sure. I wanted to run back to the Market but the bus was already pulling away, so I figured I would stop by The Clothes Horse tomorrow and settle up.

When I got back to the frat house, no one saw me come in and go upstairs to my small room, and pull my trunk out from under my bed. My trunk was the one thing in the house that only I had a key to. I put the package in there and locked it up and stowed it back under the bed, and then crawled up on the bed and fell fast asleep.

I had the strangest dream, about huge, laughing lips with no face and a long, red, tongue, and glowing eyes with whites like icy fire, and leaping panthers, and a church bell tolling slowly, and me barefoot, dressed only in The Shirt, walking down a row of columns in the desert, and on top of each one was a statue of a Centaur, but the Centaur was The Shopkeeper…

All the rest of the week, things at school and at work conspired to keep me away from The Medieval Market, and finally it was Saturday, the night of the frat party. I had of course been compelled to spend the entire day scrubbing the entire house from stem to stern, while the rest of my beloved brothers pretended to put up party decorations – when they weren’t playing kissy-fucky with the sorority girls on the couch, or with each other in their rooms.

When the party finally got started, I was just finishing up, so I went upstairs to shower up. I stood under the hot, cleansing water for a long time, and then stepped out and, without toweling off, walked naked as the day I came into the world and dripping across the hall from the bathroom to my room. I pulled the trunk out from under the bed, and, with nothing on my body but plain clear water, and with no fabric having touched me, drew the package out of the trunk, and slowly drew The Shirt out of the package.

As before, I did not so much pull it over my head as it seemed to float over me, and once it was on me it felt like it had never been off. I did not need a mirror to know that I seemed taller, bigger, stronger. I walked downstairs into the midst of the party, and as people in the room saw me, they grew silent. Somebody cut off the music, and all eyes watched me as I walked to the food table, and grabbed a beer and a plate and loaded up. The president of the frat, one of my chief tormentors, and the most brutal of those from my initiation, finally stuttered “Just what in the hell do you think you’re wearing, Dude?”

I turned slowly and looked him straight up and down, and said, “I wear whatever I want.” And for once, I seemed taller than his 6’3”, and stronger than his fullback’s manly, robust physique.

His jaw dropped and he gaped foolishly at me, and then his type-A personality reasserted itself, and he said, “Well, I’ll be damned – look at the nerd!” But nobody this time joined in his bellow of laughter, and it rang hollow in the quiet room.

Somebody put the music back on, and eventually the laughter and chatter resumed as before, but I saw that everyone was