Rita Hayworth's Shoes

by Francine LaSala

  “Still.”

  Now she was annoyed. “What? You don’t eat meat from your freezer?” she shook her head. “Honestly, you’re such a hypocrite.”

  Deck put down the box of books and folded his arms defensively. “I am,” he baited.

  “Do you have pets?”

  “A cat. I have a cat. Fluffy.”

  “Huh,” she said. “That’s an original name.”

  He smirked at her. “A normal person pet. A gentle, cuddly, loving pet.”

  “Gentle?” she laughed. “You have mice in your building?”

  “It’s Queens.”

  “Uh-huh. And do you have any mice in your apartment?” she asked, looking at her fingernails.

  “No.

  “And why do you suppose that is?”

  “I… uh…”

  “Just as I thought,” she said, triumphant. “And those little mice are still alive when Fluffy gets her meaty paws in them,” she said. “Now think about that!”

  He was silent for several moments. Then he shook his head. “I think you’ve already given me plenty to think about today.” He turned toward the door and started to leave.

  “Wait,” she called after him, feeling a bit panicked. “Where are you going?”

  He turned back to face her. “There are like fifty more boxes out there,” he said.

  “Right,” she said, relieved.

  “Why?”

  “No reason,” she said. “Just, um…just thanks.”

  “No problem,” he smiled and headed down the stairs.

  Amy grabbed a knife from the kitchen and began slicing open the boxes. Seeing her books all tucked away inside them, she immediately anticipated reconnecting with long-lost friends. She greeted them warmly as she pulled each one out, caressing their covers, inspecting their bindings. She couldn’t wait to rediscover them. And then she heard a commotion on the stoop and she raced to the window to see what was wrong.

  She spotted Deck, rubbing his head and then laughing with the guys. She couldn’t hear the details of the conversation, but it looked like Deck was telling them something. And then they all laughed and offered him high fives. She headed back to her books.

  His first trip back, Deck made alone. The second marked an appearance with Mario, toting a couple of boxes. And then Mario and Frankie. And then Mario and Frankie and Angelo. On the final trip, Amy looked up. “No Tony?”

  “I’m here,” Tony called from the hallway. “Man, you read a lot,” he said, as he dropped the boxes he was carrying on stack of boxes not yet opened. “Here’s the last one.”

  They all stood around a while, looking around at her apartment, with nothing to say. Then Tony spoke, “There’s nothing here.”

  And then Mario, “He really took everything.”

  And then Frankie, “I kind of like this look. Kind of fresh and minimalist.”

  And then Angelo, as he walked to the other side of the room and tugged on the curtain string, “Wait a minute. How is there a window here?” He pulled it open to a collective gasp.

  And then Deck, “Please, tell me. Tell us. If he hadn’t brought them here, would you have them?”

  The Boys looked to her expectantly and she shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know,” she said. “Actually, I don’t think so. No,” she sighed. “Not at all. To be honest, I really don’t like snakes that much. I mean, these guys I’ve been taking care of for so long, but, well, I guess, you don’t always get to choose what needs your love.”

  “That’s for damned sure,” said Frankie.

  The guys all nodded in agreement. “Catch you later, man,” said Mario as the guys waved and headed out.

  Deck and Amy looked at the boxes. “Now what?” he asked.

  “Now I pull them all out and shelve them, I guess.”

  Deck looked around at the empty room. “Shelve them where?”

  “Good question. I guess for now I just pull them all out.”

  “I guess we can stack them against the wall. Too bad you have all those shelves taken up—”

  “I think stacking will do just fine, thank you,” she snapped defensively.

  “Whatever you say.”

  “I already started,” she said, pointing to the books she’d already uncovered. His interest piqued, he walked over to the open box to investigate.

  “Candide,” he smiled. “My favorite.”

  “Seriously? Because it’s also mine.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. Why?”

  “Seems a little light for you,” he said, balancing the slender book on one finger like a Globetrotter with a basketball.

  She rolled her eyes. “Candide is deep and meaningful. I mean, underneath the laughs.”

  He considered this. “Nothing says comedy like burning heretics.”

  “And light cannibalism.”

  “And let’s not forget the gang rape.”

  They both broke out laughing. “So there is a light side to you yet, eh?” he said.

  “For your information, I do have a sense of humor. And, like it or not, there is a lot of deep, important meaning in every one of Voltaire’s passages. The idiocy of religion and the aristocracy,” she said. “The futility of hope.”

  “I’ll give you the idiocy bit, but I’m not sure Voltaire was saying hope was futile.”

  “He rewarded everyone’s hopes and dreams and Herculean efforts with a lifetime of hard labor.”

  “Well, that’s one way of looking at it, yes,” he said. “Tending their gardens so they wouldn’t have to keep thinking things to death—so they wouldn’t have the time to think things to death anymore.”

  “So, you’re saying the best of all possible worlds is one in which people don’t have to think?”

  “Sort of, yes.”

  “You know you’re a college professor?”

  “Thinking is fine, smartass. I’m talking about thinking things to death. It’s a little different.”

  “I suppose…”

  “Because when they can connect with the land, when they can feel their efforts and really connect to something real, that’s when they’re finally happy.”

  “And you say you don’t think things to death,” she chided him.

  He smiled. “I guess we’re more alike than I’d like to admit.”

  “Thanks.”

  They were quiet for a moment as they sat there pondering each other’s words. Then Amy broke the silence. “So maybe you can help me with something else then—”and she quickly added, “something about Candide?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Every time I read it, and I’ve read it a ton of time, I can’t help but think something’s missing, you know? That Voltaire meant to say more, and somehow…”

  “I’m not sure. I think he makes his point.”

  “I still think it’s kind of bleak.”

  “Man, are you thick. It isn’t bleak, it’s optimistic. It’s called “Optimism” for Christ sakes.”

  “It’s sarcastic.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Of course it is.”’

  “Nope.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just told you; it’s called ‘Optimism’—‘Candide, or Optimism.”

  “But how do you really know.”

  “Because sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

  “And sometimes it isn’t.”

  “And there you go, totally missing the point again.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Just like you completely miss the point every time. I think you need to spend some time in the garden.”

  “But you really don’t think it’s strange? That it’s bleak? That after all they endured, they still believed what they ended up with was really ‘The best of all possible worlds?’”

  “Things didn’t turn out like they thought they would, but at least Candide and Cunegonde ended up together,” he said. “Alt
hough who would have either other of them in the end anyway?”

  She giggled. “True.”

  “Not to mention that at least they weren’t alone—that they lived happily ever after with their freak show of a makeshift family.” He placed the book down. “And seriously,” he continued, “how could anyone get through any of the crap of life if they didn’t believe that what they were living in was indeed the best of all possible worlds?”

  She considered this for a moment. “I guess you’re right,” she said. “But it still doesn’t all add up for me.”

  “No, of course it wouldn’t,” he laughed.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Forget it,” he said. “Hey, why don’t I get us a drink while you get reacquainted with all your old chums,” he said. “Where’s the kitchen?”

  “That way,” she pointed and he headed in the direction indicated.

  Amy pulled more books out of boxes as Deck rattled around for a while. He returned with a tray laid out with her antique teapot and two of her little china cups.

  “What do you have there?” she asked, delighted that he had not only found her collection but decided to use it.

  “A literary tea party, of course. I think there’s plenty of madness to go around when it comes to you and I,” he smiled. “But no madeleines.”

  “I must have run out.”

  “Now how will we properly remember and share things past without our madeleines?”

  She grinned. “I’m starting to think the past is overrated.”

  “So is Proust,” he said, as he poured out two cups, offering her the one with the little green flowers. She couldn’t help but smile as she watched him take up the other tiny cup in his substantial hand, pinching the delicate handle between two massive fingers. He looked very much the part of Gulliver in Lilliput. “Let’s see. What else do you have here?” he asked, scanning through her books with his free hand. “What really gets Amy going?” He looked up. “And why are you staring at me?”

  “No reason,” she said.

  “Fair enough,” he said as he shuffled through. “If you don’t mind me saying so, I think this is more Faulkner than one person should be allowed to own. No wonder your brain doesn’t work right.”

  “Faulkner’s a genius,” she said. “He’s difficult maybe. But once you understand him, he’s incredibly satisfying.”

  “I guess I have to agree about the genius part. But I never found him to be that difficult. They’re really great stories, but they’re pretty basic when you get right down to it.”

  “Are you kidding me? As I Lay Dying was such a complex, tragic novel. Brilliant really.”

  “Tragic?” he asked, almost mockingly.

  “Yes,” she insisted. “And brilliant.”

  “I’ll give you brilliant,” he said, and gave her a serious look. “But Amy, you do know this is a comedy, right?”

  She gasped. “It is not! How could you say such a thing?”

  “Think about it.”

  “What’s there to think about? Their mother is dead and the family sets out on a pilgrimage to bring her home and bury–”

  “They’re mountain folk and they’re sitting around waiting for her to die,” he said. “Her name is Addie Bundren. Get it? Added burden? You don’t get it. Okay. Let’s go through it.”

  “Addie’s dying and her only request is that she be buried with her family.”

  “And not the group of yahoos she gave birth to,” he laughed.

  “So her husband, Anse, builds her a coffin, and sells some of their belongings to finance the trip.”

  “Why wouldn’t he just sell those things to buy her a coffin and just be done with it?” he said.

  “And then they head to Jefferson and all kinds of terrible things happen.”

  He giggled. “They lose the coffin in the river.”

  “The barn burns down,” she said, shaking her head. “And that poor tragic girl.”

  He smirked. “Who tries to get an abortion from the pharmacist and ends up sleeping with him, too?”

  “And the little boy and the buzzards.”

  “After a week and a half with no embalming and a good soak in the river, I’m surprised there weren’t more buzzards.”

  “I still don’t see how any of this is funny.”

  “Amy, they have no teeth. They have backwards ideas about everything.” She regarded him with a horrified stare. “Oh, man. You really don’t get it, do you? You’re much too serious.” He shook his head. “You’re missing out then,” he said, holding up the book. “Because it’s fucking hilarious.”

  She stared at him silently for a few moments, a blank expression on her face. “There’s something wrong with you.”

  “Maybe. But I know funny when I see it.”

  “Maybe we should just drop it.”

  “Tell me what else drives you. What makes you think?” he asked, moving closer to her. “Fuck that, actually. Tell me what makes you feel.”

  She inched away from him. “I guess…” she paused, unsettled and intrigued at once. “I guess these do. My books. The words. You know?”

  “I might,” he said, and picked up a collection of poems. “ee cummings?”

  “ee cummings is beautiful,” she scowled. “These poems are deep and they are exquisitely written and they are nothing to laugh at.” She snatched the book out of his hands. “You’re not going to ruin this for me, too.”

  He gazed at her for a moment before he spoke, “I do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands.”

  She froze. She could feel his eyes on her as he spoke these beautiful words, ones she had always wanted to hear like this. His eyes bore right through her. But she couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t breathe. She felt a familiar electric current flowing through her and she was very confused. This was all quite unexpected, but then, in a way, not.

  “The voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses,” he continued, and he moved closer to her, lightly touching her hand. His touch set off a surge of tiny tingles under her skin.

  He kneeled in front of her and stroked her face, and only then could she look at him, confused and elated as she was by the terror and delight and comfort she felt, all mixed together, all happening at once.

  “Nobody,” he whispered, “not even the rain, has such small hands.” And then he kissed her. Gently. Sweetly. So many precious emotions tied into one simple gesture. And she kissed him back, feeling a different kind of passion, an all-encompassing passion—a kind of passion she had never known before.

  And just as suddenly, he pulled away and clutched his chest.

  “Oh, my God!” she gasped.

  “Now you’re trying to kill me?” he said.

  “No. Oh God, no. Are you okay?”

  He smiled and pulled her close. “Never better,” he said as he kissed her again.

  ##

  Amy had been to some strange places in her life. Before today, she would have said that the strangest place she had ever been was the Northern Berks Reptile Show when she’d gone with David to Pennsylvania one summer . They admired specimens and collected some to add to his menagerie; to their family. But the event was a freak show in and of itself, having nothing to do with the snakes and the lizards and the baby alligators all up for sale. Amy had never seen more mulleted hair. More throwback feathered roach clips. More heavy metal T-shirts and rhinestones in one place. It was as much an event for an anthropologist as a herpetologist; it was hard to say if the reptiles or the humans peddling them were more interesting.

  But never in a million years could she have seen herself in the place she was just now. In her own bed, with this enormous bald man quietly snoring beside her.

  There was more to it than the visual, though. It was somewhere newly traveled, gladly beyond any experience she had ever had. It was a new feeling of calm. A luscious mix of exhausted bliss and sweet ser
enity. A place she had only been to with Deck.

  Watching him sleep, feeling the way that she did, she knew this was different than anything thing else. And she never wanted to leave this place.

  Amy nuzzled into Deck’s shoulder and closed her eyes. He opened his, and gently stroked her shoulder with his thumb. “You’re not going to report me, are you?”

  “I guess it wouldn’t look good if the dean found out, no.”

  “Does that change anything for you?” he asked. “I mean, you could stay working for me and we could forget any of this ever happened. Or…”

  “Or I could quit and have more time to prepare for my defense.”

  “I could never ask you to do that.”

  “That’s okay. I think I’m ready to do just that. We all know I suck at that job and I think this was just the push I needed.”

  “Good,” he said, and lightly kissed her forehead. “Because you are pretty terrible at it. And defending your dissertation will be a breeze, comparatively speaking. I’m sure they’ll be so blown away, they’ll offer you a new position on the spot.” He lay back down and began to drift off again into a peaceful sleep.

  “Do you really think that?”

  “I told you I read it. There’s very little to defend.”

  She smiled and nuzzled up to his shoulder. “Will you be there?”

  “I don’t think I’ll be allowed on the panel, no,” he said, gently stroking her arm. “But I can’t think of a single thing that could keep me away.”

  Amy smiled as she grazed his chest lazily with her fingertip. She was so amazed at the texture of this man. Smooth as glass. Then the tip of her finger rubbed against something wiry, something that bristled her finger as she skimmed it. She jumped up.

  “Deck! You have hair! Look! A hair!”

  He glanced over and smiled sleepily. “I know.”

  “But how?” she shrieked with delight, bouncing up and down on the bed. “And why?”

  He smiled warmly at her and gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “It’s because of you,” he said and he closed his eyes again. “Thank you.”

  “Me?” Amy pulled away. “I don’t get it.”

  “You will,” he said, and he took her back into his arms.