Free The Apartment: A Novel by Greg Baxter Page A

coat off and places it in the cradle of her crossed arms. The next level is divided into men’s formal and casual, and there is hardly anyone shopping in the formal section, just some middle-aged men looking at suits. The casual coats have zippers on the sleeves or logos or writing on the back or they are made of shiny fabric. The larges are too small – the sleeves are too short and the shoulders are too narrow – and the extra larges are too big. They all make me look as though I want to look younger. But I don’t feel younger. I feel my age. I feel, now that I am forty-one, that I was born forty-one, that this number was somehow encoded in my DNA – this number was mass-produced by every cell of my body my whole life and for most of my life powered my bewilderment with the way everybody else acted, or what they wanted, or how they went about getting it. As a joke, I try on a coat that is blue and pink and has three small white stripes in a circle around the biceps of each sleeve and Saskia waves me away from the section entirely. I follow her. There is a ledge from which we can stare down at the level below, and we see Manuela inspecting an unsightly coat that would, no doubt, look nice on her. Saskia sighs. She seems eager to get out of here. Perhaps because her father was a civil engineer who ate himself to death, she equates the efficiency and usefulness of contemporary commercial architecture with ruthlessness and disease. She likes old, small, run-down places. In her camera phone she has photos of a thousand crumbling doorways and rusted gates. Since I have known her, she has added dozens. She has photos of broken windows in palaces and overflowing trash bins outside official buildings.
    I see a coat on a headless mannequin at the other end of the floor, in a row of headless mannequins wearing nice coats. The coat is grey, almost silver. We walk to it. We stand beside the window overlooking the street. The coat has a lapel collar and epaulette sleeves and hidden buttons. Saskia says, It’s beautiful. She runs to find one my size. It’s ninety-nine per cent cashmere and one per cent cotton. It’s so soft, says Saskia. But look. She holds out the price tag, which is hanging out of the cuff. I don’t make that in a month, she says. It really is nice, though, I say. Yes, the best by far, she says. If you can afford it, you should get it. I feel inside the sleeves. It is expensive, but it’s also one of the nicest coats I’ve ever seen. And I may never buy a coat again. Put it on, says Saskia. I put my old coat on the ground and kick it away from me. I take the new coat and put my arms through the sleeves and pull the collar to my neck, and it fits. It’s a lot warmer than my other coat. It falls to my knees and there’s a large slit up the back.
    Now Manuela appears. What do you think? I ask. Very stylish, she says. Is it expensive? A little bit, I say. A lot, says Saskia. Maybe, I say, but I don’t plan to buy myself any more coats for a long time. My colleagues wear coats like this, says Manuela, but not as nice. Your colleagues do not wear this coat, says Saskia. That’s what I said, says Manuela. Not as nice. Well, I say, it’s pretty conservative. I’m not trying to stand out. That’s what I mean, says Manuela. You won’t stand out. I stretch my arms to make sure the sleeves are the right length, and they are perfect. I say, How about gloves and a scarf now? Let me pick the scarf, says Manuela. Okay, I say. You need some colour, she says. What’s wrong with grey? I ask. She looks at Saskia and says, Exactly. She departs, and Saskia says she will look for some gloves. Something heavy, I say. I go find a mirror and have a look at myself. It is strange to spend this kind of money on anything that does not move or can’t be lived in. But this is not the beginning of ostentatious spending. This is just the once. Manuela returns with a scarf. I knew it the second I saw it, she says. It is a silk scarf