The coat is an illusion. It relies on its reflective surface, and trick cameras that project what is behind it onto the front. It is an eerie illusion if done right, because of the ripples of coat without the coat-ness of it: no color, no heft, just enough of its shape to prove that something solid exists, but has been forced to assume the role of window glass, to show what the coat should hide, the woman crying over her lipstick, the man whipping the dog.
⁂ Though terms like “cloak” and “garment,” appealing terms that call up Star Trek and Harry Potter, get thrown around in invisibility science, it’s finally the stealth bomber everyone comes back to, saying: “See how far we’ve come after all.” The stealth bomber works by its strange diamond shape, considered so un-aerodynamic it was known as the Hopeless Diamond, until it flew—a manta ray shape so wide and flat it scatters radar. What would we do if we could be invisible? My 14-year-old son would edge into GameStop or Fred Meyer’s and pilfer video games. I know this about him, though I swear he’s a good kid; it is his age, when the world promises so much and delivers so little and the reasons for that are not yet at all clear. I would pull the cloak over me and simply sit in the living room. Or I’d creep around and listen in on conversations, a pursuit of mine anyway, though now I use the natural invisibility of a middle-aged woman. I have no desire to listen in on people I know and hear their secrets; they’re welcome to them, their hidden loathings and their lusts and how they really feel about their children, or even about me. It is strangers and their oddness I love, like the woman I overheard tell a friend last week, dripping sympathy, “Of course, that’s just too much of you for you to handle.” The friend, whose face I could not 30