Shoe.
Sunday July 31, 2011
So the day after the awards show my next-door neighbor burst into my apartment. I came out in my robe towelling my hair to find her crawling around the living room, picking up bits of the costume the pop star had worn to the show. They were very small and hard to see in the light. Is she here? asked my neighbor, excitedly, and I shook my head. The pop star had left at about dawn. She wanted biscuits, she said. She didn’t have anything to wear but the costume which was ruined now so she borrowed one of my T-shirts. I went back to sleep. It was now three in the afternoon.
Wow, said my neighbor, holding up a glittering bit of something that had been wrapped around the pop star’s thigh, or arm. It must’ve been incredible.
I shrugged. Oscar still wouldn’t come out from under the bed.
Is that one of the shoes? My neighbor pounced on it, sitting on the couch, fondling the simple white leather pump. Such classic lines, she said.
It’s an original Irish Scull, I said.
Really? said my neighbor.
That’s why it’s so warm to the touch.
My neighbor planted her feet on the coffee table and spread her legs and stroked the heel of the shoe up and down, up and down, her eyes closed. Licking her lips. Oh, yeah, she said.
There’s a button, I said. I leaned over her. She’d just had a shower, too. Her body gel smelled like cloves. I found the button, inside the shoe, and pressed it, and the shoe began to tremble in her hands.
Oh fuck, she said, plunging the heel of the shoe inside, pumping it in and out, her back arching. Oh wow. Pulling the shoe out and licking herself off the heel of it with a wicked smile. Bend over, she said. You have got to try this.