Shoe Addicts Anonymous (4 page)

Guilt and anger coursed through her veins. “What were you doing looking through my bedside table?”

“Bedside table? I had to get a prescription filled at the G Street pharmacy today, and they asked if I was picking up your refill!”

Oh, shit.
Shit shit shit
. She’d tipped her hand. She still could have lied her way out of it, said it was an old prescription or a mistake on the pharmacist’s part, but she’d offered too much information. She was caught, and there was no way out of it.

“Wait,” she said, too late. “What pills?”

“Birth control pills. You’ve been getting them for months, so don’t even try lying about it.”

It was a quandary. Should she take the chance on denying it, or just come right out with the truth? “It was for medical reasons,” she said, the lie coming almost as naturally as the truth. “I needed to even out my hormone levels in order to get pregnant.”

The laugh of his response was ugly. “If that was the truth, you would have told me before.”

“Because you’re so warm and friendly and easy to talk to?” she asked, her voice hard.

“You’re a liar.”

“So you said. And so now you’re punishing me.”

“You bet I am.”

She shuddered at his coldness. How the hell had she ended up married to a man like this?

“For how long?” she asked.

“How long do you think it will take you to get pregnant?”

“Are you
kidding
me? You’re going to cut me off financially until I’m
pregnant
?” She wasn’t going to do it. She’d get a job. She wasn’t going to ransom a child’s future for her own shopping pleasure.

“I’ll give you an allowance,” Jim said. “For the necessities. Say, a hundred bucks a week.”

“A hundred.”

“I know, it’s generous.”

It was about sixty cents an hour for being married to him.

“You’re despicable,” she said, and flipped her phone shut.

She looked around the store, at the rich and unassuming patrons who milled around, oblivious of the plight she’d endured these past few years, looking comfortable and rich and carefree. Though at least some of them probably shared her uncomfortable situation.

Like that woman over there. Pretty. Too pretty to have been born rich. She’d been bought. She practically had a SKU symbol across her butt. Over the years, Helene had grown quite good at telling the real thing from the fakes. Like herself.

The fakes always had a little shadow of uncertainty across their pretty faces.

Like Helene. Somehow, despite the bank account she shared with Jim, she’d never fully reached that relaxed feeling of carefree spending that so many of the Ormond’s patrons seemed to enjoy. There had always been some sort of threat hanging over her head.

The threat of Jim’s disapproval.

Well, forget that. She wasn’t going to live at his mercy, and prosper at his whim. And she definitely wasn’t going to hang at his command.

As if in a dream, she bent down and put her Jimmy Choos into the Bruno Magli box and replaced the lid.

She stood up, feeling as if she were pushing against the force of Jim’s disapproval as she made even that one small gesture. Yes, he’d knocked her down. Humiliated her, even, and then let a store clerk give her the news. But he wasn’t going to win this round. He wasn’t going to pull the leash in on her by cutting off her credit cards.

She took a step, thinking far more about the symbolism of walking out from under Jim’s control than the fact that she was still, technically, wearing shoes she hadn’t purchased.

But she’d be back, she told herself as she took another step. Ormond’s wouldn’t notice her leaving; she knew from her own retail experience in the suit department of Garfinkels—where she’d met Jim, incidentally—that the security sensors were at midbody level at the doors because that’s where most shoplifters carried their goods.

Helene wasn’t a shoplifter, though. She was a regular patron, who had probably contributed tens of thousands of dollars to the Ormond’s coffers. Hell, she’d even left a perfectly good pair of Jimmy Choos back where she was trying the Maglis on.

She needed to do this. The Bruno Maglis she had on felt so damn good. And that wasn’t true for everyone. Some people found them uncomfortable, but people with the
right
shaped feet loved them. So who wouldn’t want to keep walking?

Well, maybe that was stretching it. She wasn’t walking because the
shoes
felt good; she was walking because the
escape
felt good.

She’d pay later for the shoes, easily. As soon as she got home and either got her hands on some cash or talked some sense into crazy Jim so he’d release the credit on her cards again, she’d come back, explain that she’d accidentally left in the Maglis, and pay.

No problem.

It wasn’t like she was
stealing
them, for heaven’s sake. She almost chuckled at the thought. She hadn’t stolen anything for thirty years, and even though she’d been good at it then, she wasn’t about to pick up the habit again now.

Her heart pumped and she felt the flush in her cheeks. Jim was not going to win this time. It was exhilarating. She should get in her car and go get a bottle of champagne and drink it over at Haines Point, watching the planes take off from Reagan National Airport. Who was it that had taken her on a date to do that all those years ago? Woody? Yes, that was it. He was so cute. He drove a Porsche 914, back when that was cool. She wondered what had ever happened to him….

She was nearly out, she could see the star-dropped twilight above an orange-and-pink horizon, and she could almost
feel
the balmy air on her skin when the security system began to wail.

It tripped her up for a second. It was loud. And were those flashing lights?

Guilt flushed over Helene and stiffened her gait, but she forced herself to keep moving. She kept walking, trying hard to ignore the sound. After all, that was a sound that was ignored—by patrons and employees alike—in most stores countless times per day.

She couldn’t ignore the next alarm, though: the footsteps coming up behind her and the male voice at her shoulder saying, “Excuse me, ma’am. We’ve got a problem. Can you come back in the store with me, please?”

I
’m wearing my red leather stilettos….” Sandra Vanderslice padded across the floor of her Adams Morgan apartment in bare feet, telephone to her ear, and stopped in the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator door very quietly.

“Oooh, baby,”
the man on the other end of the telephone line said,
“I like you in red. Have you got your little red thong on?”

Carefully, Sandra took the orange juice out of the fridge and cooed, “Yes, baby, just like you like.” She tipped her glass so he couldn’t hear her pour. Two ounces. That was all she could have. She filled the glass the rest of the way with water.

“I’m ripping them off of you with my teeth.”

Sandra moaned obligingly and screwed the top back on the orange juice bottle. “Oh—oh—oh yes!” Sip. “You’re driving me wild!” She headed back to the TV in the living room. “Mmmmm. Yessss.”

“Now I’m licking your wet pussy.”

“Mmmm.”

“Do you like it?”

“Oh, baby, you’re so good.” She’d said the words so often now, they were automatic. They no longer had meaning. It was just a mantra that she repeated in order to earn herself a dollar and forty-five cents a minute as an operator for A Touch of Class Phone Friends.

Class, indeed.

She moaned again, hoping to sound like she meant it, and sat down on the couch. “Ahhh…ahhhh…”

She picked up the clicker, hit
MUTE
, and scrolled through the TV channels until she landed on a repeat of last night’s
Daily Show
.

“Perfect,” she said, more to herself than to the caller, then proceeded to make more of the obligatory moans and groans her callers liked—and mirrored—so much, while she watched Jon Stewart interview the latest politician to be indicted for fraud, reading the closed-captioning.

“You taste so good,”
he muttered between what she’d come to think of as “spanker’s gasps.”
“I could…do…this all…fucking day.”

“Please do,” she cooed, thinking of the Pliner boots she’d been eyeing online. A steal at $175. “Keep…going…” Camel or black? Maybe this guy would go long enough to get both. Nah, it would take almost two hours for him to cover just one pair. None of her callers had that kind of restraint. She’d just keep him going as long as possible and hope for another couple of long calls so she could log off. “Do it…do it to me.” She panted a little bit, drawing the attention of her Persian cat, Merlin, who jumped onto her lap and spilled the glass of orange juice all over her.

“Shit!”
She yelled it before she could think to stop herself.

Fortunately her caller, “Burt,” liked that.

“Ooooh, yeah. Talk dirty to me,”
he grunted.
“Do you want me to eat your pussy some more? Huh? Do you like it like this? I’m sucking your clit.”

Once upon a time, this kind of talk had been seriously disconcerting to Sandra, who had grown up in a family so conservative that the word
damn
was the single worst curse, and it was saved for only the most severe situations.

But now, like her own telephone dialogue, it was just noise. Noise that acted as a means to an end. Rent, food, utilities, and her many, many catalog and online purchases.

It wasn’t a bad living.

“Oh!” she cried, pulling her sticky wet shirt off. It was probably the first time she’d ever actually taken an item of clothing off during a call. “Oh! Oooooh!”

“You are so wet!”

“I am,” she agreed, balling up the orange juice–soaked T-shirt and trying to dry herself with the small piece of it that was still dry. “I’m sooo wet. And I taste like fruit,” she added, just to amuse herself.

“You do.”

She sighed.

“Now I’m going to fuck you. I’m going to fuck you hard, bitch.”

She rolled her eyes. Big tough guy. He was probably a total mouse in real life. In fact, she imagined he had a domineering wife or, better still, a female boss who thoroughly intimidated him.

So he paid for accolades.

And she provided them. For a price. “Oooh, Burt. You’re so big. So hard.”

“Say it again.”

She did, adding a few elaborations, then set the phone down for a second so she could put something on. She grabbed the only thing handy—a tight size 22 blouse that she’d been meaning to throw away but kept hoping she’d fit into someday—put it on, and cradled the phone in the crook of her neck while she buttoned. Truth was, she wasn’t even sure why she bothered with the shirt. She was alone. She was
always
alone. She could probably be naked for thirty-six hours straight and never run into a situation where she
needed
to get dressed.

Except maybe to avoid the prick of Merlin’s claws.

The only prick she’d actually felt in…Oh, god, it didn’t bear thinking about.

Burt reached his crescendo just as she pulled the final button over. It held for a moment, then popped off.

She could have cried.

Instead, though, she’d do what she usually did to make herself feel better in these situations.

She’d shop.

She booted up her computer, offering the occasional moan, groan, or exclamation as her caller’s passion reached its death throes. When “Burt” finally finished, he was eager to hang up—he sounded like he was worried he’d get caught, probably by the boss Sandra had envisioned earlier—and she stopped the timer.

Twenty-seven minutes.

It wasn’t great, but she’d had cracked-voice young guys who took much less time than that, so it would do.

She looked at the time on her computer screen. It was 12:45. Her appointment wasn’t until four, so with any luck, she’d be able to fill the next three hours with calls and order the Pliners before FedEx went out tonight.

Thank goodness her job was so lucrative. Men loved “Penelope”—as she was known to them—and why wouldn’t they? The picture she’d provided for her catalog bio was a killer. Penelope had Angelina Jolie’s lips, Julia Roberts’s nose, Catherine Zeta-Jones’s face shape and eyes, mid-’80s Farrah Fawcett hair (tousled, not winged), and Cindy Crawford’s 1991 body.

Sandra had put Penelope together with Photoshop herself, adding the small detail of replacing one of Catherine’s earlobes with her own. Just so she had one small way to identify with Penelope.

It was fun to be tall, thin, and gorgeous—if only just in her imagination and that of countless lonely, horny men—when Sandra herself had been of average height and well-above-average weight all her life.

The fact that her family was very wealthy and lived in Potomac Falls Estates had never bought Sandra any favors when it came to social acceptance. In elementary school, her physique inspired such nicknames as Sandra Claus and, after an unfortunate experience on a field trip to a farm, Moo.

People also compared her—inevitably and unfavorably—with her older, very attractive sister, Tiffany. Tiffany the cheerleader, the homecoming queen, the average student who was remembered as a star by teachers and administrators alike because of her sparkling smile and outgoing personality.

Where Sandra’s hair was the exact bland brown of a field mouse, Tiffany had dark golden blond hair, with subtle natural highlights of everything from strawberry blond to wheat. Sandra’s nose was straight and unremarkable, where Tiffany’s was the kind of thin, slightly tipped-up button women described to plastic surgeons all the time. Sandra’s eyes were deep coffee brown, and Tiffany’s? Grassy green. Again, the sort of thing most women could achieve only artificially.

Growing up with her sister had been like being trapped in a “before and after” diet ad, with the imbalance of affection toward Tiffany extending even as far as their parents were concerned. They would have told Sandra she was wrong about that, but she thought there wasn’t a clearer eye than that of a teenager longing for attention and seeing it go to her more attractive sibling instead.

Tiffany was pregnant now, and Sandra was crossing her fingers that she’d start to show by the holidays so that,
for once,
Sandra wouldn’t have to feel so conspicuously, and singularly, large and round at the family gatherings. Maybe it would even change her relationship with her parents, though she doubted it since the golden child was going to have the platinum baby.

Nevertheless, Sandra had taken this as the perfect opportunity to join Weight Watchers, albeit online. As Tiffany grew larger, Sandra would grow smaller.

That would be a nice change.

She thought of that now as she prepared a Weight Watchers recipe for Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Gorgonzola and Walnuts. It was a delicious dish. The problem was, the serving recommended seemed so small.

Sandra was pretty sure she wasn’t the only Weight Watcher to feel that way. Even size 6 (when she wasn’t pregnant) Tiffany ate four times as much, without ever putting on an ounce.

The difference was, Sandra was going to have to stick to the portion size, whereas Tiffany would never have to give it a thought.

A long time ago, Sandra had realized that life just wasn’t always fair. And if she wanted to lose some weight, or do anything at all, she was going to have to play by life’s stupid, cheating, biased, and badly refereed rules.

The phone gave a distinctive double ring.

Another customer.

Sandra grabbed a plastic fork—she kept them on hand for just such occasions, since they were so much quieter than stainless steel against the bowl—and hurried to where she’d left the phone on the counter.

She took a breath, quickly psyched herself into being Penelope, and pushed the
TALK
button. “This is Penelope,” she squeaked. Penelope was like that sometimes. She was so delighted to get a call, she was practically Marilyn Monroe. “What’s your name?”

“Hi, Penny,” a familiar voice said. “It’s Steve. Steve Fritz.”

Oh, Steve. She’d told him a hundred times she didn’t think he should be giving out his real name to people he didn’t know over the phone.

Then again, maybe that
wasn’t
his real name.

“Hi, Steve,” she said warmly, dropping the sex voice with some relief. Steve was a Talker. He wanted sympathy, never sex. She loved it when he called, though sometimes she felt really bad that he was paying two ninety-nine a minute to hand his metaphorical hat and coat to Donna Reed at the end of the day.

“It’s been another one of those days,” he said on a sigh.

“Oh, I’m sorry, honey,” Sandra said, settling into a chair. “What happened?”

She wasn’t Penelope on these calls, but she wasn’t Sandra either. She was…It was hard to say. She was someone not quite motherly, but caring and maternal. Someone confident. Someone who had successfully navigated the obstacles of life and had come out on the other side, wiser and more serene.

Seriously not Sandra.

“You know how I told you about Dwight? The guy in the mail room who makes stupid comments every time he brings me the video game catalogs?”

“Yes, that jerk.” She hated people like that. She’d gone to school with hundreds of them. “What happened?”

“Well.” Steve’s voice was tight. “I think he put my name on a newsletter for transsexuals.”

“Oh, no.” Asshole. Unimaginative asshole. Guys like Dwight picked on guys like Steve to make themselves feel better about their Chap-Stick dicks.

She’d probably talked to Dwight herself.

He was probably one of the ones that liked being “spanked” for being “naughty.”

Steve wasn’t finished. “He made a big production of bringing this newsletter in today. That means I’m going to be on all kinds of weird mailing lists, and Dwight is going to make an announcement every time something arrives.”

Poor Steve. She wished she could tell him to take martial arts and kick the guy’s miserable ass, but she’d read too many news stories about people ending up dead because of advice like that from people like her. Steve seemed like a nice guy, but it was impossible to get around the fact that there was probably a reason he was calling a sex phone operator instead of a friend. “You’ve got to tell your boss.”

“If I tell my boss, I’ll be calling attention to the fact that I’m on the mailing list. What if he doesn’t believe Dwight’s behind it? It’s not like I can
prove
it.”

“I know, but if you’re really on these lists and dubious mail is coming in for you, your boss is going to hear about it whether you bring it up or not. Better for him to hear it from you, don’t you think?”

There was silence. Sandra thought she was probably more aware than Steve of how much those seconds of silence were costing him. But it was against the rules for her to make private contact with her customers and, even though she did it sometimes anyway to save Steve some money, she was worried about getting caught and getting into trouble for it.

“He might not believe me.”

“Maybe not, but he’s more likely to if he hears it from
you
. Think about it: If you were trying to hide something like this, would you call it to his attention?”

Silence.

“Steve?”

“I guess you’re right….”

“So he’ll see that.”

“I don’t know, Penny. He’s not that smart.”

She sighed. He was working in an office full of Dwights. Permanent junior high school.

It was one of the main reasons she did what she did for a living instead of joining the rest of the Beltway rats in the workplace.

“Steve, have you ever thought about getting another job?”

Another silence. “I’ve
thought
about it.”

“Maybe you should think about it a little harder. There is absolutely no reason you should have to put up with this. You work for a network company, right?”

“We set up computer networks and databases, mostly for large retail and purchasing operations.”