She Who Likes Shoes

It was the shoes that first told the story.

He wrote to her, ‘She needed to buy new shoes, she wanted me to come along. Not to choose the shoes—you know how bad I am at things like that. She just wanted some company.’

She knows it is not about the shoes. It isn’t about the shopping either, or of them being together. The store where the shoes are is inside the mall, and there are crowds there, even on Thursdays. They will not hold hands; they will walk careful circles around each other. They will each watch the other surreptitiously in the mirrors, they will each feign appropriate inattention.

She reads the paragraph over and over, the paragraph about the shoes. She knows that today the unraveling begins. She knew it, even before he did.

It was there in the letter, carelessly put in. It was right there, that part where he said, ‘she had such tiny feet.’
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