The Devil's Workshop

He pulled the trousers on, thrilling at the feel of fabric against his skin, and left them unfastened, spreading his legs wide to keep the trousers from falling back down. He unbuttoned a dazzling white shirt, almost purple it was so pure and fresh, and he slipped his arms into the sleeves, shrugged the shirt up over his shoulders. He gathered the buttons in one hand and inserted them back into the holes, starting from the collar and working his way down his chest and abdomen, taking care not to drop any of them on the floor. Getting dressed was a thing so many took for granted, and yet he had not performed this simple daily operation in a very long time. He wanted to enjoy the process. He tucked the tail of the shirt into the top of the trousers and fastened the hooks on the fly. He wondered briefly why the front of a pair of trousers was called a fly, and he thought of his own stupid fly, his Peter, his rock, on the floor in the hallway upstairs, sleeping and missing the splendor of this ritual. He found the cufflinks, pretty chunks of silver with a blue porcelain inlay, and fixed his cuffs. He moved the knife and sat in the chair and pulled on a pair of sheer black hose that the tailor had left for him there. Elizabeth’s shoes were perhaps a bit loose, and Jack got up and went back to the kitchen, found a folded bit of butcher paper in the garbage that still smelled of meat. He took it back to the parlor, tore it in half, and stuffed the crumpled bits of it in the ends of the shoes. Elizabeth looked up at him when he heard the sound of tearing paper, but immediately lost interest and returned his gaze to the nothingness he saw in the middle of the room. The shoes were a better fit with the paper in them, so Jack tied them with a double knot, stood and put on the waistcoat and the jacket, went back to the kitchen, and gazed at himself in the mirror on the back of the pantry door.

He looked magnificent.