Thirty-Six Jackets and One Nearly Detached Red Square

The Crooked Hem

Clara cut Esteban’s trousers off him before either of them thought to lock the workroom door.

“Hold still,” she said. “Unless you want the scissors to slip.”

“I want you to admit your hem caught the pedal.”

“Your pedal caught my hem.”

Outside, a windmill clattered above the ranch’s water tank. Esteban stood in his underclothes beside the treadle machine, clutching the ruined trousers while Clara freed a strip of brown wool from its iron teeth.

They had been sharing the workroom at La Lucera for three days. In another four, the ranch manager would choose which tailor received the winter clothing contract: thirty-six jackets, alterations included, and use of the empty cottage beside the orchard.

Clara wanted that cottage almost as badly as the money. Her rented room in town was too narrow to open her cutting table.

Esteban wanted it too. He had arrived with two machines, six rolls of cloth, and an expression suggesting she was occupying his chair.

“Your seams are too fine for ranch work,” he said, stepping into spare trousers.

“Your jackets could stand up without anyone inside.”

A gust shoved the unlatched door open. Their fabric scraps skittered across the floor beneath an old patchwork quilt spread over a bench.

Esteban caught the quilt before it fell into a bucket.

He shook the dust from it carefully.

“That belongs to the cottage,” he said.

“Then put it back. Neither of us owns it yet.”

What the Cloth Remembered

The manager inspected their sample jackets after lunch.

He lifted Clara’s, admired the smooth shoulder, then stretched both arms forward. The back tightened.

“Can’t repair a fence in this.”

Esteban’s jacket allowed him to reach freely, but its collar scraped his neck.

“Can’t turn my head in yours.”

He left them with another trial: each would fit a jacket to the same stockman the following morning.

Clara waited until his boots had stopped sounding on the veranda. Then she unpicked her beautiful shoulder seam.

Across the table, Esteban attacked his collar.

“You could soften it with steam,” she said.

“You could put a gusset under that arm.”

Neither thanked the other.

By dusk, the workroom smelled of hot wool and the bitter yerba in Esteban’s mate. Clara rubbed the base of her thumb against her apron. Without looking up, he pushed the flask toward her.

“There’s still hot water.”

Later, searching for fallen chalk, she lifted the quilt. Its underside was riddled with broken stitches. One red square had nearly detached.

“That’s from a riding skirt,” Esteban said.

“How can you tell?”

“I knew the woman who wore it. She used to make me sharpen her shears.”

Clara examined the tiny, uneven stitches around the red wool.

“Your grandmother?”

He nodded.

She reached for her needle.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

He sat opposite her and threaded one of his own.

A Better Fit

They repaired the quilt between fittings, each working inward from an opposite edge.

Clara learned that Esteban whistled only when something went wrong, and that his broad seams concealed meticulous work. He learned not to speak while she counted.

“You’ve missed a stitch,” he said one evening.

“Twenty-seven, twenty-eight—”

“Sorry.”

“Twenty-nine. I haven’t.”

He bent close enough to inspect it. His hair brushed her cheek. She lost her count.

On Friday, their stockman tried both finished jackets. He rolled his shoulders in Clara’s, then pulled Esteban’s collar beneath his chin.

“You’ve been talking,” he said.

“Unavoidably,” Clara replied.

That night, Esteban brought bread, cheese, and two peaches into the workroom. They ate on the veranda with the quilt across their knees. Beyond the yard, the pampas lay copper-colored beneath the sinking sun.

“You should have the cottage,” he said.

Clara stopped peeling her peach.

“That’s a miserable way to win an argument.”

“My mother has a spare room. You’re working on a table that folds in half.”

“And if I lose?”

He turned the peach stone between his fingers.

“I was hoping you might stay nearby.”

She set her fruit down. For once, his face offered no challenge she could answer neatly.

“Nearby enough for you to complain about my seams?”

“Considerably nearer.”

She kissed him before she could make a joke of it. His hand closed over hers beneath the quilt, warm and a little unsteady.

Room for Two

On Saturday morning, Clara found Esteban packing his sample jacket.

“No,” she said.

“You haven’t heard what I’m doing.”

“You’re withdrawing. Put it down.”

He rested both hands on the table.

“Clara—”

“I didn’t kiss you for a house.”

His mouth twitched, then became serious again.

“I know that.”

“Then let me compete.”

She carried both jackets to the manager herself. Esteban followed, holding the folded quilt.

The manager inspected the repairs first, running a finger along the secured red square.

“My wife will be pleased. We thought that was beyond saving.”

Then he handed Clara her jacket and Esteban his.

“I want these made as one pattern. Her finish, your room through the back. Can you work together without wasting my wool?”

Clara looked at Esteban. He raised one eyebrow.

“We’ll need two cutting tables,” she said.

“The cottage?” Esteban asked.

“Has two bedrooms. Arrange the rest yourselves.”

They moved the machines that afternoon. Clara took the sunny room for cutting; Esteban claimed the shaded one for pressing.

At dusk, she found him outside with the quilt over his arm.

“Where does this go?” he asked.

She spread it on the grass beneath the orchard’s last peaches and sat down.

“Here, for now.”

He settled beside her, leaving a careful inch between them.

Clara caught his sleeve and pulled him closer.

“Still too much room through the back,” she said.

This time, he kissed her.