我手里握着那把沉沉的花式剪刀，在日光灯下一寸一寸地剪着布样。
剪刀的刀刃合拢时发出一种迟钝的嚓嚓声，像是把某种多余的时间剪碎了落到地上。
我把每一块布样的边缘都剪得整整齐齐，长宽都是二十公分，四四方方，没有一丝毛边。我把它们在桌子上排成一排，看起来像是一个正在等待点名的队伍。
老李走过去看了看说，剪得挺好，像个样子。
我说，像样子也没用，得看那边的人怎么看。
老李说，那边的人怎么看，取决于这样布好不好看，这样布好不好看，得看这边的人怎么剪。
我觉得我们都在说一些随口即来的废话，这些话像是一些灰尘，在有阳光的窗前晃荡，最后还是落回原处。
我把它们修剪得这么规矩，就好像是在摆弄一件艺术品。
这些样布就这样躺在桌上，它们自己并不知道自己要去哪儿。如果运气好，其中有一两块会被那个坐在高档写字楼里的客户相中，那它就成了被挑中的东西，从此开始一段不一样的路。它会被送到工人的缝纫机下面，缝成一件衣服，运气再好一点的，还会被贴上一个印着洋气的英文字母的商标，挂在橱窗里，标上一个让人需要多看几眼的价格。
但那也就是一件衣服的极限了，再贵的价格，最后也是为了让人穿在身上，然后像我们一样坐在凳子上等下班。现在是布，以后是衣服，再以后还是会变成一堆旧布。
我围着这排布样看了一会儿，它们排得很直，很安静，有一种说不上来的麻木感。
后来我把剪刀放回抽屉。
等这些布样寄出去以后，这个桌子上又会堆满下一批需要被剪整齐的碎布。
Image by Gábor Adonyi from Pixabay
Fabric Swatches
I held the heavy pinking shears in my hand and trimmed the fabric swatches bit by bit beneath the fluorescent light.Every time the blades closed, they made a slow, dull crunching sound. It felt as though something unnecessary was being cut away along with the fabric. Small scraps fell quietly onto the floor.
I trimmed every swatch neatly into shape. Twenty centimeters long. Twenty centimeters wide. Perfect squares without a single loose thread.
Then I lined them up across the table. They looked like a row of people waiting for their names to be called.
Old Li came over and glanced at them.
“Nicely done,” he said. “Looks proper.”
“Looking proper means nothing,” I replied. “Depends what the people over there think.”
He nodded.
“And what they think,” he said, “depends on whether the fabric looks good. Whether the fabric looks good depends on how we cut it here.”
I felt we were both saying meaningless things. The kind of words that drift around a room like dust in sunlight before settling back where they came from.
Still, I kept trimming the swatches carefully, almost as if I were handling pieces of artwork.
The swatches lay quietly on the table. They had no idea where they would end up.
If they were lucky, one or two might catch the attention of a client sitting somewhere inside a polished office tower overseas. Then their fate would change.
They would be sent to a factory floor and fed beneath the needle of a sewing machine. Turned into garments. And if luck stayed with them a little longer, they might even receive a label with some fashionable English name stitched inside.
Then they would hang beneath bright lights in a shop window with a price tag large enough to make people stop and look twice.
But that is about as far as a piece of clothing can go.
No matter how expensive it becomes, in the end it is still something worn by a tired person sitting on a stool waiting for the workday to finish.
Right now it is fabric.
Later it becomes clothing.
After that, it turns back into old cloth again.
I stood there looking at the row of swatches for a while. They were lined up perfectly straight and perfectly quiet. There was something numb about them.
Eventually, I placed the scissors back inside the drawer.
Once these swatches were mailed out, the table would soon be covered with another pile of fabric scraps waiting to be trimmed into perfect squares.