The doorbell chimed, letting in the damp autumn wind and a young man. His name was Julian. He was handsome, but it was that nervous, exhausted beauty found in greyhounds that have lost a race. His expensive suit was from last year's collection and had begun to shine at the elbows, and a mixture of desperation and hungry ambition could be read in his eyes.
The Tailor,
without changing his posture, continued to wipe his glasses with a piece of
chamois. “You have the wrong door, young man. The pawnshop is further down the
street.”
“I know who
you are,” Julian slammed the door, cutting off the city noise. “I was told that
you can... reshape reality.”
The Tailor
put on his glasses. Behind the lenses, eyes as cold as needles glinted. “I just
sew clothes. My clients reshape reality. What do you want?”
Julian
walked up to the counter and slapped his palm on it. “I want to be noticed. I
have brilliant ideas: startups, projects, plans... But investors look at my
frayed cuffs, not into my eyes. Bankers look at my credit rating, not my
potential. I am tired of being a ‘promising failure’. I want them to look at me
and see success. Not the kind that was, but the kind that is inevitable.”
He caught
his breath. “Sew me a coat. One that makes anyone who meets me understand: this
guy has everything ahead of him. So they see a future in me that they want to
invest in.”
The Tailor
slowly walked around the counter and picked up a measuring tape, but he didn’t
measure anything. He simply looked at Julian like an entomologist looking at a
beetle crawling into a jar of ether on its own accord. “You ask for a dangerous
thing,” the Tailor said quietly. “You want to dress in ‘potential’. This is the
most treacherous fabric in my arsenal.”
“I will pay
a percentage of future profits!” “Oh, I do not doubt it,” Black chuckled. “But
you must know the rules of wear.”
Julian
nodded impatiently: “Yes, yes, do not take it off, do not wash it... I’ve heard
the tales. I am ready.”
The Tailor
shook his head and suddenly uttered the very phrase he repeated to everyone who
yearned to exchange ‘now’ for ‘later’: “It is not about washing. The Future is
a heavy fabric. It drapes poorly on the present. It will pull at the
shoulders.”
“Nonsense!”
Julian dismissed it. “I am strong. I will bear any weight, just give me a
chance.”
“The main
thing is the effect!” the Tailor mimicked his thoughts. “Very well. Stand
straight, lower your arms. We shall take the measure of your pride.”
Sewn from
fabric the color of a storm cloud, deep and rich, the coat was a masterpiece.
It kept its main secret inside. The lining was not visible from the outside,
but when Julian put on the coat, it flared up with a golden glow. It was not
the gold of metal—it was the light of pure, concentrated promise.
When Julian
stepped out onto the street in the new coat, the world changed. He hailed a
taxi, though he had no money. The taxi driver, glancing at him in the rearview
mirror, said: “Don't worry, boss. You’ll pay later. I can see you are on your
way to sign the contract of the century.”
At the
meeting with investors, Julian didn’t even open his presentation folder. He
simply walked into the conference room. The gray suits at the table froze. They
looked at him and saw not a nervous youth, but a monolith. They saw in him
Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and Rockefeller rolled into one.
“How much
do you need?” the chairman asked, pulling out a checkbook. “A million? Two? We
want to be part of your future.”
It was
intoxicating. Women fell in love with him instantly. Not with his jokes or his
bed, but with who he would become. “You will be great,” whispered another
model, looking at him with adoration. “I will wait. I know it will happen very
soon.”
Creditors
who used to blow up his phone now bowed upon meeting him. “Mr. Vane, no
problem. Pay us back when your project takes off. We can see it’s a matter of a
couple of days.”
Time flowed
unnoticed. Julian lived in the best hotels (on credit), ate in the best
restaurants (the bill was charged to his “future”). But there was one problem.
Every time he sat down to work to realize his plans, he felt a strange
resistance. The coat “pulled at the shoulders.” The moment he started doing
something in the present, the magic would dissipate. Real work looked petty and
boring compared to the greatness the coat promised.
He
procrastinated. “Tomorrow,” he thought. “Tomorrow I will start. But today I
just need to be present and shine.”
And
everyone agreed. No one demanded results. Everyone was happy just to be near
the “man of the future.” Investors gave new tranches to cover old debts, firmly
believing that a breakthrough was about to happen. Julian stopped taking off
the coat even at night. Without it, he felt like a nonentity. In the coat, he
was a God about to create a world.
Forty years
passed.
A narrow,
dirty alley behind the dumpsters of an elite restaurant was swept by an icy
wind. A creature sat on a pile of cardboard boxes. It was an old man with a
matted gray beard, filthy, covered in sores. He smelled of urine and sour wine.
But on his shoulders hung rags of a color once like a storm cloud. Now the
fabric had turned into a gray, greasy rag, eaten by moths. The hems were torn,
buttons long lost, the coat was held together by a piece of twine. But through
the holes and tears, the faint, hypnotic golden glow of the lining still broke
through.
The back
door of the restaurant opened. A cook brought out a bucket of slops. He
grimaced in disgust, about to splash out the liquid, but suddenly his gaze fell
on the figure on the boxes. The cook froze. He did not see a homeless man. The
magic of the decayed coat still worked flawlessly. The cook saw a genius who
had simply taken a pause before a leap. He saw a man in whose eyes (cloudy and
insane) shone the dawn of a new era.
“Forgive
me, sir,” the cook hastily hid the slop bucket behind his back. “I didn’t know
you were... contemplating. I won't disturb you.” He fumbled in his pocket, took
out a crumpled bill—his tips for the evening—and timidly placed it at the old
man's feet. “Take this. It’s an investment. I know when you rise, you won’t
forget the little people. You have... you have such a future, sir!”
Old Julian
picked up the bill with a trembling hand. He wouldn’t buy food with it. He
would buy a lottery ticket. Or a newspaper with stock quotes. He smiled with a
toothless mouth and wrapped the hole-ridden fabric tighter across his chest.
“Yes,” he wheezed. “Just a little more. Tomorrow. Tomorrow it all begins.”
People
walked by. They skirted the foul-smelling pile of garbage, but, glancing at the
old man in rags, they broke into enthusiastic smiles. “Look,” a guy whispered
to his girlfriend, pointing at the half-corpse in the corner. “What a gaze! I
bet anything this guy will go far.”
Julian Vane
froze to death that same night, clutching a crumpled dollar in his hand. But
even when the coroners were loading his stiffened body into a black bag, they
tried to do it gently. It seemed to them that they were carrying not the corpse
of a vagrant, but a sleeping prince who was about to wake up and make this
world happy.
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