Hunt

They're missing. I bought them specifically to go with that leather dress, and the damned things have gone walkabout. How ironic.

It's like some LSD-addled exercise in spatial reality: my closet empties out and the piles of shoeboxes on the bed behind me grows in direct proportion. The Via Spigas, no, too clunky. The Maude Frizons, too sedate. The Pradas, too casual. Those Blahniks - ugh. Temporary insanity. What was I thinking?

Shitshitshit. Sixty-eight boxes. Everything's out.

My husband wanders in, holding a Neiman's Bag. "I found this in the car. Weren't these those red Steigers you bought for the wedding?"

He licks his lips and tries not to appear desperate. The place is quiet except for the clink of glass, the murmur of croupiers, the infrequent squeal of a winner. The evening is wrapped in ice and green felt and the white coats of the large men who drift around the edges of the room and occasionally make a determined foray into the crowd, emerging with an oddly silent, white-faced person sagging between them, on his way out.

He licks his lips again and blows on the dice. "Come on," he whispers urgently, "Baby needs a new pair of shoes."

(edited for a stray word. word count, 100)

funny...I write about shoes all the time, but doing it on purpose? I can't think of anything.

Bev, I thought for a minute you were going entirely somewhere else with the shoe reference in that one: I suck at cards (no gambling gene at all), but isn't the thing the croupier in a casino uses called a shoe?

erika! Kay and her shoes?

The cards are indeed in a shoe.

Yeah, I did that to Kay Howard a number of times.

Can anybody play? 100 words, right? Forthwith:

Mrs. McNaughton’s erstwhile second-best heels announce their arrival home.

The children are abed, eyes closed, having heard the car and zipped their secret way up the stairs. Under the blankets, they are still wearing drinking glasses on their hands.

Lena takes a last swipe at the jelly fingerprints on the countertop and tries to wash her hands. "They were really a bunch of characters tonight," she wheezes. Mr. McNaughton's bowtie flaps as he swallows.

Mrs. McNaughton has not yet gone into the living room, where her formerly best shoes lie behind the television, full of peanut butter and sock lint.

Oh, Nutty, LOVELY! Peanut butter and sock lint, indeed. Family life.

These can't ever scuff or wear thin, the way all her others are before she even gets them. They sparkle and make her happy, even when they're hidden from her view beneath full skirts. Their click against the floor is solid, not at all brittle like she'd worried.

He doesn't step on her toes once, nor she on his, to her surprise. Instead, they whirl around the dance floor, beaming at each other and the newness of it all.

As she turns she catches sight of the clock for the first time tonight.

Dear God, she thinks, stiffening.

She runs.

BWAH!

Fairy tale!