Shoe Addicts Anonymous (7 page)

It was a curly black hair.

And without a shred of hard evidence, Helene was 100 percent certain it belonged to Jim.

“I do?” Pam asked, still unaware that the person before her had figured out she had pubic hair caught in her teeth.

“It’s…” Helene hesitated. There was no way to say it. And with the apparent certainty that it belonged to her husband, there was really no
reason
to say it. “It’s nothing,” she said. “Trick of the light.”

“Oh. Okay.” Pam gave a fake smile, clearly displaying the hair between her teeth.

Yup, there was no doubt about what it was. Even proper DAR women like Nancy Cabot would be able to tell. And there were plenty of them here tonight.

Helene was almost going to enjoy that.

“Do you know where I can find Ji—Senator Zaharis?” Pam was hanging herself, and Jim, with every word.

Whether it was the wine or the past ten years, Helene couldn’t say for sure, but she answered, “Last I saw him, he was in the hallway by the foyer, talking to someone.” She should have cared, but she didn’t. At the moment, she didn’t care about anything much.

She’d shoplifted.

And gotten caught.

And her husband’s assistant, who called him by his first name—and who, come to think of it, had been missing, along with Jim, for some time after they arrived at this party—had a black pubic hair stuck between her front teeth.

It wasn’t a good night for Helene.

“Mrs. Zaharis, we meet again.” It was the photographer, Gerald.

Maybe Helene’s buzz was wearing off in the wake of the administrative assistant revelation she’d just experienced, but suddenly Gerald looked a lot less handsome and a lot more feral.

“We do,” she answered him, accustomed to answering at these events in as charming a manner as she could muster.

At the moment, that consisted of
we do
.

“I was sorry we were interrupted earlier.”

She was entering a cynical mode. Something about this guy, his persistence, and the fact that he seemed to be everywhere she looked tonight, disconcerted her. “Why is that?”

“Because we weren’t through talking.”

“We weren’t?”

He looked at her coolly. “No, I was going to tell you about one of the more interesting photo sessions I’ve had lately. In fact, it was just yesterday.” He hesitated a moment longer than a kind person would have. “Did
you
do anything interesting yesterday?”

Apart from getting caught shoplifting? “Not that I can recall.” Her alcohol haze was burning off.

“That’s funny,” Gerald said. “Because you figured prominently in the more interesting part of
my
day.”

Helene looked at him. “Me?” She had a bad, bad feeling that she was going to get an answer she didn’t like.

Gerald nodded. “I was at Ormond’s department store yesterday. It’s their semiannual sale, you know.”

“Is it?”

They both knew she was bluffing.

He nodded, playing the game. “I took a few shots there.”

“Photos, you mean.” She arched an eyebrow. “Or were you drinking tequila in the men’s room?”

He chuckled. “Good thing I wasn’t, or I would have missed a damn good story.”

“You don’t look like the sort of guy who’d find
anything
of interest in Ormond’s.” She grazed an eye over his Super-Mart–quality suit. “Were you just passing through on the way to the parking lot?”

“As a matter of fact, I was. I’d gone to get a battery for my camera at one of those fancy jewelry stores. It always drove me crazy that I had to get a fussy little battery like that instead of a regular double A, but it turns out to have been one of the luckier things that’s happened to me.”

“Is that so?”

He nodded enthusiastically. “I was walking through Ormond’s on my way to my car, and I was fidgeting with the camera to make sure the battery did the trick, when I stumbled upon an incredible scene. I didn’t have any idea I was going to stumble across an actual story, but I did.” He pulled an envelope from his pocket. “Take a look. It’s good stuff.”

He’d been planning to find and corner her tonight.

“I’m not very interested in your work, Mr. Parks.” She didn’t want to see what was in the envelope.

“Go on, take a look.” He shook it at her, like a lion tamer shaking a steak in order to get his subject’s attention. “I think you’ll find it really interesting.”

She glared at him wordlessly.

“Better that you see it from me, now, than on the news tomorrow.”

Helene took the envelope reluctantly. At this point she was playing her role in the game she had no choice but to play.

Taking what felt like hours, she opened the envelope and pulled out the neat stack of five-by-seven black-and-white prints within.

The first was of her, from a distance, talking with Luis in the shoe department of Ormond’s.

The second showed Luis returning with her credit card extended toward her.

The third showed Luis returning with her credit card extended toward her
again
.

The fourth was a really excellent close-up of the anguish on her face as she spoke to the credit card company on her cell phone.

The fifth…well, more of the same.

The sixth—that was the worst one. It showed her looking to the left in a way that clearly illustrated
seeing if the coast was clear
.

The seventh showed her putting one of the new shoes on her right foot, her old shoes clearly visible in the box at her feet.

The eighth was a great shot of the conflict in her face as she pushed the box containing her old shoes under the chair she was sitting on.

Nine, ten, and eleven showed her striding toward the exit with a gait that seemed confident and an expression that looked doubtful.

Twelve was opening the door.

Thirteen—this was a prize—was the security guard, with his super-serious Maryland trooper face on, hurrying after her.

And fourteen…was history. Along with fifteen through twenty-five. They were just moment-to-moment documentations of Helene’s apprehension and arrest.

She looked the pictures over, then arranged them into a neat pile—as they’d been presented to her—and handed them back to Gerald Parks. “I’m not sure I understand why these would be of interest to anyone,” she said, but her voice wavered just enough to assure the observant person that yes, she
was
sure.

She was painfully sure.

“Oh, because they are a sequence of photos showing you—frankly, I almost can’t believe the luck—stealing a pair of shoes from a store and then getting caught and actually arrested for it.” He explained it in a voice so friendly that he might have been a local forest ranger telling elementary school kids about the time he found a harmless black snake in his bathtub.

And took pictures of it.

It was America’s Funniest Embarrassing Private Moments Caught on Film, and Gerald Parks had just won the grand prize.

“It was a misunderstanding,” Helene said coolly.

“Meaning you weren’t shoplifting?” He shook his head. “Not according to my source.”

“And who is your source?” She wanted to stay calm, but it was obvious, just from looking at the pictures, that she was guilty as sin—and no one looking at them would believe the story she’d told Jim.

“Now, Mrs. Zaharis, if I told you that, I might endanger that person. And, more important, the story.” He clicked his tongue against his teeth. “I think newspapers would pay a lot of money for this, I really do.”

“Newspapers aren’t interested in me.”

“Don’t be so modest.” God, how could he sound so nice, so cordial, while delivering such a menacing threat? “You’re married to what many people are saying is a future president of the United States. Your picture has been splashed around the ‘Style’ section of the
Post
and
Washingtonian
. You are, to purloin a criminal justice phrase,
a person of interest
.”

When he finished, Helene looked at him in silence, astonished—and almost even impressed—by his incredible capacity for blasé evil. A person who didn’t speak the language would have deduced from his tone that he was a respectful man expressing great appreciation for Helene’s beauty and accomplishments.

“I see I’ve surprised you,” Gerald said. “I apologize for that. Believe it or not, I gave this some thought in advance, and there’s just no graceful way to sneak up on a subject like this. You have to just
bam!
—”

Helene flinched, startled.

“—get right to the point.”

Again, his tone was so warm and casual that she couldn’t figure out what he was getting at. Was he going to sell the pictures? Or was it possible that he was just warning her to stay on the straight and narrow because there were unsavory people out there who might not be so kind as he.

Helene had been around the block enough times to seriously doubt it was the latter, so she asked him straight up. “What do you plan to do with these pictures and your contentions of theft, Mr. Zaharis?”

His small dark eyes lit, like a teacher who was proud his student came up with a particularly astute question. “That’s up to you.”

“Up to me.” If it were truly up to her, the man would dry right up and blow away.

He nodded. “I’m a working man, Mrs. Zaharis. I need to make a living, just like everyone else.” He paused, and a telltale expression of disdain flickered across his eyes. “Well, like
most
people, anyway.”

It was tempting to tell him that she damn well knew what it was to struggle to make a living, but she wasn’t going to form any sort of camaraderie with him, even a vague one like that.

Besides, it was none of his business.

And he already knew too much about her.

So instead, Helene said, “Most people strive to make their livings honestly.”

“Absolutely,” he agreed. “That’s exactly how I like to live. And you can rest assured that I have no intention whatsoever about lying to
anyone
about you.” He nodded toward the pile of photos she still held. “Those pictures tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth by themselves. No embellishment from me is necessary.”

Helene shook her head. “What’s the bottom line, Mr. Parks? I don’t have the time, or the interest, to stand around and try to figure out your riddles.”

He pointed a finger gun at her. “You’re a sharp lady, Mrs. Zaharis. I like you. The bottom line is this: You pay me a lump sum of twenty-five thousand dollars right up front.”

She gasped, then glanced around, hoping she hadn’t drawn anyone’s attention.
“Twenty-five thousand?”
she whispered harshly. “You must be joking.”

“Oh, no. Not at all. See, I gave this a lot of thought. We don’t want large withdrawals from the bank to call attention to you. You could easily explain a twenty-five-thousand-dollar withdrawal as a political or charitable donation, but more than that and your hubby might start asking for receipts and so on.”

He had no idea. “My husband keeps a very close eye on his finances,” she said.

“
His
finances? That’s quaint. They’re your finances, too. And you and I both know that, where you come from, ten thousand bucks and a stipend of, say, a couple thousand bucks a month is nothing.”

A
couple thousand
bucks a month? And now, of all times, when Gerald had pulled the reins in on her spending. “Where I come from,” she said in an icy tone, “people wouldn’t think of blackmailing as a legitimate way to get money.”

“I don’t like that term,
blackmail
.”

“It’s accurate.”

“Yes, it is. But still I prefer to look at this as safeguarding you from your own truth.” He chuckled. “In a way, I’m your own private Secret Service detail. Anyway, I’d like that twenty-five grand in the form of a cashier’s check, no names or addresses. Get it and have it ready. I’ll catch up with you later in the week.”

“Where? When?”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll find you.”

Anger surged in Helene’s breast. She’d worked too long and too hard for this life to let some sniveling little jerk like this take it all away from her, yet she didn’t seem to have a choice. Here he was, proposing that she pay him twenty-five thousand dollars, probably again and again, according to his financial need.

Unless of course he wanted a
raise
for his hard work.

This could just go on and on, eroding her life in dollar-size fractions, until she finally crumbled.

She wasn’t going to do it.

“I’m not giving you one flat dime. You have no idea what happened that day, or what you took pictures of.” The flash. She remembered it suddenly. Outside, when the alarm was wailing, she thought it had lights, too. But it didn’t have lights; that was just the pop of Gerald Parks’s camera flash.

She should have figured that out a long time ago. She should have prepared for this moment, braced herself. Maybe even spoken with her lawyer in advance.

Except she couldn’t speak with her lawyer without Jim finding out, and she did
not
want Jim to find out that, on top of everything else, now she was being threatened with blackmail.

Gerald Parks had her at a bigger disadvantage than he could have imagined.

It didn’t matter. He knew enough. Even if she just wanted to keep the press from finding out, he had her.

And he knew it.

“You’ll pay,” he said, with utter confidence. “Have it ready. You’ll be seeing me soon.”

I
t was Steve again.

Funny how he always seemed to call Sandra around three-thirty on her four o’clock days. She could almost count on it.

She kept an eye on the clock.

They were talking about his need for social activity again. And again it was raking in the big bucks for Sandra, while costing Steve a lot more than he should have had to pay for a friend.

“Didn’t we talk about joining some sort of support group or something last time?” Sandra asked him, assuming her Professional Therapist Voice.

He wasn’t the only caller who liked that voice. In fact, he probably needed it less than some of the others, but that was a different matter altogether.

“Yes,” Steve said to her. “And I tried. It just didn’t work out.”

“What did you do?”

“For one thing, I looked on Gregslist to find a group or something I could possibly take part in.”

“And?…”

“And the D.C. transsexual support group is full.”

Sandra didn’t know what to say.

“Kidding,” Steve said, allowing for one of the first notes of levity she’d ever heard from him. “I called a cooking club and a gardening club, but apparently you have to bring something to the table, so to speak. You can’t just join them to learn.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Yeah, then I called this Parents without Partners number, but it’s not enough to just
want
kids—you have to be a single parent.”

Sandra waited for him to say he was kidding again, but this time he didn’t and she found herself unexpectedly touched by the idea that this poor lonely man wanted kids.

“So
then
I came across this advertisement for people who like shoes. I figured, yeah, I like shoes.” He snorted a laugh. “I like them a lot more than going barefoot.”

Sandra was puzzled. “A meeting for people who like shoes?” He must have misunderstood.

“Forget it. It’s really specific. You have to be a woman, for one thing, or at least—get this—a drag queen with narrow-to-regular feet. No wide sizes.”

“
What?
Steve, seriously, what are you talking about? A group for people who like shoes but you can’t have wide feet or be a drag queen?” And why did everything keep coming back to transsexuality with him? She wasn’t going to ask, but she sure wondered.

“Okay, it’s this.” She heard him clicking on his computer. “Shoe Addicts Anonymous—”

Sandra straightened in her seat.

Was this for real? Because this was exactly the sort of get-out-of-the-apartment dream she often had. Having waited and waited for a nudge from God or Whoever, it would finally come true in a really specific form. And now that she was feeling more capable of getting out…

“—it meets in Bethesda every Tuesday night—”

See now, this was getting weirder and weirder. Sandra was free Tuesday nights.

Of course, she was free every night. Strike that from the “weird” column.

“And they trade shoes, I guess. It says something about trading Maglis—”

He pronounced it
mag-
lies instead of
mollies,
but she knew what he meant. There was a pair lying on the floor in front of the sofa right now.

“Oh! And you have to be a size seven and a half.
Women’s
seven and a half. No eights. No fives. If you’re a man with a size seven shoe, forget about it.” He made a noise of disgust. “Talk about getting slapped in the face by an exclusionist group right when you’re trying to get out and feel like you
belong
. Jerks.”

Sandra, meanwhile, felt like she might be hearing about the first club in the history of the world that she could ever have been totally included in. So much so that it was suspicious.

Had he somehow found out where she lived, had come into her apartment, gone through her closet and ascertained her preferred shoe brand and her size?

“And you saw this on Gregslist,” she said doubtfully, wondering if she should be getting her cell phone to call the police and have them trace Steve’s call, or if she should turn on her computer and find this group before it disappeared into the world of fairy tales.

“Yeah,” Steve said, so guilelessly that she couldn’t believe her paranoia could be justified.

There was no way Steve could have found her. The company made really sure that calls were routed through several transfer hubs before ending up with the operators.

“So that wasn’t the group for you,” she said, still on guard but feeling quite a bit better than she had a couple of minutes earlier.

“Yeah. That’s what you get for going on a free online bulletin board to find validation. Maybe what I need is a real psychologist.”

Psychologist! Shit! She looked at the time.

Five minutes to four.

“You might consider that, Steve,” she said, using a
wrapping it up
voice she rarely needed when she was being paid by the minute. “At least it would get you out and get you used to socializing with someone face-to-face. It might be a great first step for you.”

“You really think so?”

She nodded, even though he couldn’t see her. “Yes, I do.”

“Well, what about medications? Psychologists can’t prescribe, and maybe I need medicine—”

“A psychologist should be able to tell you whether you need to see a psychiatrist for psychotropic drugs.”

“What?”

“Antidepressants.”

“Oh.” He paused again. It probably cost him a buck. “You really think so?”

“I really do. In fact—” She looked at the clock and saw she had two minutes until her four o’clock appointment. “—I think you should call someone right now. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with you, Steve,” she hastened to add. “But I think there is help out there for someone sensitive like you who has a hard time getting out into this crazy world. Do it
now
before you lose your fire.”
Fire
may have been overstating it a bit, but in Sandra’s experience, men preferred overstatement.

“You may be right,” he said, sounding hopeful for the first time she could remember. “I think I’ll make some calls.”

“Excellent!” Rarely did her calls end in such a crescendo for her. “And remember,” she added, dispensing advice she knew she had to take herself, “small steps. Don’t try to do it all at once.”

“Penny,” he paused, and she pictured him shaking his head and smiling, “you are the greatest.”

“You, too, Steve,” she said, wondering if either one of them was using a real name, or if this whole camaraderie was a mirage. “Now you let me know how things go, okay?”

“You got it.” He sounded stronger than usual. “I’ll be calling you back.”

“Thanks, Steve.” She pushed the
END
button on her phone and hesitated, wondering for the thousandth time if it was as wrong as it felt to let this poor guy call and pay so much per minute for a friend.

She knew it wasn’t a
good
thing, but it was his choice. He chose to do it over and over again. Even though she’d warned him it was costing a lot.

How responsible did she need to be for that?

It wasn’t a question she could answer, so she decided to pose it to Dr. Ratner, her four o’clock appointment. For which she was paying 130 bucks an hour.

Compared with what Steve was paying, it seemed like a bargain.

The conversation with Dr. Ratner went the same way it usually did.

“I’m concerned that you’re not feeling confident enough to come to my office,” Dr. Ratner said. “It’s only six blocks away. You could walk here in ten or fifteen minutes and have the pleasure of knowing you beat one of your challenges.”

Challenges
. Right. It was a phobia. There was no spin on that. Sandra didn’t like to leave her apartment. She knew it was called agoraphobia, she knew it was common, she knew it
could
be cured with some work…for some people. She knew a lot of stuff about it.

She knew she had to break through the fear by going out. It was practically Psychology 101, and it was time she did it.

“I’ve just been busy,” she lied, wondering why she was paying so much per hour to lie to a therapist.

“Sandra, you need to make yourself a priority.”

“I know….”

“You’ve said that every week for almost a year,” Dr. Ratner persisted. “I’m not sure you’re really getting this. You can talk to me all you want, every week, every day, whatever you need. But you’re not going to get
better
until you bust through that wall and get out of your safe environment.”

“Every time you say that, it makes it sound like the world outside isn’t safe.”

“Maybe that’s because you
feel
it isn’t safe. Maybe that’s just one more good reason for you to get out and face your demons.” Dr. Ratner’s voice was soothing, but what she said still felt undoable to Sandra. “Until you do, I don’t think I, or anyone else, can truly help you.”

“So what are you saying?” Good God, was her therapist
breaking up with her
?

“I’m simply saying you need to get out for an hour. Half an hour. Whatever you can make yourself do. Look, you drive to the grocery store and the library, and you’ve come into my office now and again. You know you can do it without running into any personal danger. All I’m saying is that you need to challenge yourself a
little
so that you can grow through this phobia.” Dr. Ratner hesitated a moment, perhaps not realizing Sandra was sobbing silently on the other end of the line. “Does that make sense?”

Sandra nodded, then said in a small voice, “Yes.”

“Excellent. So how about a trip to the movies?”

Sandra shook her head, unseen. “Too crowded. And movies are too long these days.”

She knew what she had to try to do. And it wasn’t some boring movie in a creepy dark theater. She needed to meet people she could feel safe with, people she had something in common with. The only way she could envision herself going out and leading any semblance of a normal life was to be with friends, to be talking about something interesting to her—as opposed to a party where all the skinny girls and hot guys were hooking up and she was working in the kitchen.

“Then what
are
you interested in?” Dr. Ratner asked. “What feels comfortable and appealing to you? It really doesn’t matter what you pick—just pick something you think you can do.”

“I don’t know!”

“Okay.” Dr. Ratner’s voice was soft, but there was a firmness to the tone that Sandra had rarely heard. “That’s fine, Sandra. But let’s consider this an assignment for the next week. Find one thing—just
one
thing, and that’s for the whole week—that you can go out and spend, say, more than an hour doing. Sixty-one minutes would be fine. It just needs to be more than one hour. And that will be progress. Are you up for it?”

One hour.

She could do that.

Couldn’t she?

She wanted to. She wanted to get better. So she asked, “Are you talking about, like, a trip to the grocery store? Or the National Cathedral or the zoo or something?”

“No, Sandra. Those are all things that you picture yourself doing on your own—”

She was right.

“—what I’m suggesting is an hour of actual social contact. A town meeting, a homeowners’ association meeting, whatever you can think of. It doesn’t matter
what
it is; it only matters that you get out and do it.” She paused for a moment and Sandra said nothing, so she continued, “I think it would truly do you a world of good.”

“Okay,” Sandra said, suddenly a petulant child. “
Fine
. I’ll do it.”

Dr. Ratner said, “Excellent. Sandra, I’m very serious about this. I think you would find that it isn’t so hard as you fear it will be. It will change your life.”

It will change your life
.

If there was one thing Sandra needed, it was for her life to change. It almost didn’t matter what the change was; she just needed a break from the routine she was stuck in before it devoured her.

After she’d hung up with Dr. Ratner, she turned on her computer and opened her browser to Gregslist.biz. From there, all she had to do was type in “Shoe Addicts, Bethesda,” and the ad Steve Fritz had told her about popped right up.

She looked at the ad for a long time, trying to talk herself into making the call, but it seemed like such a big first step. Diving right into a meeting with people who would undoubtedly expect her to be sociable…As perfect as the group looked, Sandra needed to start herself off more slowly.

But she was interested. So she set up a couple of mini-challenges for herself.

The first was a trip to a fast-food restaurant. Since there was virtually nothing on the menu that was allowed by Weight Watchers, it was a quick trip. She went in, ordered a Diet Coke, sat down at a front window seat, and drank it, forcing herself to go slowly and use Dr. Ratner’s trick of “floating” through her feelings of discomfort.

Twenty minutes passed like two hours, but when she left, Sandra felt like she’d accomplished something.

It was a small thing, and virtually everyone else in the world could do it daily without giving it a thought, but Sandra was learning to stop berating herself for her phobia, so as soon as she had those impatient thoughts with herself, she tried to stop them.

It didn’t always work, though.

“The more you try and push your fear away, the more it’s going to push back,” Dr. Ratner said on the phone when Sandra called her later that day.