Faivish the Imbecile – Robert Bagnall

The thermometer rose day by day. We worked with the doors and windows thrown open all day and into the evening. Summer always turns the volume of the city up. Car horns, radios, sirens, televisions, engines, shouts, laughter, running footsteps. Occasionally a car backfiring like a gunshot; more rarely, a gunshot like a car backfiring. A constant mix carried on the heat through everybody’s open windows. I had spent three straight nights stitching corsets for Kordaski. Black lace numbers with blood red ribbons, clashing stitching. I was beat and had taken the afternoon off. Cousin Faivish could help father on his own.

That evening they came back from the shop earlier than usual. My father’s eyes sparkled. He had a story to tell. Cousin Faivish bobbed behind him like a small child eager to illuminate and illustrate the main tale.

“A man,” my father began, never liking to get to the heart of a story too quickly, “An ordinary man, stops and looks at the rails of t-shirts. He looks at one rail. Then he looks at the other rail. He chooses a t-shirt and brings it in the shop. He’s chosen a $14.99 t-shirt. The more expensive t-shirt. Ten dollars more.”

“So, a mad person walks the streets of New York. Is that news?” my uncle retorted.

“Don’t you see? I call a thing ten dollars more and people pay ten dollars more.”

“Because they trust you and therefore trust that it’s worth ten dollars more,” my mother complained.

“But it’s clearly not. It’s the same t-shirt. Everybody can see that. Even Faivish can see that it’s the same garment.”

It was the first time that my father had ever suggested that Cousin Faivish was not playing with anything but a full deck. Even for a revitalization he was clearly backward; most of us suspected he’d been made with rejected parts, offcuts from more desirable creations.

And then it happened. I was stitching pants in the front room, making best use of the late afternoon sun with the television burbling away in the background, tennis from Flushing Meadow. A crowd shot during a break. People getting up, sitting down, chatting, laughing, looking around, just waiting for the match to start again. And the commentators, filling in, picking out a ‘$4.99’ and a ‘$14.99’ t-shirt in the crowd and making a joke of it. Compare and contrast. What it said about the wearers. Which one was in the more expensive seat?

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