The Suit

Silas returned home far later than he had expected, so late that the sun had just begun to crest over the far away horizon. Exhausted, he entered the apartment he and his wife shared, trying to be as quiet as possible and hoping that his wife was tucked away in their bed. It didn’t take long for him to realize that his hoping had been for naught. Leaning back in a way that would surely leave her with a crick in her neck, soft snores coming with each exhaled breath, Clara was fast asleep in her favorite armchair. Sighing, Silas gathered her up in his arms and carried her to the bedroom where he tucked her in, pressing a gentle kiss to her forehead.

Turning away from the bed, Silas removed his suit. He carefully examined it, looking for any new stains or holes that may have formed without him knowing. Clara teased him so often about how much he cared for his suit that he finally had stopped explaining how it was a basic extension of himself and simply shrugged instead. Satisfied with the suit’s appearance, Silas went to the bathroom and brushed his teeth. It seemed an incredibly menial task after a day such as this one, where the darkening bruise on Silas’ jawline only partly reflected how his day had gone, but now all Silas wanted to do was crawl into bed with Clara and fall next asleep to her.

The next day seemed extraordinarily uneventful. Silas was only called away from work once, and he believed he had left unnoticed. As usual, he sat in his cubicle at Palfrey Corporations, typing away at his computer, bored out of his mind. If it hadn’t been for the fact that his office chair swiveled, he’d have long since fallen asleep. A knock on the frame of his cubicle entrance pulled Silas away from the tedious report he was writing up. Turning, he saw the head secretary standing there, a grim look on her face.

“Silas? Mr. Hammond wishes to see you,” She said. Silas nodded and stood, then followed her down the fluorescently-lit hallway. The whole time, he wondered what the CEO wanted with him. He’d been sure his absences hadn’t been noted. Perhaps the job he liked in the IT department had finally opened up, or Mr. Hammond wanted to speak to him about the latest financial reports. Either way, Silas was less than thrilled to have to visit with him.

“Winters. Nice to see you. Have a seat.” Mr. Hammond indicated an uncomfortable looking chair before his desk, which Silas took. Meanwhile, Mr. Hammond slowly crossed the room, his balding head shining beneath the lights. Settling himself in the desk chair, Mr. Hammond leaned forward, his immense bulk straining against the buttons of his Italian-made suit.

“Winters, our secretary has informed me that you took an unexpected leave of absence this afternoon. According to the main desk, this is the third occurrence this week. We did tell you when you came on board with us that these types of situations could not occur.” Expletives scrolled through Silas’ head as if on a marquee, yet none managed to escape his lips. He could have sworn that no one had seen him leave.

“I’m terribly sorry, sir. It’s Clara, you see, she’s been under the weather and I’ve been trying…” Every excuse under the sun poured from Silas. He had to keep this job. Had to.
Raising his hand, Mr. Hammond silenced Silas. “Enough, Winters. I’m sorry to have to do this, but I’m going to have to let you go. The secretary will help you with your things, and your next paycheck will be mailed to you. Good luck in your future endeavors.”

The cab ride to his apartment in the heart of the city was excruciating. Looking into the cardboard box on his lap, Silas could see a framed photograph of him and his wife. He didn’t even want to think about how she would take the news. He could not have lost his job at a worse time, yet he knew he was the one to blame for it. If only he’d been more efficient, more adept at hiding his absences—this never would have happened.

“You’re home early,” Clara said as Silas entered their apartment. He thought she looked beautiful, sitting in her usual spot on the small balcony which overlooked Centropolis. Her honey-blonde hair was pulled away from her face in a messy bun, her long fingers held a stick of charcoal, and it was clear from some of the smudges on her face that she had been sketching for a while. A nurse who worked in the trauma center, Clara used art to clear her mind in whatever free time she managed to glean. When he needed her to, Clara also helped Silas out when things went south.

“It happened again,” Silas told her quietly. Her long strokes on the paper stopped. “I’m sorry. I—they noticed. I thought, when I left, no one had seen me.”

“Clearly, Silas, someone saw you.” The anger in her voice was evident as she stood up, “This is the fifth job. The fifth one. You can’t keep losing jobs like this!”

“I’m not doing it on purpose, Clara!” Silas’ tone surprised even himself, but he couldn’t stand it anymore. Every time he lost a job, it was the same conversation over and over again. He knew how important it was for him to hold down a job. After all, nurses only made so much money. Yet whenever he put on the suit, he felt as if, at that moment, that was all that mattered. In that suit, he was more than just Silas Winters, he felt as if he was the face of Centropolis.

“Don’t you understand? I want to start a family, Silas! We’ve been married for four years now, always just scraping by. I’m tired of that.” Clara sighed. “When we first were married, we spoke of having kids. Not right away, but perhaps a year or two down the road. It’s been four. Even if we had kids now, we couldn’t support them! We can’t get by on just my salary alone! Your—your suit has made sure of that!”

Silas bristled at the mention of his suit, “Don’t drag that into this conversation! You knew when we got married that the suit was part of this, part of me. I can’t just sit idly by while—“

“You can’t save everyone, Silas! But you can save us!” A few seconds of tense silence followed. Running her hands through her hair, frustrated, Clara at last spoke again, “You have to prioritize. I can’t keep feeling as if you don’t want this—us. We had goals, too, or don’t you remember? It’s me or the suit.”

When Clara’s relationship with Silas had begun to get serious, she had told herself that that was the one thing she would never do to him—make him choose. She regretted the words as soon as they left her lips, but she still felt as if she didn’t have a choice. Clara loved Silas, yet in recent years, she had found their relationship falling to pieces. It was the suit, she knew it in her heart. Whenever he wore it, it was as if he was someone else; not the man she had fallen in love with.

Silas stood before her now, a look of betrayal and bewilderment written across his features. He still looked the same as he had four years ago, with his dark, crew cut hairstyle and a faint shadow of stubble on his jaw. It was his eyes that had changed. Each time he wore the suit, he became more troubled. A smile was slow to reach his lips now, and even slower to reach his eyes. Clara missed the man she had married. The man who had been first to recognize a pun, the man who wore the suit only out of moral obligation and not as an escape from the confines of their small apartment—the man who had loved spending time with her over a random citizen of Centropolis.

Now it had come to this. Although Silas and Clara were in the same room, mere feet from each other, it seemed as if they were worlds away. A choice had to be made, this they both knew.
Silas took a deep breath, trying to clear away the thousands of thoughts crowding his mind. He had never wanted it to come to this. In retrospect, he shouldn’t be surprised. But all he could think about was how he thought Clara had been different—and was losing one person, albeit one he loved more than anything in the world, greater than the lives of people he didn’t even know?

“Clara, I love you,” He heard her give an audible sigh of relief, at the same time, his heart wrenched. He stepped closer, trying to close the distance between them, “I love you more than anything in the world, you know that. No one else could have put up with everything, much less who I am.”

“So you’ll stay?” She whispered, “You’ll stay with me?”

“I can’t. As important as you are to me, what about those who can’t defend themselves? I may not know them on the same level as I know you, but I have a duty to them. They are the minority. In this world, there exist people in power—people who abuse that power. And then are the underdogs. I fight for the underdogs. For those who feel as if they are being dragged through the mud time and time again, as if they cannot rise for fear of falling once more; when their body is the only thing moving forward because their heart and soul remain cemented in the past; that is for whom I fight. I will lend them a hand, I will wash the mud from their skin, and I will kiss their scars and show them that every scar has a story, every story is part of who they are, and they are important.”

There are moments that define who a person is. Moments that reveal everything about a human being; slicing open their soul to show their moral fiber. It was in that moment that Clara saw everything. For years now, she had known who Silas was. Every part of his identity, both in and out of the suit, she had been aware of. She had thought that the man she’d fallen in love with had simply had another side to him. Now she saw that the man who wore the suit was his true self, it was the one out of it who was the disguise.

Clara left the apartment knowing that Silas would do great things. She knew that in times of trouble, he would be called upon, and he would willingly answer. If anyone could live off of hope and hope alone, it was Silas. Perhaps he couldn’t hold down a steady job which involved typing away at a keyboard in a tiny cubicle with flickering fluorescent lights; but he would whatever it took to get by.
In the months to come, Silas and Clara would not completely remove themselves from each other’s lives. Silas still called upon Clara whenever he had need of her skills as a trauma nurse. As for Clara, whenever she had some extra money, she would be sure it got to Silas. Yet, eventually, he became harder and harder to find. Clara used all resources to locate him, noticing that the apartments he leased began to become smaller and smaller and located in worse and worse neighborhoods until, one day, he vanished from her radar. Although she no longer knew where he called home, she at least knew he was alive—the Centropolis newspaper still featured stories about him, though they became further and further spaced out.

* * *

Clara was walking home from work exactly a year after her separation from Silas. It had been a rough day at work, with gruesome car accident victims coming in and the doctors being unusually unhelpful. In all honesty, she wasn’t sure if the day could get worse. Then, she saw the crime scene tape. It was at the base of a forty-story skyscraper, one of the highest in Centropolis. There was a large group of people trying to inch in ever closer. Even from here, Clara could see shards of glass twinkling in the evening light, and blood staining the sidewalk. Upon seeing the prone body on the sidewalk, Clara broke into a run—years of training pushing her to call out that she could help, that she was a trauma unit nurse.

The police allowed her under the tape, informing her that paramedics were on their way, though they thought it evident that there was nothing more to be done for the victim. Yet Clara heard none of that. Now, she could see the body clearly, and now she understood the crowd. There, lying in the suit, face down and broken, was Silas. Tears streamed down her face as knelt down beside him, blood seeping into the fabric of her pants. This close to him, she could smell the alcohol on the suit. She didn’t need a police officer to tell her that his fall was no accident, that the door to the balcony on the thirty-fourth floor had been locked, and the glass on it broken with what seemed to be unnatural strength. All she could think about was how he had taken his own life. Who would fight for the underdogs now?

On that day, the citizens of Centropolis lost a man they didn’t know. The readers of the Centropolis Times did not know who Silas Winters was. The broken body found on the sidewalk was just another name in the obituary, just another face in the crowd. The papers broke stories on the rise of crime in the city, not on the death of one man. While Centropolis had lost a superhero, Clara had lost someone she loved.