Alice in Glass Slippers

by L. C. Davenport

  “We can’t even afford the people we have.”

  Johnny cleared his throat again. “Are you looking for the woman that’s been visiting Harold?”

  Alice met Lucy’s eyes for a second. “Yeah, we are. Have you even spoken to her?”

  Johnny’s forehead creased. “No, I haven’t, and that’s odd because I usually meet everyone who comes in here. Of course, Harold’s convinced that I’m a girlfriend stealer, so I suppose I can’t really blame him.”

  “How do you know he has a lady friend, then?”

  “Harold likes to talk. Or rather, boast.”

  That seemed to fit his personality. “I bet he does a lot of that.”

  Johnny didn’t laugh. Instead, frowned thoughtfully as they made their way back to the front of the building. As Lucy was saying her goodbyes to a tired-looking Sonya, he turned to Alice with a serious expression. “I’m sorry if this is presumptuous, but it appears that you have a conundrum on your hands.”

  “I do, actually, and very little time for solving it.”

  “Did you know I used to be a detective?”

  “You were?”

  “Yes. Would you mind if I nosed around for you? I could try to talk to this girlfriend of Harold’s, get some information.”

  Alice threw her arms around Johnny and. “That’d be great,” she said after she pulled away.

  “Let me give you my cell phone number.” Johnny was beaming so wide she was sure his cheeks were going to ache in the morning.

  “You have a cell phone?”

  “I like to keep up with new technology. Makes me feel younger than I am. I can even text,” he stage whispered.

  Alice programmed his number into her phone and thanked him again. She was grinning as they got in the car.

  Alice called Adam Monday night and he whooped in her ear before she’d even had a chance to say hello.

  “You’re in a good mood,” she laughed, and then jerked the phone away when he did it again. “Did you win the lottery?”

  Adam didn’t answer for a minute. It sounded like he was trying to take deep breaths so he’d calm down. “No, but it sure feels like it.”

  “I take it the board meeting went well?”

  “Without a hitch.”

  “Are you going to share what happened now or am I going to have to torture it out of you when you get back?”

  The pause this time felt different. “Torture sounds very… intriguing.”

  Alice rolled her eyes and thought about wrapping a rubber band around the kitchen sprayer in his apartment. “I’ll see what I can do. Watch your step when you open your front door.”

  “I’m not worried.”

  “You should be.”

  Adam made a strange noise that resembled a cross between a laugh and a pterodactyl. “How’ve things been going back home? Have you heard anything from Johnny?”

  Alice fingered the notes she’d taken during her conversations with Johnny over the past few days and sighed. “Yeah. Evidently Anna was there today, and Johnny talked to her a little. As soon as she found out he had three kids she turned up her nose and pretended he didn’t exist.”

  “I take it the guy she’s currently enamored with–”

  “Harold.”

  “–is childless?”

  “Yup. He hates kids.”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  Alice had a sudden vision of Adam surrounded by several small, well-named children. At least one of them was blonde. It made her forget what they’d been talking about before. “Is that so?”

  “Well, it ultimately depends on their mother, of course. And how she feels about them.”

  Alice was glad he couldn’t see how red her face was. “Anyway. I told Johnny about the other men who’ve called over the past few months, and he thinks there’s a connection. So he’s looking into it.”

  “I’ll be interested to hear what he finds.”

  “You and me both,” Alice muttered before moving the conversation along.

  Thursday morning Lewis was almost quivering with excitement when he hopped into Alice’s car. “What are you doing in my car?” she yawned.

  “Tagging a ride to work. Whitney’s taking Tang,” he explained when she looked at him strangely.

  It was too early to try to decipher the brain of a man on a ball gown high, so Alice just nodded and backed out of the driveway. “You must be in love if you’re letting your girlfriend drive your precious beast of a car.”

  “Tang isn’t a beast. And I’d let you drive her if I thought you truly appreciated her character.” His hands tapped on his legs the closer they got to the mall. “Lewis!” Alice snapped after too many minutes of this.

  “I’m anxious, that’s all.” When she didn’t press for more information, Lewis became even antsier. “Aren’t you going to ask me what’s so exciting?”

  “Are you going to tell me?”

  “I will tonight if you promise to meet me in the atrium after closing. And after Whitney’s gone home for the night.”

  “All this twitching and you’re not going to spill for the next twelve hours?”

  “Nope. That is highly classified information.”

  Alice sighed to herself and parked the car behind her shop. “Okay, have it your way. Wait… isn’t the atrium still blocked off? It has that little walkway down the center, but the rest of it’s been walled up for the past three weeks.”

  “They’re taking them down tonight to put in the last of the flooring before the ball tomorrow.”

  Alice would have asked him how he knew this, but decided it wasn’t important. “Whatever you say.”

  There was a steady stream of customers that day, and she and Whitney were kept so busy handing out shoes that they’d had to special order for the ball that neither of them took a lunch break. Finally, somewhere between dinner and bedtime, Whitney collapsed behind the cash register and closed her eyes.

  “I’m glad we can sleep in tomorrow. I’m not even going to set my alarm.”

  “That makes two of us.” Alice flipped the ‘closed’ sign over and started putting shoes back on their display tables.

  “Do you want me to close the gate?”

  “No, that’s okay. I’ll do it in a minute. You can go, though, if you want. I still need to sort through the delivery that came in this evening.”

  Whitney looked at her suspiciously. “Are you hiding something from me, Alice?”

  “Where would you get an idea like that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Lewis’s been acting strange all week, all jumpy one second and excitable the next. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

  Alice had never outwardly lied to Whitney before, but she thought about all those hours spent researching the perfect ring and didn’t hesitate. “Not a clue. It must be the ball. He gets kind of fired up about stuff like that.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Whitney shook her head in amusement and grabbed the deposit bag. “I’ll take care of this on my way home,” she told Alice as she gathered her things. “I’ll see you when you get there. Are you sure that box can’t wait until Saturday?”

  Alice shook her head. “I’m looking for Adam’s shoes. They haven’t come in yet…”

  “They could always be delivered tomorrow.” Whitney didn’t sound too hopeful.

  “I’m really hoping they’re in that box back there. Go on home and take a long bath. You look beat.”

  “Don’t be too late. You have a big day tomorrow, too.”

  Alice smiled faintly. “I’ll try to remember that.”

  It seemed to take a small eternity to empty the crate in the back room. And by the time she pulled the last box out of it, she’d nearly given up–until she lifted the lid.

  “Ah,” she breathed out, and turned the shoes over in her hands.

  Alice had ordered so many pairs and varieties of footwear over the years that there was no way she could remember them all, but every time she did she tried to
do her best to make sure they were exactly what the customer wanted. But for some reason, this pair had been different, and she wasn’t exactly sure why.

  Maybe it was because they were for Adam, she reasoned. And since she was in love with him, they meant more.

  Or maybe, her subconscious said in a sly voice, you hope that tomorrow night will be the start of something new. Different, even. And you want everything to be perfect.

  She slid them in a silver bag and walked into the mall. As soon as she passed her mother’s display window, she paused and pressed her hands to the glass.

  The slippers seemed to beckon to her. She almost thought that if she could listen hard enough, she could hear them calling to her. Wear us, they whispered. We can help.

  Ever since Lewis had hinted that she should wear them to the ball she’d been carrying the window key in her pocket, and she found herself fingering it absentmindedly. She’d almost pulled it out entirely when Lewis called her name from down the hall. “Alice? Are you coming or has the shoe fairy got you trapped in a magic time warp?”

  “Very funny,” she told him as she wrenched her gaze away from the slippers. “And you’re mixing metaphors.”

  “I try.” Lewis’s smirk was ruined by the way he was bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Come on, slowpoke.”

  Alice let him drag her toward the atrium, pretending to resist. That is, until they turned around a wall that had been spared the workmen’s hammers.

  “Oh my,” Alice whispered.

  She stepped into the atrium, not really even sure it was an atrium anymore. The glass-encased elevator was still there, as was the fountain, but those were the only things that remained the same.

  “Do you think that’s really marble?”

  Lewis tapped his foot on it experimentally. “Sure looks like it.”

  The area seemed huge without the tables and patterned carpet, and as Alice walked into the center of it, she turned in a circle to take everything in. “They even put in a stage,” she said quietly to no one in particular.

  “It’s probably for a band.”

  Alice sat on the edge of the fountain and shook her head. “It’s amazing. I don’t have any other words.”

  If Alice had been paying attention to him, she would have noticed Lewis playing with his shirtsleeves. But she wasn’t, so when he blurted out, “This is where I’m going to ask Whitney to marry me tomorrow,” she was taken a little off-guard.

  “What?”

  Lewis huffed in annoyance at being made to repeat himself. “I said, this is where I’m going to ask Whitney to marry me.”

  “At the ball?”

  He rolled his eyes at her. “Obviously. I picked up the ring this afternoon.”

  Alice wrapped an arm around his middle and squeezed. “Let me guess. It’s burning a hole in your pocket.”

  “You got it.”

  “I’m so happy for you. Where do you think you’ll do it?”

  Lewis’s jittery nerves reappeared at once. “That’s a little sketchy right now. Do you think it’d be too cheesy to pop the question while we’re dancing?”

  It might have been terribly cheesy if it hadn’t have been Lewis Hughes. “I’d say no, but you can really only do the swing. That doesn’t seem like a very proposal sort of thing.”

  Lewis scowled at her. “I can do other stuff.”

  “No, you can’t. I remember very well those dance lessons our mothers made us take, you know. You were a great swing dancer. You stunk at everything else.”

  Lewis’s scowl deepened. “I did not. I just need a little practice, that’s all.”

  Alice sighed in an overly dramatic fashion and got to her feet. “What exactly do you want me to do?”

  “The waltz. Isn’t it the easiest?”

  Before she could respond Lewis was on his feet and bounding toward the stage, where a small boom box had been left behind. He stuck a disc in it and ran back to pull her to the center of the room. “How’d you know–”

  “I just did, Alice. Besides, I always have waltz music lying around.” He smirked down at her and held out his arms. “Now shut up and remind me how to be suave and debonair on the dance floor.”

  She tried, she really did, but halfway through the first song she shook her head and stopped moving. “I think we’re making poor Strauss roll over in his grave.”

  “I’m not that bad.”

  Alice felt a hand on her shoulder that didn’t belong to Lewis and she started.

  “Yes, you are,” a deep voice said. “May I cut in?”

  Adam gently twirled Alice around so she was facing him. He looked down at her, a strange expression on his face. “Let me show you how it’s done, Hughes.”

  Lewis scurried out of the way as Adam held out his right hand. “Shall we?”

  “I thought you couldn’t dance.” The waltzing and the surprise of being in Adam’s arms made Alice’s voice sound breathless, and she couldn’t take her eyes off of his.

  He gave her a slight smile as the music restarted. “You’ll have to judge for yourself.” Then he moved forward, and Alice forgot how to think.

  It seemed to Alice that they danced and twirled around the atrium for hours, but when they finally stopped she was no longer breathless. “Hi,” Adam said quietly, and bent to kiss her.

  She gazed up at him when he pulled away and blinked a few times. “You should give lessons. Why’d you tell me you couldn’t dance?”

  “I didn’t tell you that. I only asked you if you’d still go to the ball with me if I couldn’t.”

  Alice opened her mouth to argue but couldn’t find it in herself. “I’m glad you’re back. I wasn’t expecting to see you until tomorrow.”

  Shrugging, Adam turned and grabbed the CD player. At some point, Lewis had disappeared–probably to figure out a Plan B for his proposal. “I went home, but Whitney said you were still at the mall. So I came to find you.” He grinned wickedly. “You’re lucky I’m not a jealous man, Alice.”

  “It was just Lewis.”

  “That’s what I keep telling myself. I may not let any other man have one of your dances tomorrow night.”

  “Not even your father?”

  Adam scrunched up his face. “I might have to make an exception in his case. After all, he went along with my plan.”

  Alice picked up the bag she’d dropped it. “This is yours. They came in this evening.”

  Adam glanced inside, a satisfied look in his eyes. “Excellent.” After he’d switched off the lights they made their way back toward The Glass Slipper together.

  “So are you going to tell me what your big meeting was about?”

  Adam glanced at her sidelong. “I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone until tomorrow.”

  “Okay.”

  “That’s it? Just ‘okay’? You’re not going to pester me for information?”

  Shrugging, Alice pulled the shop’s gate down and locked it. “I trust you. If you have to wait, you have to wait. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Adam dropped the bag and kissed her senseless. “I’ve wanted to do that for seven days,” he gasped when they’d broken apart.

  “Then why didn’t you do it back at the atrium?”

  “I wanted to wow you with my dancing prowess.”

  “Well, it worked.”

  Adam looked extraordinarily pleased but tried, unsuccessfully, to appear nonchalant. “Do you need anything before we go? I think Lewis took your car. He grabbed your keys before he left the atrium.”

  Alice was impressed that he’d been able to pay attention to something other than his feet. Glancing around the shop, her eyes fell on the window display–and she hesitated. The slippers were almost glowing in the near-darkness, and for the first time she knew that Lewis had been right all along. “Let me grab my slippers,” she told him, and unlocked the case.

  After almost a year and a half Alice had expected that she’d have to wipe at least a thin layer of dust off of them, but they were surprisingly clean. Even
the air in the small space smelled fresh, almost flowery. “Did you put an air freshener in here?” Adam asked, coming closer to sniff.

  “No. Will you grab those shoes off the table and put them in here?”

  “Sure.”

  Alice reached out and pulled the slippers from their stand. They were supple in her hands, and she turned them over and over, marveling at how light they were.

  “What’s that?” Adam pointed to the stand inside the display. To Alice’s surprise there was a small piece of paper, folded in half.

  “It must have been under the slippers,” she said, and grabbed it.

  Adam wordlessly locked the window for her as she shook it out gently with one hand. There was a picture on one side, with her mother’s neat handwriting underneath.

  Alice squinted at the face of a bitter-looking woman staring defiantly back at her. She was standing under an awning. Alice could just make out a pair of shoes with an almost translucent heel in the glass behind her. It reminded her of the slipper she currently held in her hand. The woman looked strangely familiar, which didn’t make any sense since the photo had obviously been taken a long, long time ago.

  “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know,” Alice answered slowly, and read the caption aloud.

  It’s always good to remember where you started, her mother had written. If it weren’t for Bertha Frome we would never be where we are today.

  All at once Alice was taken back to the day she’d helped Whitney grab her things from her former house. There’d been a box filled with Whitney’s school papers and old family photos. And a family tree…

  The picture fluttered to the ground, and if Adam hadn’t been standing so close to her, Alice would have followed it. “Alice!” he cried. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “The woman,” she managed. “In the picture. The one who wouldn’t sell that pair of slippers to my grandfather and who then went out of business when my grandma opened her own shoe store. She was Mimi’s mother.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The next few minutes were a bit of a blur. Alice allowed Adam to lead her outside and watched numbly as he locked up for the night. She finally spoke when he opened the door of a car she knew he hadn’t been driving the week before.