He stands in the doorway. He won’t come all the way through. He is on the way to work.
But he has something to say before he goes.
“All my life I’ve been buying pants that are 34, 30,” he says.
I know this.
“It’s the wrong size,” he says and, as proof, offers me a look at his current pants– the ones he has on right now, the navy ones that want ironing and that, when he extends his leg just slightly as he’s doing now, go just a wee bit too far past his heel.
“They’re too long,” he says.
“Yes.”
“The thing is, I need to buy 34, 29,” he says.
I think he’s right about that. I think he’s hit it dead-on. It’s taken us years to come to this conclusion, but neither one of us is a person who spends much time thinking about pants.
“The problem is,” he says, “you can’t buy them that size. They don’t make them. You can’t get 34, 29 pants,” he says.
I am listening. I am thinking he is right. I’ve done my share of shopping for him over the years, and I can’t remember ever seeing a size 34,29 pair of pants in the offing.
“It’s like they’ve decided,” he says, “that you can’t be any shorter than that. As if a person of my breadth Can’t Possibly Be any shorter than a size 30 inseam. That’s it. That’s all. That’s as short as you can possibly be.”
He says this, and then he stands there, and silently we digest this reality together.
We are rueful, both of us. We know how it is. I have a devil of a time finding clothes that fit me and so, it would seem, does Bill. Too short, too small, legs too short for this waistline, legs too long for that.
It’s unfair, really it is.
Then Bill goes to work in pants that are a bit too long, and I head to Duke for a meeting with my professor. As I walk through the parking lot on my way to the building, I have to keep tugging my shirt down in the name of modesty, because my skirt doesn’t really fit me around the waist.
