Her shoes glare at me as I wait on the couch for him to pour the wine. Her shoes fill the room with her presence. Their apartment is quiet, and lush with her collection of vintage Parisian decor despite the disarray of half packed boxes, stacks of books, and piles of clothes loitering in the hall. It occurs to me that it is strange that I am here, then I realize it is strange that has never occurred to me before. In some ways my presence in their home is more intrusive than anything I ever did with Jay, in others it is clearly less. Somehow, in all the late nights I’ve spent here, I've missed the clearest fact.
The stitches inching up the white leather backstay glower down upon me from atop their perch of a stack of cashmere sweaters. I glance down at my boots. The toe of one is starting to bust open, the same one whose sole has been worn thin on the just the outer left side. Hers, are made of real leather, mine have succumbed to the wear of city blocks. The kind of shoes you leave at the door. I should have left mine at the door; the shoes' gaze and mine cross as we follow the graying trail of salt towards the door.
How long must it take to pour two glasses of wine? I take off my shoes.Their galley kitchen is obscured from view by the numerous boxes stacked by the door that leads to the master bedroom, their bedroom, well, his now.
I move to the window, looking out across a darkened street where a brightly illuminated storefront is shadowed by a couple intertwined against the glass. Whether drunk on each other or something else entirely I'm not quite sure, but even as they pull themselves from their embrace it isn’t their eyes I feel on me.
They are still inspecting me, fixated on me, so I don’t turn from the window but let my eyes stretch the length of their stems to peer over the corner of my cheekbone at them. They are white, with a thick clog-sole. The pillory cut-out in bottom feigning the shape of the arch. It’s delicate straps whispering of narrow ankles, not so as knobby as mine, that never seem to bruise or blister despite being noosed by these straps during signings. She would remain poised, even after an extended reading, even on the night when the clicking of those solid wooden heels coming did not wake us. Her merciful, but futile warning toll.
Her shoes are well worn, but well preserved. Perhaps she buffs the smooth white leather, or perhaps he used to. Then again she may never have worn them, the straps are too tight, and rub on her ankles. Only, she wore them that night?
So, then perhaps too she wore them the night they met. She'd have taken them off as he walked her home from the party. Perched in vignette against the backdrop of store windows she might’ve undid them with one hand, propped herself against his shoulder, and taken them off. Her bare, soft feet on the slick pavement. He would've been drunk from PBR and she a little bit too, although not from PBR. It would've been there that he’d first kiss her; ignoring the clunk of her wooden heel as it falls from her hands and hits the cement.
He slithers up behind me in pine green socks and his thick arms encircle my waist, pressing a mason jar filled with red wine to my lips. “It didn’t seem right to dirty Marina’s wine glasses.”
And what of the myriad of invisible stains we’ve left in her bed?
“I’m sorry about all of this,” he murmurs, nuzzling his dark beard and lips into my hair, “I would’ve cleaned more, but I don’t like being here when Marina is here packing. I’m sorry she left us such a mess.”
I suppose I can forgive her. I swallow the guilt creeping up the back of my throat, and twist around to face him. The shoes still peer at me from over his shoulder. Stable amidst a world of disarray her shoes’ un-scuffed leather and unscathed soles beg to be worn in. I wonder when last they slept in the same bed, when last she wore the shoes, and if they used to claw at one another wordlessly in the night. When publishers were accepting both of their work- and not simply hers, if the only thing that got in the way of his work was her spindly hands sneaking up the back of his shirt while he typed.
I turn from the shoes, and find his eyes staring back at me. “Do you write about me?” I ask.
He doesn’t reply, burying his lips in my collar bone. So I ask again, and this time he nods, only pausing his affair with my neck to hum in my ear, “And you of me?”
I extract myself from his arms and move towards the pile of boxes stacked in front of their, his, room “Sometimes, but mostly in relation to her.”
I take the white shoes off of their perch atop her boxes. Hooking the back strap of them around my finger, I slide my foot into one as I steady myself on the boxes. The other shoe falls from the boxes, striking the floor like a gavel. Retrieving the lost mate from the ground I try to stuff my foot the other shoe.
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