THE FAT MAN SHOP

Carolina Quarterly

Copyright © 2024

All Rights Reserved

The twins are looking past chain store glass for something blue to suit them both: a Size 50-long-at-least blazer for Evan, a blaze of blue. It is Ethan’s wedding day, and the glass-faced twins have run out of chain store options. Evan the younger, Evan the softer, Evan ever fat as a fatted calf: Evan has come blue blazerless all this way to be Best Man for his twin brother on this day.

Big Man Shops, Evan is saying to Ethan, to his twin face in chain-store glass.

There has to be a Big and Tall Man Shop in a city of this size, Evan is saying.

And Ethan is saying back in glass to Evan, The hell would I know Big Man shops, or Tall Man either, Ev? I mean, the hell would I ever know about something like that?

And Evan is saying to Ethan, They are hard to miss, Eth, that’s all I’m saying. Big Man Shops are big business nowadays.

Go ask a fat man, Ethan says to Evan’s face in the glass, a fat man is sure to know where you can find a fat man shop.

So Evan asks the first fat man he can find, someone so fat his coat never gets close enough to button up. The fat man takes the measure of Evan, then he points with a fat finger to where they have to go.

The twins are running again: Ethan in a hard hurry, like always, with Evan still behind, always softer, still later, by seconds still, their time together wasting away, dry sand dripping through the waist of an hourglass. They find The Big and Tall Man Shop, but the shop is more Tall than Big, ending not even at 50, with long, extra long, and jumbo long must be for giraffes. There is nothing big enough here for Evan, but the Tall Man behind the counter has sized him up, big as he is, and the Tall Man is saying, You could try the costume shop. They stock for the circus sometimes, or for any kind of a special event with a tent.

Let’s go, last chance, Ethan is saying to Evan.

Ethan, at a hard run, is the first to be rapping on the glass of Ye Oulde Costume Shoppe. The Shoppe is closed, but there are costumes in the window, and a man inside not about to open up. Ethan raps hard on the glass again. The man comes to the window with closed in his mouth on the other side of the glass.

Ethan mouths Open! and then Now!—and the man in the Shoppe opens it then with no choice.

We need a coat, Ethan is saying, a blazer for my brother. He is my Best Man, Ethan is saying, and Today’s the day.

Something big in blue, Evan says soft.

The man in the Shoppe with no choice says there are no coats, nothing that big, nothing in blue, nothing new and nothing Oulde, plenty of nothing.

There has to be something, Evan is saying.

This place is for freaks, Ethan is saying to Evan, for people who eat torches and saw themselves in half.

There must be something, Evan is saying.

Last chance is up, Ethan is saying.

What about this? Evan is asking.

But it’s red, the man with no choice is saying, like a maroon. And it has epaulets and big brass buttons.

You can’t wear that thing to my wedding, Ethan is saying to Evan in the glass of the mirror. Don’t even try it on.

We can let out the waist, Evan says, soft, to Ethan. We can make something out of this.