Shoe Addicts Anonymous

by Beth Harbison

  “They just don’t understand, do they?”

  Oh, there was so much Jim didn’t understand. “No,” Helene said simply.

  “So…you’re a shoe person?” Chiara asked.

  Helene laughed. “You might say I’m an addict.”

  Chiara smiled. “I knew it! I could tell we had something in com mon as soon as we met. Quite a few things, I’ll bet. As a matter of fact,” Chiara paused a moment, then whispered, “come upstairs with me for a moment. I have something I want to show you.”

  Helene glanced uncertainly in Jim’s direction.

  “Oh, yes, of course he’ll be mad. Anthony as well. Forget them.” Chiara took Helene by the arm in instant camraderie. “If they want us to stick around, next time they better invite some pretty young boys for us to look at.”

  Helene liked this woman.

  They went upstairs, through a gilded hallway more ornate than anything Helene had seen outside of a church, and Chiara led her through a red room with a massive round bed with red satin sheets, to what appeared to be a large empty room lined with doors.

  “What is this?” Helene asked, thinking how great that bed had looked and how much she’d like to just take a small nap.

  “This? This is my closet.” Chiara sashayed over to one of the doors and pulled it open.

  Lights flashed to life in the little room, revealing floor-to-ceiling trays with pull-out boxes.

  Shoe boxes.

  Each one of them had a label with some sort of cataloging number. Chiara went straight to C-P-4 and took out the most beautiful stiletto T-strap sandals Helene had ever seen.

  “Look at them, darling. You won’t believe it.”

  “They’re lovely,” Helene understated, turning the shoe in her hand to examine it like a work of art.

  The arch was a graceful waterfall perched on a heel so exquisitely shaped, it could have been made of crystal. The leather was as soft and supple as Egyptian cotton sheets.

  Helene looked for a label, or even a size stamp, but there was none. “Where did you get these?” she asked.

  Chiara smiled and raised an eyebrow. “My nephew, Phillipe Carfagni.”

  “Nephew?” Chiara couldn’t have been older than twenty-six or twenty-seven. How old could her nephew be?

  Chiara shrugged. “He’s my age, but my father was married before, you see. My sister, from his first marriage, is already middle-aged.”

  Which explained a lot about Chiara’s choice of husband. Chiara’s father was probably Anthony’s age.

  “Anyway, my nephew makes these shoes, wonderful shoes. Go—try them on.”

  “What size are they?”

  “Oh, of course. Your feet would be too big for them.” Chiara clicked her tongue against her teeth. “It’s a shame, because they feel like little tiny hands are caressing your feet.”

  Helene laughed at the image. “Where does he sell them?”

  Chiara shook her head. “He does not. Not yet. I’ve only just learned of his talent, and Anthony—” Chiara interrupted herself to let fly a brief, staccato string of Italian. “Anthony will not support the young man’s efforts. The investment would be great, of course—” She gestured at the shoes. “—you can see that. But Anthony…I think he is jealous. Phillipe is very young, and very handsome.”

  Suddenly Helene wanted nothing more than to have a pair Phillipe’s shoes in her own size. She didn’t even care that much if they were comfortable; they were beautiful enough to make up for a whole host of aches and pains.

  It had always been that way for her, ever since she was a child. If someone told her she couldn’t have something, she was driven to prove them wrong. To have it, whatever it was.

  That was how she’d gotten where she was today—by proving to her father, a man who told her she’d “never amount to anything,” that she could have any material thing she wanted.

  It didn’t make a difference that her father was dead, that he’d been gone long before she’d left home.

  She still had something to prove to him.

  And now she had something to prove to Jim as well.

  She approached him about the idea of investing in Phillipe’s designs as they were driving home from the party.

  His answering bark of laughter had been her first indication that he wasn’t going to be impressed with her suggestion. “Leave it to you to come up with a way to make money off of shoes.” He glanced at her from the driver’s seat, the streetlights flickering across his face so quickly, she couldn’t read his expression. “I admire that, really.”

  “You should. I’m sure you’d rather I make money from shoes, than spend it on them.”

  “Or steal them,” he added.

  That stung. He’d never let her forget it. They both knew that. “I don’t think that’s fair,” she said to him.

  “It’s just the truth, babe.” He reached over and put his hand on her thigh. “You know I’m nothing if not honest.”

  She thought of the pubic hair between Pam’s teeth a couple of weeks ago, and decided she didn’t want to pursue this conversation with Jim. She might be able to persuade him to back the plan, but suddenly she was thinking that maybe she didn’t want him to reap the rewards of this plan.

  She was going to do it herself.

  “This place smells funny!” Colin Oliver said, loudly enough to turn the heads of several patrons of the Goodwill thrift store.

  “Colin!” Joss whispered harshly. “That’s not nice.”

  He put his hands on his hips and managed, somehow, to look down at Joss while looking up at her. “My mom says it’s better to be honest than nice.”

  And there was Deena Oliver in a nutshell. Opting for masturbatory “honesty” rather than basic consideration for others, then patting herself on the back for it.

  Once again, Joss really wished she’d gotten to know the Olivers before signing a contract to live with them for a year.

  “It’s important to be nice, too,” Joss said, taking a stab at diplomacy instead of telling the child his mom was wrong. “And it’s especially important to be polite.”

  Colin shrugged. “It stinks in here.”

  “Yeah.” Bart agreed, pinching his nostrils shut.

  “Then we’ll be quick.” Joss took each boy by the hand and dragged them through the store to the far wall, where she could see shelves of shoes and shoe boxes.

  The boys protested all the way, putting up such a fuss that people probably thought she was kidnapping them. She was sorely tempted to make a deal with them, to promise some great treat if they’d behave themselves, but she just couldn’t bear the idea of rewarding them in any way for this behavior.

  She just couldn’t contribute to putting that kind of person out in the world. Deena would be doing plenty of damage on her own; Joss had to stick to her standards.

  She got to the shoes, and yes, it did smell somewhat unpleasant. Worse, the shoes were just jumbled onto the shelves without regard to size or the expected gender of the wearer.

  This was going to be ugly.

  Fortunately there was a toy section about twenty feet away from the shoes, so she dragged the protesting boys over there and let them each pick out a germ-filled deathtrap of a toy to look at while she tore through the shoes.

  Colin took a short-wave radio with a broken antenna, and Bart took a Tweety Bird Pez dispenser with a couple of old pieces of orange Pez still stuck inside.

  Fine. As long as it kept them occupied for a few minutes, Joss was all for it.

  She took a list out of her pocket. Before coming, she’d printed out the names of some of the better shoe designers. To her surprise, finding designer shoes wasn’t hard. But finding them in a 7½ and in decent condition was more of a challenge. Most of the soles were worn, sometimes almost all the way through. Heels were broken, leather scuffed, buckles bent.

  After twenty-five minutes of power searching, Joss was able to find one perfect Gucci pump. The size was right, but there was only one of the shoes.
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  “Excuse me,” she said to a passing employee, a tired-looking woman with hair that was mahogany on the ends, and black at the roots. “Do you know where the other one of these is?”

  “That’s where the shoes are,” she said, limply gesturing to the wall of shoes.

  “I know, but there was only one of these, and I wondered if you knew where I might find the other one.” Joss frowned. “You wouldn’t put out just one shoe, would you?”

  “No, we don’t do that. Unless it’s like, a medical shoe or something.”

  Joss wondered what that meant but didn’t have time today to ask. “So the other one should be there somewhere?”

  “It should.” She shrugged and pushed her purple hair back. “Unless someone stole it.”

  Joss considered asking if a one-legged woman with expensive tastes had been in recently, but the employee’s eyes widened as she looked at something behind Joss.

  “Is that your kid?” she asked. “I think something’s wrong.”

  “What?” Joss turned to see Bart, bug-eyed and deathly pale, clawing at his neck. “Oh, my God!” She ran to him. “Bart! What’s wrong?”

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t make a sound. He just continued to panic and turn a frightening shade of blue.

  That’s when Joss saw the Pez dispenser, less Tweety’s head, lying on the floor.

  “Are you choking?” she gasped, and, without waiting for an answer, flipped him around and performed the Heimlich maneuver on him.

  Nothing happened.

  It didn’t work.

  “Colin!” she shouted, pulling the other boy’s attention away from bending the antenna out of shape. “Get my cell phone out of my purse. Call 911.”

  “Why?”

  “Godalmighty, Colin, just do it!” She clasped her hands tighter and thrust them against Bart’s solar plexus again.

  Still nothing.

  Joss felt cold terror wash over her. Colin appeared to be moving in slow motion, and the employee who had pointed out that Bart was having trouble was still just standing there, watching.

  “Call a fucking ambulance!” Joss yelled at her, thrusting hard with panic and anger.

  This time Bart gave a low, almost inhuman cough, the plastic Tweety Bird head flew out of his mouth and banged against a cement pillar about twelve feet away.

  Bart coughed and gasped for air.

  “Are you okay now?” Joss knelt before him. “Can you breathe? Is anything still stuck in your throat?” She knew the coughing was a good sound. As long as he was coughing, he was getting air.

  Finally the coughing subsided somewhat, and the color gradually returned to Bart’s cheeks.

  “Can you breathe?” Joss asked him again.

  He nodded, gasping and working his mouth like a fish.

  “Okay.” She pulled him into her arms. “It’s okay. Stay calm.” Holding him against her rapidly beating heart probably wasn’t doing much to calm him down.

  “I was scared,” he said, in a voice so small and vulnerable that her heart felt like it was breaking.

  “It’s okay now. I need to make sure there’s nothing still stuck in your throat, okay?” she said to him. “So stay right here. Take big, deep breaths. I’m going to just go get the toy, okay?”

  He nodded and she went to pick up the bottom of the Pez dispenser and looked for the top, stopping every two and a half seconds or so to look back at Bart and make sure he was still standing, breathing, and pink.

  She knew the direction the plastic piece had gone and that it had bounced against the pillar, so she searched around that area until finally she saw it lying on the floor behind a threadbare wingback chair that reeked of cigar smoke.

  Joss got down on all fours and reached under the chair for the Tweety Bird head, but she felt something else first, something hard and furry with dust. She pulled it out.

  The other Gucci pump.

  There was no time to examine it now, though, so she reached under again, trying to ignore the tumbleweeds of dust and finally felt the little hard plastic head.

  It was coated in dust, but she was able to fit it perfectly onto the other part. Good. There were no slivers of plastic working their way toward Bart’s lungs or intestines.

  She slumped against the pillar for a minute, relieved but spent by the experience.

  “Excuse me, ma’am.”

  Joss looked to see the employee standing in front of her. “Yes?” She hoped the woman wasn’t going to make a big deal about Joss being a hero or anything. In Felling, the news would cover this kind of thing, and the last thing in the world Joss wanted was to be the center of attention.

  She needn’t have worried.

  The woman gestured at the plastic Tweety Bird she still had clutched in her hand. “You’re going to have to pay for that, you know.”

  Chapter

  14

  The thing is,” Lorna said to Phil Carson, who was sitting at the bar during her shift at Jico, “I’m meeting my bills, but I don’t feel like I’ve got anything left over to have fun with.”

  “Maybe you should come over to the bureau and speak with me during business hours—”

  “Oh, come on, Phil.” She had no patience for this nonsense. “You can see what I do.” She gestured around. “I’m pulling double and sometimes triple shifts here. And you’re sitting right here. What have you got to lose by talking to me for a minute.”

  “It’s not that—”

  “What are you drinking?” She eyed his glass. She had a gift for this. “RitaTini with a Cointreau floater?”

  He looked at his half-empty glass. “How did you know?”

  Actually, it was what all the guys with midlevel management jobs were drinking. “I pay attention, Phil,” she said. “I’m good at my job. And I’m working as hard as I can. So can you just give me a little advice without making me go all the way to your office?”

  “I guess I can.”

  “Great.” She looked to the bartender. “Boomer!” She pointed down at Phil. “Another one here. On me.”

  “You don’t have to do that.” Phil looked like he was blushing. “Actually, you shouldn’t do that. You can’t afford it.”

  “I get it at cost and then you tip me on it.” She winked. “I’ll make a profit, trust me.”

  “So do that a few hundred more times, and your problems will be solved.” Phil gave a loopy smile.

  “Funny.” Lorna sat on the barstool next to his. “I need to know if you can negotiate a lower interest rate with any of my credit card companies.”

  “They’re already low!”

  “Discover only went to nine-point-nine,” she said. “Their introductory rate is a lot lower than that!”

  “Yes, but it’s introductory. They lure people in, and then—you know the rest.”

  Lorna was disheartened. Yes, she knew the rest. She knew it way, way too well. “But I can’t even buy shoes!”

  Phil chuckled. “Now, come on, you’re exaggerating. You have enough to cover the basics. And you should feel so good about the progress you’re making.”

  “I feel good about the progress,” she said. “Just not so good about the lack of money.”

  “Does this job have benefits?” Phil asked. “Health insurance, that sort of thing?”

  “No, I have to get that myself.”

  “What’s your hourly wage?”

  She told him, and he gasped. “But that’s because I make tips. Sometimes with tips it amounts to fifteen, twenty bucks an hour.”

  “Every hour, every night?”

  “No,” she admitted. “It’s definitely variable.”

  “Miss Rafferty—”

  “Lorna.”

  “—you might want to consider getting a more…reliable job. One with benefits, and a 401(k), and a salary that you can plan on. You have a college education, don’t you?”

  She gave a shrug. “A bachelor’s in English.” Reading had seemed like a great major until she went out in the world and tried to fi
nd a job doing it.

  Phil’s second drink arrived, and he drained his first one more quickly. “You could have a much better job.”

  Boomer stopped and gave Phil a cautionary look, but Lorna waved him off, mouthing the words It’s okay.

  “But I can barely afford to eat!” she said. “There’s got to be something you can do.”

  “You’re still spending, aren’t you?” he asked, eyeing her with a lucidity he hadn’t displayed before.

  She felt her cheeks grow warm. “What do you mean?”

  He gave a knowing nod. “We went over your budget very specifically. Even with the variable income, the low-end average should have given you enough to make the payments on your debt as well as your rent, utilities, and food.” He shook his head. “You’re still spending. I’ve seen this before.”

  She tried to swallow the guilt that was balling up in her throat. “I have not been to the mall in weeks.”

  “So what is it, online shopping? With your check card?” He knew he’d nailed her. “As far as I know, it’s the only one we didn’t destroy.”

  So, what, was she one of his only clients? How could he remember the details of her meeting with him with such clarity? “No, I just had a couple of unexpected expenses. My car,” she added, for credibility. And it was true, she had given them a considerable back payment. “And also utilities.” So it hadn’t been in the past week—it wasn’t as if she could admit she’d been on eBay. A guy like Phil Carson would never admit that there was virtue in bargain shopping if it took the place of therapy.

  “Well.” He took a sip of the drink she’d bought for him. “You obviously need more income. The budget we set up should work, but if it doesn’t, you’ve got some leaks in your spending, and the only way I can think of to stop them is for you to be bringing more money in.” He shrugged. “I worry. I wish I could make this easier for you, but it’s really the only way.”

  “Thanks, Phil.” It sounded sincere when she said it, but she didn’t really feel it.

  Sure, he was right. She was spending outside her budget. And if he said he was unable to negotiate a lower rate, she had to believe him because what reason would he have to lie to her?