The tall girl smiled, her fingers gently lifting the heavy velvet from the chrome bracket before his thick hands could touch it. "It's fine, Mister. It didn't touch the wheel."
"Thank the saints," Bill breathed, taking the coat from her with a series of quick, short nods of his head. He held the blue fabric against his chest like a child holding a blanket, his eyes fluttering beneath the brim of his scattered hair as he looked at her.
"Thank you, young lady. My eyes... the fog on the ridge makes everything look like a gray sheet after five o'clock. I didn't even notice the zipper had slipped the latch."
"It's a beautiful color," the shorter girl said politely, curiously staring at the rows of silver pins still stuck into the coat's shoulder seam. "Are you a tailor?"
"Bill Curt," he said quickly, offering a small, self-deprecating bow that caused his vintage tape measure to slide from his pocket, its metal tip clinking against the asphalt.
"Just the bespoke shop near the block. I was... I was taking it down to the West End for a fitting before the early curfew."
As he spoke, his left hand—the one not holding the velvet—moved with a silenced speed. The tall girl was carrying a large, open-topped canvas tote bag slung over her left arm—a generic university piece with loose straps and no zipper. Inside, Bill could see a pair of red woolen gloves, a paperback novel, and a small brass key ring.
With a single, skillful flick of his thick thumb, he released a tiny, magnetized alloy from the palm of his hand—the exact twin to the Byte Seal he had used to secure the subterranean capsule at the precinct.
It slipped through the open top of the canvas tote without a sound, burying itself silently in the soft wool of the red gloves at the very bottom of the bag.
"You girls be careful out here now," Bill said meekly, "The department heads are running a very tight shift tonight because of the Ohio update on the animal attack. If the guards find you on the streets after eight, they won't care about your bus schedules."
"We're just heading to the library annex, besides it's been extended to 12 at midnight" the tall girl said, her hand reaching down to adjust the strap of her tote bag, completely oblivious to what's been tossed into it . "Thank you, Mr. Tailor."
"Good evening to you," he murmured.
He climbed back into the driver's seat, closing the heavy steel door with a "thud".
The moment the lock clicked, he pulled off the facade his features settled back into that frustration that had pinched his eyes since encountering Mahito.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a match, and struck it against the rusted dashboard. He lit the cigarette that had been clamped between his teeth, inhaling the thick, acrid smoke until his lungs were completely full, his sharp eyes watching the reflection of the tall girl's trench jacket through the rearview mirror as she disappeared into the gray rush of the crowd then drove home.
On reaching home at Columbus hills, he descended into the cellar beneath the bespoke shop; it three separate layers of limestone was reinforced timber that had been engineered during the rail expansion of forty-six.
Bill carried the oiled cowhide hand bag down the narrow, vertical shaft, his thick rubber boots gripping the iron rungs. The air changed every ten feet, losing the warm, linseed-oil sweetness of the upper studio and taking on the heavy, mineral stench of stagnant water and old river mud.
At the bottom of the fourth landing, he reached out his large hand and pressed his palm against the green iron surface of a heavy blast door.
The lock didn't use an electronic key rather it was a mechanical three-tumbler deadbolt that required a specific, forty-pound counter-pressure to turn.
Bill threw his weight against the iron bar, his shoulder muscle bunching beneath his linen shirt until the internal pins retracted with a loud, hollow *CLANG-CLACK* that echoed down the stone corridor.
"The evening seems to be getting better he whispered".
He stepped inside, closing the door behind him until the seal was tight.
The basement was a sprawling, subterranean labyrinth that ran sixty feet beneath the eastern ridge with single rows of low-wattage halogen bulbs hung from the exposed pine rafters, their light reflecting off a series of deep, concrete basins that had been cut into the floorboards during the building's days as a commercial tannery.
In the center of the main room sat a long, steel worktable covered in tools that didn't belong to a clothier—heavy iron skinning knives, bone saws with teeth as thick as a thumb, and three separate carboys of commercial lemon bleach that smelled twice as strong as the pool in the university restroom.
But it was the far corner of the vault that held the true architecture of reflection of his work.
Bill walked over to the steel table, dropping his hide bag onto the metal surface with a heavy, solid "thud".
"The silk is here," Bill said to the empty room, a voice which would have very much terrified Mrs. Gable if she saw the real him. Hé pulled out a pad which reflected the a read dot on a map. The tracker on the campus boulevard was already sending its local loop signal through the ground lines, counting down the minutes until the tall girl cleared the library annex.