The day before the day before I bought the shirt I thought about buying
the shirt. The day before I bought the shirt I thought about buying the
shirt. The day I bought the shirt I bought the shirt.

I don’t know how to express the feeling of waking up and hating every scrap
of clothing in my apartment. The day before the day before I bought the
shirt I woke up next to him for the first time as cohabitants, face in the
cold drool spot he was still contributing to, and got up and looked in the
closet and had this feeling. Just hate. The closet seemed smaller with his
clothes in it, and all my clothes were cramped lost causes. I put something
on, something I don’t remember because I don’t remember really any other
clothing but the shirt. I went and did the dishes that were left over from
the night before, from our dinner to celebrate his moving in. I stared into
the draining sink as it burbled its last and said, “I know.”

Work was six short blocks away, but I left early because there was a new
thrift store between home and office and I needed to check it out. Hate
sucks if it’s not at least the beginning of action. The world seemed a
little smaller too now that he wasn’t living a few neighborhoods east, now
that I wouldn’t have to get on a bus to see him, now that he was living in
my bed or whatever, my couch, he didn’t go to work. So these six blocks
were sort of going to be it.

The thrift store was medium-sized inside; you could slide down the aisles
between racks but not without brushing fabric. The shop guy was more than
ready to receive patrons, despite it being a few minutes after opening, and
though I slipped past him without a “good morning” he gave me a friendly,
standard “let me know if you want to try anything on.”

I wanted to try things on.

I just hadn’t found what yet but when I did it really was something, the
shirt. It was completely hidden between two unremarkable, bulky options on
the back rack and leapt out at my eyes. It was stunning, bright. A color I
won’t try to describe but one I was immediately blinded by, and drawn to. I
held the fabric between my fingers and pulled it from the rack, and as I
did the shop guy was already at my service.

“It’s the greatest, isn’t it?”

I nodded, dazed.

“You’re feeling it, right, you love it? It’s the softest fabric ever.”

I commented on the color.

“It’s so bright. It’s so bright you could see it from space.”

I laughed in a kind of agreement.

“No seriously. From space.”

I took whatever I was wearing off fast in the dressing booth, and then the
shirt was on me. The fit was great, but more than anything, in the mirror
when I looked, I was one person again. It repelled the presence of anything
else clinging, and startled me. I stepped out and heard a gasp from the
shop guy

“I love it on you.”

Ducking back into the booth, I took off the shirt, put my whatever clothes
back on, and tore out the door, mumbling my lateness to the shop guy.

Minutes later, in the office, I was just another someone of many at our
computers.

I was close to a deadline on an article where I play the haunted levels of
old video games, the spooky ones that are darker and full of ghosts or
graveyards, and write about them. I hadn’t done much of it with all his
moving in crowding my space and brain. Before lunch all I did was crack my
knuckles and sit and play one level with a duck in it and then I wrote down
one thing:

This house has an illusion wall.

After lunch I watched the first episode of a show online, a domestic comedy
from the UK. My corner cubicle made it easy to do whatever, and I could
always fold it into some content creation project or another if bothered by
any bosses. I liked the greeting in the show: “How’s today, then?” Better
than any US greeting like how are you or what’s up, the day as the central
part. The shirt made today not another flat day, “textured” I was ready to
say if anyone asked me, but of course nobody did.

We got take-out that night and I mentioned the shirt as we ate.

“You should buy it,” he cut me off.

I told him okay but I want to tell you about it, describe it to you so you
can picture it on me.

“You should just buy it, buy yourself something you deserve it if you want
it just buy it. We’re celebrating,” he said.

I don’t want that to be connected to this, I didn’t say.

The day before I bought the shirt he was in the bathroom when I woke up and
for a second I thought maybe. But then he was back in bed with slightly wet
hands. I was on my way to work quick with the light kiss he gave me resting
on my cheek.

It took a lot of willpower to hustle past the thrift store but I didn’t
have a lot of willpower and caved when it hit me that I hadn’t even checked
the price on the shirt. I peered in to see if my shop guy was there again
but it was a different clerk, so without embarrassment I went in and went
right to the rack where I could already see the shirt glint. It was
expensive enough that I wasn’t scared of someone snapping it up, and I
could wait and get it as a nice reward for meeting my deadline the next
day, sure. The designer’s name in raised cursive on the tag started GEN but
the rest had faded away.

Back at work I played a full day’s worth of haunted levels, killed a lot of
weird enemies and banged out a few solid fragments for the piece:

The haunted level is never the first. To prepare you there are rites of
passage in sunlit places with grass or brick, monsters that might not
exist in the real world.

Like most of them, this world centers around a giant house. Only the
wealthy can leave lasting ghosts.

You love the haunted levels, don’t you? Where life is easy and full of
pain.

As I sat across the table from him that night and ate his pasta there was a
big thought forming. I knew I couldn’t just come out and throw it at him
but the thought was this: sometimes when you make a big change it hits you
that you actually need to make a much much bigger change. I knew he knew I
was thinking about the shirt, he was probably thinking about buying it for
me, but more than anything I knew that I could never wear it around this
apartment. When he passed out I brushed my teeth hard, and yeah the
bathroom sink was right there below me but I spit on the floor.

The day I bought the shirt I waited until I got off work, because I knew
that of course I’d want to wear it out the second it was mine. The office
wouldn’t accept it and couldn’t contain it. I drummed my fingers on the
desk more than usual and met my deadline with this last little half-ass:

The whole game is filled with ghouls and mutants and aliens. It’s very
early nineties.

I opened the door to the thrift store with a smile that said get the damn
thing already, but when shop guy saw me I could tell something was wrong by
his sour face. And then I looked to the rack and saw the shirt was gone.
Shop guy made to mouth an explanation but then someone left the dressing
booth with the shirt on, showing off to a waiting friend. The shirt looked
dull and rough, nothing like the shirt I’d tried on. It was clearly not
working for them so they put it back. I slid into the dressing booth and
saw the tossed shirt on the bench and was dazzled again by the color,
returned. I put it on for the last time.

I left my old shirt bunched on the floor and emerged. The shop guy softly
applauded and took my cash with a flourish. The shirt was on me and I left
the store and it didn’t hit me at all to head home. The brightness would
totally blind him, I knew, and there was no way he could be happy for me.
The world seemed small but the sky seemed huge. I could hear the scattered
clouds and wanted to get up, to get closer. There’s always something at the
highest point in the haunted levels, a treasure above the weathervane of
the mad monster mansion or a ghost on the peak. I had to get there.

I walked up toward the park instead of down toward home and when I got to
the convenience store lot the billboard above me seemed like a good start.
I climbed the ladder fast and stood below the humongous dude faces, next to
a big letter Y, a movie with no women in it. I could see pretty far over
the city but it was still mostly buildings, including the one where I
worked and the one where I lived and where he was, so I got back down and
headed up six more blocks to where the sidewalk stopped and the park
started.

I’d heard about the tower that people sometimes hiked up to, in a clearing
at the top of the trail through the woods. I thought about the smell of him
that was now my apartment. And then I was standing below it. A radio tower,
slim and steel rising in front of me.

The climb was nothing. I didn’t even glance at the ground as I got higher
and higher, and in really no time I was at the tip clasping the final rungs
of the ladder below the spire. It was probably a great view but I ignored
everything below and looked up.

There was something beyond the clouds and the fading light in the sky,
something asking down for a signal, for my signal. This world I was above
was way too contained for me now, too dull, I knew. They were coming down
to get me, but there was no way I was waiting for them to descend through
that entire atmosphere in between us. My hands let go and reached, I lifted
off. My feet left the ladder and the tower dropped away.