visit – I know all my customers, all de time.”

I smiled back, immediately liking this genial giant. I said “Yes, and I’m looking for something special to wear to a frat party, and I hate clothes-shopping, and I have no idea what to wear. Can you please help?”

He smiled again and said “Sho t’ing, Bas, I got jus’ wha’ you need. Always, I gots jus’ wha’ everbody needs.” With that enigmatic remark, he went to a shelf at the back of the store and, from the very top shelf, so high that only he could reach without a ladder, pulled down a shirt.

He unfurled the folded-up garment like a flag, and it was a dashiki-style robe, like his, but shorter, and of an absolutely incredible fabric. I am of Scots ancestry, with red hair, grey eyes, and very pale skin. This shirt shimmered in the dimly-lit room, as if it carried a light of its own within itself. The color was a combination of grey that matched my eyes and slate-blue, like the North Sea on a bad day, with a few shots of red and some green in it, in an indiscernible pattern that seemed first one thing, and then another. As soon as a particular design took shape, it vanished. If color and substance could be made into liquid smoke, this would be it.

I gasped involuntarily as I saw it, this seemingly delicate fabric held in his huge, strong hands. It was literally breathtakingly beautiful. I had never in my life worn anything like it, but I knew I had to have it, had to possess it, to claim it as my own. I didn’t care how much it cost – mere money was as nothing compared to such triumphant beauty and feeling – how a mere garment could have feeling was beyond me but I knew that this one did.

The Shopkeeper smiled again knowingly as I gazed at his treasure, knowing that he had hooked his fish. I stammered “C-C-Could I please try it on?”

He said, “Be sho, Mon, you mus’ put it on – but firs’, you mus’ remove all other fabric – no other cloth ever touch this cloth – never – mus’ never.”

As he spoke, he seemed to loom even larger than his already towering height, and his quiet, deep voice, with its surprisingly lilting accent, echoed in the small room as if it were the large stone sanctuary that this building had once been. My vision had narrowed so that the room surrounding me was indistinct, the shapes blurred – there was only the shirt, and him, his handsome, dark face like carved ebony, and his strong hands like the grip of a lion. I shook my head to clear it, and the room settled into its former lineaments. I stammered again “W-W-What do you mean – you mean I have to take all my clothes off to try on a shirt? Well, I guess ok – where is the dressing room?”

He smiled again and said “Only dis room, Bas, only here, only now. You mus’ – no other cloth ever touch dis cloth – mus’ never. Naked as day you came into dis worl’, so only may you wear dis.”

My instinct was to say no to that, and let my runner’s legs carry me as fast down those winding stairs and out of this building as they could, and I promised myself that I would