The only black suits I know are clubs and spades

Published Sept. 3, 2007

My husband was going shopping for a new suit.
"I'll come with you," I said.
The plan was to leave for the mall at 6 p.m. so, in keeping with that schedule, we backed out of the driveway a couple minutes before 7.
By the time we got there, we only had about an hour and a half until the stores closed.
Can a tailor-made man with an off-the-rack pocketbook find a suit in that little time?
I didn't think so.
We got to the store and my husband started walking down one of the rows as I stood there trying to get my bearings in a sea of jackets and pants in varying shades of black.
"What are you looking for?" I asked my husband, the man who has been pawing through the likes of Esquire and GQ for so many years that I was sure he saw the differences in these suits that all looked exactly the same to me.
"I want a plain black suit," he said.
And with that began my lesson in the nuances of "plain black suit."
There are two-button and three-button jackets with narrow or wide lapels. There are one or two or no back vents. There are different weight materials and types of lining.
I was still being schooled in jackets when the salesman came over and offered to help.
He asked my husband his size, walked to an end area in the suit sea and pulled out about six of them.
I hadn't had enough lessons to see the difference in these half-dozen suits. I wondered which was the least expensive.
My husband eliminated a couple of them, and the suit salesman carried the others over to an open spot in the sea of suits where there was a full-length mirror.
The salesman pulled jacket after jacket off their hangers and helped my husband into them.
He looked anywhere from dashing to very dashing in all of them.
And then finally, the slightest mention of a price.
"Here, try this one on," the salesman said to my husband. "I think it's as nice as that other one, and it's a couple hundred dollars cheaper."
OK, well, now at least I knew the dollar ballpark - hundreds.
But neither of them flinched at the salesman's words, so I didn't either. I did, however, stand up straighter and try to smooth out my shirt in an attempt to look like a woman who didn't flinch at the words "a couple hundred dollars cheaper."
He finally picked out a suit. He looked marvelous in it. If he had a clue how much it cost, he didn't let on and, by this point, asking him "How much?" would have been gauche no matter how softly I whispered it.
Besides, how much more do you have to know when the difference in prices is measured in hundreds?
The next day, my husband related part of the conversation he had with the suit salesman as he got the hem of his pants pinned up.
"As soon as you asked for a two-button suit," the salesman had told him, "I knew you were a Democrat.
"And then I saw your wife," he went on, "and I knew she was a Democrat."
"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked my husband.
"I don't know," he said.
"Well, what kind of suit did he have on?" I asked my husband.
"A three-button one."
Hmm. It's true; you do learn something new every day.
It's just that some days, you have absolutely no idea what you just learned.