“It’s gravy, by the way, don’t ask.  Just get it out.”  The man leaves the shop quickly without another word.

The drycleaner isn’t in the least bit surprised.  He’s seen it all.  Ink on curtains, lipstick on skirts, red wine on neckerchiefs.  Gravy on an overcoat is just another part of the job.

He takes the overcoat into the back of the shop and hangs it up to examine the stain on the left sleeve.  It starts at the shoulder and runs all the way down the arm.  Rather impressive actually, there must be a good story there, but it’s not his business to ask.  He looks closely at the fine herringbone weave of the charcoal-gray wool.  He’d have to penny-pinch for years to afford an overcoat like this.

With a slight hesitation, the drycleaner pulls off his own coat: the smock to protect his clothes from the chemicals he uses.  It smells sharply, yet rather sweetly, of the cleaning agents from his daily work, and the hem is beginning to fall.  He tosses it aside.  Glancing behind him once, he takes the overcoat from the hanger and pulls it on.

The sleeves are a little too long; he doesn’t have the shoulders to fill it out.  Nonetheless, he can’t help but imagine himself as a figure of authority in this coat.  This is the coat of a businessman, an executive, a CEO.  This is a coat to be handed brusquely to a personal assistant upon entering one’s private office suite.  This is a coat to hang in the foyer of an old Victorian house after a hard day’s work, before kissing a blonde wife wearing a string of pearls.

The drycleaner walks a few times around his workspace, admiring the way the hem of the coat whips around his shins.  The weight of the fabric is perfect, heavy enough to be warm, but light enough to move easily.  His steps become longer, more elegant, a bit of a swagger.  He feels taller somehow, more coordinated.  He walks with a purpose.

The clothes make the man, they say, but no one knows this more than the drycleaner.  He sees all kinds of people and all kinds of clothes everyday, but most importantly, he sees how people treat their clothes.  People worry about the states of their favorite clothes almost as much as their own health.  Sometimes more.

The drycleaner makes one more round of his shop in the coat, then stops.  It’s a beautiful coat, but it isn’t right.  It’s like wearing the wrong skin.  He begins to feel the shoulder seams rubbing against him an inch lower than they should be.  The cuffs nearly cover his thumbs, constraining his hands.  He pulls it off and hangs it up again.  His own coat, the cheap and threadbare smock, fits just as it should when he puts in back on.  Somehow, it’s almost a relief.  Whistling tunelessly, the drycleaner picks up a bottle of Perc and sets about lifting the gravy stain from this sleeve from someone else’s life.