“
I unbuttoned the top of my shirt as I looked at the Tongue & Buckle. I wasn’t used to button-up shirts. I only owned two. The one I had on was new, a gift from my sister. Just thinking about her made my fingers worry nervously at the next button. The shirt was black, short-sleeved with tiny little skulls on the pocket. On the back, a Day of the Dead style Virgin Mary. Haley has a wicked sense of humor.
James didn’t insist on much, but he did insist on dressing up for meetings. Ridiculous, since one of the members had a hard time wearing pants. Wait, what was I thinking? James insisted on tons of things. I undid another button.
“You’re one away from a nice seventies look.” Sean put his feet up on the dash.
“I’d need chest hair for that. And gold chains.”
“True.” He leaned farther back into the passenger seat, if that was even possible. Sean, at least, never bitched about my Subaru. “You know, you’re going to have to go in eventually. And the longer you wait, the longer you’re in those clothes.”
I flicked a piece of lint off the black slacks James had dug up for me. He’d grunted at inspection. That grunt probably meant he’d be taking me shopping soon. Or it might have been directed at my Cons. You never knew. He needed to cut me some slack. My last job had been flipping burgers. You didn’t buy dress shoes for a job like that. With a job like that, you couldn’t even afford dress shoes. Or clothes. You couldn’t afford anything, really.
Sean looked over at the pub. “What did Groucho Marx say about being aware of any job that requires new clothes?”
“The quote is that we should ‘beware of all enterprises that require new clothes,’ and it’s Thoreau, not Groucho Marx.”
“Oooh, listen to you. ‘It’s Thoreau.’ Well, we didn’t all go to college for a quarter.”
“I went for a year, not a quarter, and shut up.
”
”