Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes Read online

  “What’s that you’re reading?” she asked.

  See what I mean? People always ask me that question.

  Before I could answer, Hillary flipped the book over to the jacket to look for herself as I wiped at the red speckles on my wrist.

  Hillary sniffed. “Not exactly Hemingway, is it?”

  “It’s better than Hemingway!” I enthused.

  Hillary cocked one perfect blond eyebrow in my general direction, an eyebrow that was waxed and sculpted regularly by the nice Asian ladies at Nail Euphorium, a place I’d never set foot in but heard tell of from Hillary.

  “Okay,” I conceded, “maybe it’s not Hemingway, but this book is fun!”

  She still looked skeptical as she opened her refrigerator, the one on top, and removed fresh vegetables. I had no doubt she was going to make some kind of amazing homemade sauce, but my Michael Angelo’s really was working for me just fine.

  “As a matter of fact—” I enthused on “—after I finish this one, I’m going to—”

  “Don’t say it.” Hillary stopped me cold, brandishing a sharp knife. “You’re going to go down to the bookstore and buy everything else this woman, this Shelby Macallister has ever written…right?”

  “Wrong,” I said, a touch snottily, but it was so nice to uncover someone else’s wrongness for a change. “You are so wrong.”

  “Oh?”

  “Shelby Macallister hasn’t written any other books before, meaning I can’t get any more of hers until she writes them. So there.”

  Hillary shrugged, contrite, and went back to chopping. “Then I stand corrected.”

  It was a good thing her back was to me, so she couldn’t see my blush when I said, “But I am going to go to the bookstore and buy a stack more of this kind of book.”

  “I knew it!” She slammed the knife home so hard that poor little green pepper didn’t stand a chance. “Every time you get going on something—”

  “Hi, honey—” it was my turn to cut her off “—how was your day?”

  This was how Hillary and I plugged along in our merrily dysfunctional way, had done so since back in our college days, at least before I flunked out: I was wacky, she called me on my wackiness, I sidetracked that call by being solicitous, and on we went.

  Hard as it was to tear myself away from High Heels, I put the book down and reaching behind me—the eat-in kitchen was that small—opened the door to the lower fridge.

  “May I interest you in a libation?” I asked, going all waiterly on her. “Tonight we have Jake’s Fault Shiraz, Jake’s Fault Shiraz and, hmm, let’s see, Jake’s Fault Shiraz.”

  Hillary tried to be stern, but before long she started to laugh, which was just fine, that was the way it always was with us.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” She rolled her eyes. “I guess I’ll take the Jake’s Fault Shiraz.”

  “Good choice, madam.” I rifled in the utility drawer for the rabbit-ears corkscrew. “Why don’t you go change out of your work clothes while I pour you a glass.” Hillary wore the pants in our family and had a great selection of spiffy suits that didn’t deserve to get ruined. “I’ll even finish chopping your vegetables for you.”

  “Thanks, it has been a day.”

  Sure, she should change so as not to get anything messy on her nice suit, but I really wanted her out of the room so she wouldn’t see what I was about to do with that corkscrew. Hillary had given it to me in my holiday stocking the winter before because I always had trouble opening bottles with the old-fashioned, cheap, blue, plastic corkscrew I’d been using for years. But what she did not yet know was that even with the high-tech marvel she had given me, a corkscrew so wonderful it could make a sommelier out of a five-year-old, I still had problems with the damn thing, always pushing down on the ears too prematurely so that the cork only rose partway out and I wound up mangling it as I twisted it between my legs, trying to uncork it the rest of the way.

  The cork came out almost without incident, meaning it snapped a bit at the bottom and I had to press that snapped part through into the wine down below. I poured us each a glass, but Hillary must have decided to indulge in a second shower and by the time she emerged, I was too deep into High Heels and Hand Trucks again to make polite conversation while she ate and did whatever else she did, only taking in her words in the most peripheral way. The written word being the way I connected with the world, my imagination caught up in the mere prose descriptions of all those Choos.

  Her: “Do you want more of this wine?”

  Me: (stretching out glass without looking) “You wouldn’t believe these shoes.”

  Her: “Want to watch American Idol 25 with me?”

  Me: “You would not believe these shoes.”

  Her: “How about Jon Stewart?”

  Me: “You would not believe these shoes.”

  Her: “I guess I might as well hit the—”

  Me: “You would not—”

  Her: “Oh, stuff it, Delilah. ’Night.”

  Well, that was rude.

  But here was the thing: you would not believe these shoes, no one would, unless you read about them yourself, I thought, shutting the book after the last page.

  Damn! It was after midnight. I’d need to wait until after work the next day, technically that day, to go to the bookstore and pick up more books like High Heels. I was definitely going to be reading more books like High Heels.

  But then I realized something else: reading about the shoes, which the author constantly described as “architectural marvels” as if there were no other words for them, was a far cry from actually seeing the shoes. I mean it’s always show, don’t tell, right? And as good as the author was at describing the shoes—there were so many of them!—I suddenly was struck by an overwhelming urge: I needed to see those shoes.

  But what to do, what to do…

  I had no idea who in Danbury might actually sell Jimmy Choos, probably nobody, and even if I took the last train into Manhattan, all the shops there would be closed at one in the morning.

  What to do, what to do…

  There was only one computer in our apartment and it wasn’t mine.

  I gently turned the knob on the door to Hillary’s bedroom, tiptoed over toward her computer, tried not to trip over anything in the dark—“Ouch!”—and shushed myself, silently cursed my own clumsiness and immediately thanked my stars I hadn’t woken her, sat down in her desk chair, turned on the monitor and Googled the obvious.

  The PDF file for all things Jimmy Choo was on the screen before me—the Asha, the Asha, I really wanted the Asha!—when…

  “Delilah, just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  But I was too caught up in the pretty images on the screen before me to feel as appropriately guilty, snagged and embarrassed as I might otherwise have felt.

  “Oh, never mind that.” I pooh-poohed her. “Look. Look!”

  “I don’t want to look,” Hillary said, totally peeved and sporting quite a case of bed head, I must say. “I want my sleep.” She grabbed the mouse and moved it toward the shut-down menu. “And I want you to—”

  “No!” I stopped her hand. Then, feeling totally contrite, I wheedled, “Please look.”

  “Oh, all right.”

  At first, she just looked annoyed, but as I ceded control of the mouse and she started to click on the images of the shoes and boots and sandals, enlarging some of the images as I had done earlier…

  “Well—” she was still resisting the pull “—I’m not crazy about some of the red ones.”

  “Oh, me, neither,” I said quickly, trying to sound agreeable. And it really wasn’t much of a stretch since, despite red being one of my favorite colors, the red pairs didn’t grab me as much as the others.

  I saw her eyes stray back toward the comfort of her rumpled sheets. Thinking I couldn’t let her get away, since I really did need a cohort here, if for nothing else than to keep me from being so lonely in the midst of my own obsessions, I grabbed the mouse back and
quickly clicked on a different image.

  “Look at this,” I said eagerly.

  It was the Asha.

  “Oh, my!” Hillary said, her eyes going all glittery, as my own had no doubt done a short time ago.

  “And this,” I said, clicking again.

  It was the Ghost, which was maybe even more spectacular than the Asha, if such a thing were possible.

  “Oh, my!” Hillary said again.

  “And this.” I clicked one last time.

  It was the Parson Flat.

  “I would buy that shoe!” she trumpeted.

  I knew the Parson Flat would get her.

  “How much…?” she started to ask.

  In another second, she’d be racing for her Dooney & Bourke bag to fish out her Amex.

  “But that’s the whole problem!” I all but whined.

  “What?” Hillary said. “Are they too much money?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I keep clicking around, but I don’t see any prices here.”

  “Oh, dear,” Hillary said. “That’s never good.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Have you ever eaten in a restaurant where they don’t list the prices on the menu?”

  “Um, no. Who do you think I am, you?”

  “Trust me, it’s never cheap when they don’t list the prices.”

  We both stared at the screen.

  I tried on a nonchalant shrug.

  “So?” I said. “How expensive can a little bit of leather and maybe some glitter be?”

  “Who knows?” Hillary said. “But I’m guessing very.”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” I said.

  “Hmm?” She was still transfixed by the Parson Flats.

  “Road trip!”

  “Oh, no,” she said, successfully tearing her gaze away. “This is your insanity, not mine.”

  “Please.” I was back in wheedle mode. “Wouldn’t you like to at least see if you could afford them?”

  Before she could answer, I clicked to the part of the catalog where boutique locations were listed. I didn’t think I’d ever persuade her to go to London or Dublin or Milan or Moscow or Kuwait City or Hong Kong, Korea, Bangkok or even São Paulo to shop for shoes, although I suppose Paris might have been nice. Hillary always said she wanted to see Paris. But at least I could try…

  “There are two stores right in Manhattan,” I said. “One in the Olympic Tower on Fifth Avenue, the other on Madison. We could each use a day off from work. Come on, just one day. Nobody says we have to buy anything…”

  “If I say yes, can I go back to sleep?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.”

  Five minutes later…

  “And turn off that computer!”

  “Sorry.”

  Still, for good measure and so that I’d have something to remind her with should she change her mind, I printed pictures of our three favorites: the Asha, the Ghost and the Parson Flats.

  “And stop using my printer!”

  “Sorry.”

  Then I went to sleep, too.

  And all night long, I dreamt of the faceless Yo-Yo Man. I was in his arms, on my feet a pair of Ashas.

  I was dancing in my Jimmy Choos.

  4

  But getting a day off from Squeaky Qlean was not as easy as I thought.

  “If you absolutely need to be sick,” Stella said when I called her up with my lie, “then be sick tomorrow. We’ve got four jobs today and I need all squeegees on deck. Tomorrow there’s only one.”

  This turned out to be not such a bad thing because, while eating my cold Amy’s Cheese Pizza Pocket in the van after I’d finished the inside of the second job, I was struck by inspiration.

  On the bench between the driver’s seat and where I was sitting, feet propped up on the dash, lay Stella’s bible: her scheduling book. In it, were listed the names, addresses and phone numbers of the jobs for each day we worked. She usually left the prices out, perhaps for fear that if we ever actually knew how much she was bringing in, The Girls From Brazil and I—The Golden Squeegee, I might add!—would demand a higher hourly wage.

  Quickly, feeling very Nancy Drew, I flipped through Stella’s bible. She always tore off the corner of the page once the day was done, so it was easy work for me to find the page from the day before, on which was listed Elizabeth Hepburn’s name, her address and her no-doubt unlisted phone number.

  I found a pen on the seat and grabbed a parking ticket Stella was never going to pay anyway out of the glove compartment, and was just shoving the piece of paper into the pocket of my khakis when Rivera sauntered up.

  “Yo, chica,” she said.

  From time to time, I wondered if chica was actually a Portuguese word or if they just liked to play with me. A part of me was tempted to sneak onto Hillary’s computer that night and look it up on Babel Fish but then I decided I really did not want to know.

  “What’s The Golden Squeegee doing now,” Rivera asked, “looking through Stella’s book to see what time we might get off today? Damn, it’s a hot one.”

  “Heh,” I nervously laughed. “That’s exactly what I was doing. Heh.”

  Five hours later, home, grimy, exhausted, I picked up the phone, punched in the number on the parking ticket.

  It didn’t take more than a brief description, certainly there was no persuading required on my part, and Elizabeth Hepburn was on board.

  “Are you sure?” I said. “We’ll be taking the train and no one said we’re actually going to buy anything.”

  “Are you kidding?” she laughed. “I’ve been waiting for an offer like this for years—road trip!”

  “Tell me again why we’re taking Elizabeth Hepburn to Jimmy Choo’s with us?” Hillary asked the next day just prior to pulling her red Jeep into Elizabeth Hepburn’s circular driveway.

  “Because she’s old,” I said, “and we’ll be old one day, if we’re lucky, and we’ll hope to be invited out. Because she’s lonely and she’s fun.”

  “Good enough.”

  But, apparently, there was something about me that was no longer good enough for Elizabeth Hepburn.

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk.” She tsked as I got out of the car.

  It would have been annoying but it had been a long time since anyone had cared enough to tsk-tsk me. My late mother had been a great tsker, but since then…

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “You don’t want to go into the city looking like a…ragamuffin, do you?”

  “That’s exactly what I told her!” Hillary said.

  “Who are you?” Elizabeth Hepburn demanded.

  “Hillary Clinton.”

  A slow smile rose on Elizabeth Hepburn’s soft features. “Of course,” she said.

  “What’s wrong with the way I look?” I asked again.

  But before they could answer, I could see it for myself. Hillary, as always, was dressed impeccably. Riding the rails into the city on a hot summer day, she had on a sleeveless peach sundress with a wide-brimmed straw hat and flat gold sandals that were pretty damn attractive, even if they weren’t Jimmy Choos. As for Ms. Hepburn, she had a slightly more modest aqua sundress on that brought out the color of her eyes, a straw hat with a big floral band à la the late Princess Diana and open-toed spectator pumps that matched her dress. For an octogenarian, she had a great set of wheels.

  While I had on…

  “All right already!” I said. “I get the point! But isn’t it true these days that so long as you can afford the price tag or pay the restaurant tab, no one cares how casual you look?”

  “I care,” Elizabeth Hepburn said, drawing her spine up to its full acceptance-speech glory.

  “Well, it’s a little late for me to go home and change,” I said.

  Besides, I was thinking, what’s so wrong about jean shorts, a T-shirt and my Nikes? With ten million people or so in the city, there would be plenty of people who looked like me, probably be a lot more people looking like me than lik
e these two garden-party missies. And, hey, my T-shirt was clean.

  “I can fix this,” Elizabeth Hepburn said. Then she crooked a finger at me. “Come.”

  Five minutes later, I was back on the gravel drive. Gone were my shorts and T, replaced by a fairly pretty peasant blouse and long skirt.

  “What we wore back in the sixties,” Elizabeth Hepburn said, “it’s all come back again.”

  The amazing thing was, having caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror on the way out, I didn’t look half-bad. It was a bittersweet pill to swallow, the idea that I looked better in an old lady’s clothes than my own.

  “Sorry about the shoes.” Elizabeth Hepburn directed her apology to Hillary as though I wasn’t there. “But mine are all too small for her. I did always have such tiny feet. It was one of the things Rudolf Nureyev used to say he loved about me.”

  Rudolf Nureyev? Wasn’t he—?

  “That’s okay.” Hillary shrugged as she studied the tips of my Nikes as they peeked out from under the long dress. “We’ll just tell the salesgirls at Jimmy Choo’s that she’s our country cousin and that’s why we brought her in, because she needs their help…bad.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I said. “Maybe you two should just go on without me.”

  “Now, now.” Elizabeth Hepburn rubbed my arm. “Where would we be without you? You’re the glue, Delilah, you are definitely the balls of the operation.”

  A short time later, as we boarded the train, Hillary tossed over her shoulder, “Will you be able to manage a day without Amy’s Cheese Pizza Pockets for lunch?”

  “Very funny,” I groused.

  But, of course, I had my own doubts.

  Later, as we exited Grand Central Station, she said, “We never did decide which Jimmy Choo’s we should go to, the one on Fifth or the one on Madison?”

  “Oh, definitely the one on Madison,” Elizabeth Hepburn put in quickly. “It always reminds me of the time I slept with the president.”