Enzo ignores this entirely. He begins to circle Luke with the focused intensity of a man scoring a Renaissance sculpture. His hands are raised. His expression is pained. He looks like he might weep.
"The shoulders," Enzo breathes. "Theneck.The jawline —Dio mio,the jawline. Do you know what I could do with a jawline like that?" He stops. He turns to Max. "Do you know what he does to me? This man walks in here incottonand he thinks I amjust going tofunctionnormally? He thinks I am going to simplycontinue?"
"Please continue," I say.
Enzo spins back to Luke.
"I have dressed princes," Enzo announces. "I have dressed diplomats. I dressed a man who was briefly a pope. And I say to you now, with full sincerity, that none of them—" he pauses for effect, "—had a torso like that."
Luke looks down at his torso. "It's just a hoodie."
Enzo makes a sound like a man who has been personally wounded.
"Just a hoodie," he repeats, to nobody. To the universe. To whatever god oversees the tragedy of wasted potential. "He saysjust a hoodie.This is my curse. This is my cross." He rounds on Luke again, reinvigorated. "Take it off."
Luke freezes. "I'm sorry?"
"The hoodie. Take it off. I need to see what I am working with."
"I— there's a shirt underneath?—"
"Magnificent," Enzo breathes, as if this is the most exciting news he has ever received. "Ashirt.Another layer. I love layers. You know why I love layers?"
"...Because you're a tailor?"
"Because," Enzo says, stepping so close that Luke begins a slow, subtle lean backwards, "taking them off is myfavourite part."
Luke turns to me with the expression of a man whose brain has started filling out an incident report.
Enzo produces his tape measure with a dramatic flourish, like a magician revealing the ace of spades.
"I have a private room," Enzo announces. "In the back. No windows. Soft lighting. I do my best work in there." He sighs contentedly at the memory. "We will be completely alone. Just you, me, and the tape. I will take my time." He looks Luke up and down one final, devastating time. "I am never," he adds, "in a hurry."
"Jax," Luke says, very quietly.
"Yeah."
"Is he?—"
"Yeah."
"Should I?—"
"Probably."
"STEP AWAY FROM THE PHYSICIAN."
It’s Preston.
He steps out from behind a rack of tuxedos. He's wearing a charcoal suit that fits him better than Enzo's fits Enzo. He walks toward them with the smooth, unhurried movement of a man who has never once needed to raise his voice to empty a room.
Enzo turns. He looks Preston up and down with the clinical eye of a professional. A beat passes.
"Another panic room," Enzo concludes.
"Interesting," Preston says pleasantly. "A man whose primary business is wrapping other people in expensive fabric just called someone else a panic room. The self-awareness in this building is genuinely remarkable."
Enzo stiffens. "I am an artist."
