I don’t much like shoes. Like right now, I’ve got my bare toes pushing along the hardwood floor, and it seems right not to be wearing shoes when I’m half-naked anyways with this summer heat keeping me indoors – otherwise I might go outside and faint like all those people on the news. So I’ve got a pair of my boyfriend’s khaki shorts on and a little halter top. Nothing else. It’s too hot for a bra and panties, and I’ve got my hair pulled up in a high ponytail. Trying to keep my neck cool.

            Thing is, I dress like this and it’s fine with Max. Max likes girls who don’t dress girly. And I don’t mean butch, I just mean not glamorous. No make-up, no pink and fluff and flowers. This is fine with me, because my last boyfriend wanted lots of girliness – or maybe I should say womanliness. Carlos wanted me in small dresses and short skirts. He had a fondness for shoes and I’m not a shoe type, but you know, women do things for men, so I wore the shoes he wanted me too. Black strappy heels. Platforms. And in the bedroom, he wanted me in shoes. He had this one pair that he really loved. He’d sit down in the gray suede wingback chair in his bedroom and tell me to put them on. “Slowly,” he’d say, and I’d do it, sit at the edge of the bed and slide my feet into the shoes, grin at him with the wicked smile I know he liked. You know how it is.   

            Later, when I found out Carlos was sleeping with not only me, but two other women, I took those shoes he loved and threw them at him, one at a time. The first one hit him.  I grew up playing softball and basketball, and I’ve got a decent arm. That shoe hit him flat in the chest and he yelled, “Jesus, Michelle!” and I threw the other shoe and it was way off the mark, hit the night stand lamp and knocked it to the ground.

So those shoes are gone.