Chapter Text
Julius and Kay have an—arrangement, in their marriage, that protects both of them. They're an excellent match in every way except for their mismatched sexual attractions. Kay has a girlfriend, Odette, who’s a poet and lives in the Village, and sometimes he goes with her to Odette’s reading. Julius ended things with his last boyfriend a few weeks after starting work at Incredible Tales, and for now he’s not in a hurry to find someone new.
He couldn’t say why, exactly, he wanders into the tailor’s shop one morning. He buys strictly off-the-rack and the only suit he’s ever had tailored was his wedding suit. Maybe it’s that as he walks past, he hears a radio playing the repetitive “beep…beep…beep” of Sputnik passing overhead. It’s not a particularly pleasant sound, in the abstract, but for some people—like him—it might as well be the comforting sound of a heartbeat.
When he walks down a few steps and enters the shop, he hears a man exclaim, “Welcome, welcome!” The shop is overly warm, a little dim, but impeccably clean. Julius steps past a display of clothes to find a man sitting at a worktable, stitching busily. When he comes into sight, the man leaps up. “How may I help you?”
“I was—” Julius starts, and realizes he doesn’t have the rest of the words. That’s odd. He’s almost never at a loss for words. “I heard Sputnik.” He points a little stupidly at the short-wave receiver on the man’s work table.
“Ah yes! I find it pleasant background noise, don’t you?”
Julius stares at the man. “I…suppose I do.” He’s a little older than Julius, perhaps in his early forties, with lank brown hair that’s a little too long for polite society, sunken eyes, and a very pale complexion. “But I’m a science-fiction writer. I’m not sure most people would agree with me.”
“Ah, a writer!” The man extends his hand to shake. “My name is Elim Garak. And you are?”
Julius takes his hand. It’s callused, a little cool even in the warmth of the room. Mr. Garak’s grasp is firm. “Julius, Julius Eaton.”
“Of course! I’ve seen your name—you write for one of the magazines, do you not? Galaxy, is it?”
“Incredible Tales.” It’s nothing to be ashamed of, even if it isn’t Galaxy.
“Yes, yes, of course!” The man sounds delighted at everything Julius tells him, and it sends an unaccountable shiver down his spine. He’s been holding the man’s hand too long, and he releases it. “I’ll make sure to purchase the next issue to find your latest story.”
Julius thinks back to the latest story he wrote, which involved Martian princesses. “Perhaps you should wait for the next one.”
Mr. Garak laughs at that too. “Whatever you say, my dear Mr. Eaton.”
“Call me Julius, Mr. Garak,” he says. “Please.” The War Office calls him Mr. Eaton.
“Oh, it’s only Garak. Plain, simple Garak.” There is something about Garak that says that he’s neither plain nor simple.
“Garak, then.” Julius is somewhat at a loss now, the steady sound of Sputnik in the background.
“I’m always happy to make a new friend,” Garak says cheerfully. “Did you come in here looking for a suit?” He looks Julius over, and there’s that shiver down his spine again. “Or perhaps more limited tailoring work?” His gaze drops to Julius's hand and the wedding band that sits there. “Many a man’s wife has told me that she appreciates the way I’ve made her husband’s suit fit.”
“My wife—” How is Julius to say this? It’s been a while since he tried to indicate a certain sense of possibility. “My wife appreciates the fit of ladies’ clothing.” There, that’s acceptably ambiguous.
There’s a certain spark in Garak’s eyes and Julius had forgotten how intoxicating this is—the first flush of excitement, the anticipation. “Still, I would be delighted alter something for you. Perhaps your jacket? May I?” He walks closer to Julius and puts his hands on Julius’s shoulders even as Julius begins to agree. “I think you’ll find that with a few minor changes, this would sit very nicely.” He squeezes so gently that Julius almost thinks he imagined it.
All of this is how he walks into work without a jacket, prompting sharp looks from the police detectives who have been lurking in the neighborhood and an exclamation of “Oh, Julius, what happened?” from Darlene. “Did you get mugged on your way in?”
“Yes, Darlene, I’m sure a man pointed a gun at him and said ‘It’s your jacket or your life,'” Herbert says from behind his desk.
Douglas pokes his head into the room long enough to regard Julius with some disgust, shake his head, and say, “No sense of decorum at all,” before retreating to his office.
Julius pours himself a cup of coffee, lights a cigarette, and sits down at his typewriter. Kay is giving him a look heavy with meaning, the meaning being don’t be indiscreet. “If you must know, I ducked into a tailor’s shop on my way to work this morning and was offered an excellent price for a little work on my jacket. If I’d realized it would upset everyone so much, I would have returned home for another one instead of being on time.”
“All right, all right, I’m the only one who gets to spend this much time talking about what my husband is wearing,” Kay says. “Unless you all have opinions on the fit of his trousers too?”
There’s various grumbling as the others turn back to their typewriters.
Around 6 pm, when Herbert has started nipping at the bottle of sherry he keeps in his desk in case of writer’s block and Macklin has lost his fifth pack of matches, Kay heaves a sigh and pushes away from her desk. “Jules, dear, I’m going to go home.” She lowers her voice a little. “Will you be home tonight?”
“I think I’ll stop by my club,” Julius says. “No need to wait up for me.”
“Of course, dear. I have plenty of reading to occupy me.” Their code for a visit to Odette. She picks up her coat and handbag. “Don’t drink too much, you know you’re not as young as you used to be.”
“And yet you, my dear, never age.” He kisses her lightly, careful not to smudge her lipstick.
After the door closes behind her, Herbert says, “You two have such a…modern marriage.”
Julius looks at him sharply. “Do you have a problem with my wife, Herbert?”
“With Kay? No, no.” Herbert gestures with his sherry glass. “She’s too good for you. What kind of man would rather drink with a bunch of other sad old men than be at home with that woman?” Julius knows Herbert well enough to see this for the needling that it is. Herbert has two ex-wives and his only son died in Korea six years ago. He doesn’t bother to respond in kind.
Julius stays for another half-hour, poking at his assigned story for the month, about a spy transformed into an alien who can’t transform back. It had seemed poignant when he first took the assignment, but it’s all coming out a little too depressing. He pulls the most recent page out of his typewriter, adds it to the stack, and stuffs the whole mess into his briefcase before leaving.
What he likes to call his ’club’ is the bar at the VFW hall. Technically he’s not eligible for membership, what with not having served in the American armed forces, but with his own service and Kay’s time in the WAC, it seems they’ve decided it’s close enough. It’s an old building, drafty and dimly-lit, with battered wooden floors and threadbare carpets. In summer, it’s sweltering; in winter, barely inhabitable. But the membership seems to grow every day, and undoubtedly there will be another surge with the next inevitable war. Sometimes Julius will go every night for a week or two, and sometimes he stays away for a few months.
He hasn’t been for quite some time now, but his story is nagging at him. Whether or not he intends it, those men always seem to turn up as characters in his stories and he’s stopped fighting it. Tonight, he goes straight to the bar and says, “Scotch, Charlie—make it a double, it’s been a long day.”
Charlie nods—he isn’t much of a talker—and turns away to pour it. Julius contemplates sitting at the bar or finding a table by himself, and has almost decided to sit at the bar when a man next to him says, “Julius, what a surprise!”
Julius turns to the warm presence at his side and finds Garak standing there.