Stilettos
Four years ago, for reasons I no longer remember, I wrote this story. And it languished, quite forgotten, until yesterday, when I found it going through the files on the laptop-before-this-one. It's had a slight polish and a bit of a revision. Original fiction, just over 500 words, let's say PG to be on the safe side.
It was the stilettos.
The trip back from Budapest was a nightmare. (And who gets sent on a business trip to Budapest, anyway?) I called Ethan from Frankfurt, told him that the flight was overbooked, and I was going to be another day. He sounded glum, but that’s air travel. What can you do? Then, miracles happened, and they found me another flight through Zurich. No time to call, just off and running. Got home only six hours behind my original schedule. And I went straight to Ethan’s, he’d given me a key the month before, and I just wanted to see him. So I let myself in, and got met by a garish purple pair of four-inch stiletto heels.
They weren’t mine.
Neither was Ethan, apparently.
It was the stilettos.
In the wake of Ethan came hours and hours of retail therapy with Helen. And in a fit of whimsy - or insanity - I bought an embarrassingly expensive pair of red leather stilettos. Once I got them home, I found them silly and myself ridiculous, so I left them in the box, and ignored them for almost a year. Then came my birthday, and Kevin was out of town, and Helen talked me into going clubbing. And I decided to dress up.
I should have known earlier, in retrospect. Kevin knew a little too much about things like hair care products and electrolysis. He had a battered copy of The Joy of Sex that fell open to the oddest pages. But, no, I figured it out when I went to put on those ridiculous shoes, and they’d been stretched out, like they’d been worn by someone with much larger feet than I have.
I wasn’t really a stilettos type.
But Kevin was, it seems.
It was the stilettos.
I bought them as a reaction to dinner with Grandmother. Grandmother brought me yet another guilt scarf - these damn things she keeps knitting, and I don’t need or want them, but I can’t throw them away. So they accumulate in my front closet, a mute reproach for not calling, or whatever. Grandmother complimented me on my return to “sobriety and chastity” (like the second was a choice, at the time). I got through dinner by listing things in my head. (I know five of the dwarves, four of the deadly sins, all seven American Idol winners, and eight of the commandments.)
I went straight from the restaurant to shoe store, where I bought the most inappropriate, and least chaste, pair of shoes I saw - gorgeous black stiletto heels. I wore them out of the store, and went straight to the bar on the corner, stopping only to throw my sensible flats and the scarf in the trash can on the corner.
I sat at the bar, drinking martinis, letting one black shoe dangle from my left foot, and flirting with Mark, the piano player. Stayed until the bar closed, walked all the way back to his place in my new shoes.
The stilettos turned out to be an excellent choice.
So did Mark.
It was the stilettos.
The trip back from Budapest was a nightmare. (And who gets sent on a business trip to Budapest, anyway?) I called Ethan from Frankfurt, told him that the flight was overbooked, and I was going to be another day. He sounded glum, but that’s air travel. What can you do? Then, miracles happened, and they found me another flight through Zurich. No time to call, just off and running. Got home only six hours behind my original schedule. And I went straight to Ethan’s, he’d given me a key the month before, and I just wanted to see him. So I let myself in, and got met by a garish purple pair of four-inch stiletto heels.
They weren’t mine.
Neither was Ethan, apparently.
It was the stilettos.
In the wake of Ethan came hours and hours of retail therapy with Helen. And in a fit of whimsy - or insanity - I bought an embarrassingly expensive pair of red leather stilettos. Once I got them home, I found them silly and myself ridiculous, so I left them in the box, and ignored them for almost a year. Then came my birthday, and Kevin was out of town, and Helen talked me into going clubbing. And I decided to dress up.
I should have known earlier, in retrospect. Kevin knew a little too much about things like hair care products and electrolysis. He had a battered copy of The Joy of Sex that fell open to the oddest pages. But, no, I figured it out when I went to put on those ridiculous shoes, and they’d been stretched out, like they’d been worn by someone with much larger feet than I have.
I wasn’t really a stilettos type.
But Kevin was, it seems.
It was the stilettos.
I bought them as a reaction to dinner with Grandmother. Grandmother brought me yet another guilt scarf - these damn things she keeps knitting, and I don’t need or want them, but I can’t throw them away. So they accumulate in my front closet, a mute reproach for not calling, or whatever. Grandmother complimented me on my return to “sobriety and chastity” (like the second was a choice, at the time). I got through dinner by listing things in my head. (I know five of the dwarves, four of the deadly sins, all seven American Idol winners, and eight of the commandments.)
I went straight from the restaurant to shoe store, where I bought the most inappropriate, and least chaste, pair of shoes I saw - gorgeous black stiletto heels. I wore them out of the store, and went straight to the bar on the corner, stopping only to throw my sensible flats and the scarf in the trash can on the corner.
I sat at the bar, drinking martinis, letting one black shoe dangle from my left foot, and flirting with Mark, the piano player. Stayed until the bar closed, walked all the way back to his place in my new shoes.
The stilettos turned out to be an excellent choice.
So did Mark.