Flash! Fiction 3 by Peter McMillan - HTML preview
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The Suit Shoppe was an institution. Generations of men and boys had been measured, fitted and suited there. Over the years, the store and its owners had figured in many newspaper accounts that promoted the business and the legend of the master tailors who fled their homeland.
Joe, the elder, and Harry, his son, created a phenomenal success story, and every four years, TV-savvy people came through to have their pictures taken with these immigrant entrepreneur stars. Between the papers and the parties and traditional word of mouth, advertising was free. Nevertheless, Harry, unlike his father and more like his great grandpa back home, was a showman as well as a tailor and businessman, and he believed in radio saturation.
Yet despite having the means and status to move uptown, Harry kept the neighbourhood store opened by his grandpa. Since then, of course, the store had expanded horizontally and vertically—
substantially in both cases—smoothly transitioned with the help of good friends in the right places.
Harry made a point of greeting and talking to everyone making them feel welcome, special, and, not incidentally, inclined to buy a suit or three. Harry never missed a day, though he wasn't always in the store. He had a multitude of obligations—weddings, funerals, christenings, communions, bar and bat mitzvahs, grand openings, opening ceremonies, and so on and so forth. Wherever a suit was called for, one was likely to be his.
At Trisha's wedding, I remember that Harry gushed over the appearance of the groom and his father, the three younger brothers, the best man, and the ushers. Ruth and I felt strangely pleased that Trisha was our daughter … and only child.