atlanta with a little money in his pocket. Besides tips from the pool players and his ½ minimum-wage wage, Brutus bargained for use of the cot in the storage room and access to the owner’s hotplate and automatic espresso maker.

After espresso on his second day, he felt so much at home that he reprised — from his latter days in Africa when he was trying to lose weight for his escape to America — his pre-dawn stroll. He went right, away from the bus stop, into the historic center of Blue Ruby. Before he’d even started to perspire he saw Big Green in the lighted window of the haberdashery. For the next ten months on days it wasn’t raining, pining in front of the haberdashery absorbed all of the hopeful moments of the walking part of Brutus’s morning constitutional. Big Green spoke eloquently to him of royalty back home, a daily renaissance from nostomania.

The sign in the window — Clearance: Toga’s 35% off — worried him for the whole year, not so much for its apostrophe error as for the gut-wrenching fear that Blue Ruby Bespoke would sell Big Green before he could buy it. ’Twas by now his favorite color, richer by half than his green; more regal by twice than his winter purple; subtly aged by the sun to express the freedom Lady Liberty promised — Who could want more? The only one he’d seen on display from New York to Blue Ruby that he thought was big enough to fit him right off the rack. His two everyday togas wouldn’t last forever and his dress toga would’ve looked like bragging in Blue Ruby.

NOW, LESS THAN A YEAR later it is his.

After Mr. Verlon gives it a few spritzes with an air freshener, a good backward brushing to raise the nap and then his trademark alternate-stripe smoothing to create the tony effect of the Yankee Stadium outfield when it reflects the light, two minor tucks and one nip, Brutus departs work for his room, the stock room of The Blue Ruby Times, wearing Big Green. He’s whistling in his native tongue, humming, sometimes mumbling, “I feel sorry for anybody who isn’t me (isn’t being Brutus’s ESL way of reminding himself he’s finally properly attired) today, and who won’t be me tomorrow…” He has purposely chosen to stroll on the other side of the street from BRBE so the boys standing outside the door grabbing a smoke can see him in his new toga — ¿Maybe even the owner’ll be out tonight? — for nearly the whole of the three-block long stroll.

One of the boys, Cicero Kilgore, looks both ways and then darts (actually ambles at an angle) across Main Street to cut Brutus off.

“¡Boy, howdy, Bluewoowoo!!! Some fine threads you got there. And the fit… howdy boy!”

After Brutus’s expository explanation in melodious pidgin of the Haberdashery’s discount policy about how he came by his “new treads,” for the briefest moment — before Cicero suddenly realizes Brutus means “threads” when Brutus holds out the toga does a quick curtsey, a 180 and then back 180 — Cicero glances at Brutus’s sandals. Cicero ambles at an angle back to the Emporium where he tells Owin’ Owens, who has made a rare stop at the billiards hall to catch up with his brother Lucky, about Brutus’s new purchase.

Back across the street, after standing for a long minute and then a hesitant step or two onward, Brutus’s smile disappears. He is troubled by Cicero’s comment on the fit before he departed: “Fine as you look, Blue, why’d you have them tailor your toga with that bulge in the middle there?”

If anybody’d know how a toga ought to fit in Blue Ruby, it’d be Cicero Kilgore, the man who introduced togas as evening wear in Blue Ruby three years before, nearly 33 years after he studied — in high school Latin — Caesar’s triumphant return to Rome from his African Campaign.

For nearly a year, at the time Cicero introduced togas, Cicero’s older identical triplet brother, LeRoi Louis XIV Kilgore (called Ziv by his first wife) — older than Cicero by four minutes and younger than Caesar by twelve minutes — had been getting most of the attention around the Emporium with the simple accoutrement of a royal purple, shading to lavender silk scarf, he tucked semi-discreetly in his left sleeve to wipe the sweat from his hands between bank shots when he played snooker with Cicero. Cicero was forced to climb up to his attic to find his old high school Latin book to see what he’d have to wear to liven up his game and live up to his given name. Brutus heard variations of Cicero’s fashion coup a hundred times in his stint as rackmeister.

Getting such a lukewarm reception of his new toga by Blue Ruby’s expert so soon sends Brutus back to Mr. Verlon, who is still at the shop and will be for another hour or so. Mr. Verlon stops his sorting and restacking long enough to say, “Not to worry, that’s the way they’re wearing them outside Blue Ruby. What Cicero probably didn’t tell you was that the bulge is for evening wear. For more casual wear, just hold your right wrist up against the bulge and pull it up a bit. That’ll smooth it right out.”

Brutus walks back down Main Street past the Emporium sucking his breath in and deftly keeping the bulge smoothed out with his right wrist as he goes. Cicero’s back out front again for another smoke and, once more, intercepts him. After a preliminary flurry of turning Brutus around, tugging at the sleeves, looking at the neckline with one eye closed and then the other, and bragging on the new fit, Cicero says, “¿You do know, it flares open a bit on the left side of your neckline there?”

Brutus looks at the sun and then at his watch to see if he can make it back to the Haberdashery before Mr. Verlon leaves. He holds up his toga at the knees and sets off at a canter, sparks flying from the new carburized half-moon heel taps he’d just yesterday had put on his dancing sandals to replace his worn plain steel ones.

Again, Mr. Verlon, who is now partway through preparing the day’s bank deposit, reassures him. “That’s the way they’re wearing them outside Blue Ruby. ¿A little too sexy for you? To hold the neckline closed for casual wear — when the mighty flattering open look is a little much — they’re inclining their heads a little leeward and tucking that sexy flare up under their chins.”

In front of the Emporium, Cicero is having his third cigarette since Mr. Verlon closed for the day to regular customers. Once again, he intercepts Brutus. This time he gets straight to the bottom of why he has ambled at an angle across Main Street. “The left side of your garment hem’s hanging lower than its right side.” Brutus once again looks at the sun and his watch, decides he can make it back to see Mr. Verlon before he leaves the haberdashery. If he runs.

It’s dark enough that the spark streams off his heel taps come together to make it look like he’s got one of those diamond knife-sharpening wheel options attached to the hem of his toga. Fortunately, he catches Mr. Verlon just as he’s locking up; fortunately, also, the street lights come on so Mr. Verlon can give the hem of Brutus’s new garment a good close look, “That’s the way they’re wearing them outside Blue Ruby. Just press your left wrist into your waist and pull up that sag.”

When he sees Brutus glancing nervously at his left wrist, now visible at a glance over his bottom eyelids, Mr. Verlon adds, “You know, so you can tell Greenwich Standard Time with just a glance, without having to lift your arm.” Brutus rotates his arm to see the face of his big many-dialed watch — which he wears with the dial face of the watch on the underside of his wrist — as he presses and lifts the sag.

For this trip back past the Emporium, Brutus sets off “in tune and on time” — au courant is how XIV’d put it — pressing his bulges and holding up his sags as he goes: His sideways smile is a confident one and his frolic bordering on a regal one. By the time he gets back to the center of town, the new high intensity street lamps with the antique look, combined with the ablaze theater marquee, have lit up the Blue Ruby night brighter even than the sun did at the battle of Jericho.

Across Main Street at the Emporium’s outside smoking area, Brutus sees Cicero’s not there. Brutus is crestfallen. Cicero’s identical triplet XIV’s now there, but seems preoccupied with Lucky Owens.

64, as the boys at the Emporium call LeRoi (for his Roman numeral initials LXIV) to distinguish him from Cicero, says to Lucky, “Ain’t that Blue acrost the street?” When Lucky says it has to be, since Blue is the only African that ever stayed in Blue Ruby past dark, 64 says, “How’d he get all bent up that way? Was he run over or something?”

“Can’t say’s I know that, but his toga sure fits good.”