In Her Shoes Read online

  “I believe we have a winner,” said Simon. “The Hot McNugget. That’s what we’re calling her. Agreed?”

  “I don’t know,” said Rose. “What about the guy who spit when he talked? Or Miss Boston?”

  “I was dying to tell her that she wouldn’t like Boston, because it’s not much of a college town, but she didn’t look like someone who enjoyed Spinal Tap,” he said. “And now I’m feeling somewhat remiss, because we didn’t ask any of them how they feel about alternative sports.” He shook his head in mock despair. “I don’t think we can go back to Philadelphia.”

  “The guy with the ex-wife looked like he’s got a snowboard in his garage.”

  “Yeah,” said Simon, “right next to his crossbow. And how about that blonde?”

  Rose bit her lip. “That blonde” had been their second-to-last applicant. Mediocre grades and no experience to speak of, but she was gorgeous.

  “I think some of the partners would have appreciated her,” Simon said dryly. Rose winced. Did he mean Jim?

  “Anyhow,” said Simon, gathering his papers into the inevitable Lewis, Dommel, and Fenick folder. “What do you feel like for dinner?”

  “Room service,” said Rose, getting to her feet.

  Simon looked dismayed. “Oh, no, no, we have to go out to eat somewhere! Chicago’s got great restaurants!”

  Rose gave him what she hoped was a kind look. “I’m really tired,” she said, which was true. Also, she had cramps. And she wanted to be in her hotel room for Jim, who, in lieu of his presence, had offered her the consolation prize of a phone call. Was phone sex hard to do, she wondered? Could she pull it off, without sounding like one of those sleazy ads on late-night cable, or, alternately, like she was reading from the Clinton/Lewinsky depositions?

  “Your loss,” said Simon. He raised his hand in a salute, pushed his folder into a Lewis, Dommel, and Fenick tote bag (grown men, Rose thought, should not carry tote bags), and was gone, as Rose hurried off to the hotel room, and the telephone, and Jim.

  NINETEEN

  Maggie made a bet with herself that she could get a job before Rose came back from Chicago. If she had a job, she figured, Rose would be pleased with her, and willing to apply herself to the Case of the Missing Grandmother. So she gave up on the bartending gig and set out with her stack of résumés. Within a day she’d landed a job at the Elegant Paw, a chichi pet-grooming establishment around the corner from Rose’s apartment, on a block that boasted two French bistros, a cigar bar, a women’s clothing boutique, and a cosmetic store called Kiss and Make Up.

  “You like dogs?” asked Bea, the manager, who was wearing overalls and smoking an unfiltered Marlboro as she worked on a shih tzu with a blow dryer.

  “Absolutely,” Maggie had said.

  “And I can see that you like grooming,” said Bea, taking in Maggie’s tight jeans and tighter sweater. “You’ll do fine. You wash the dogs, clip their nails and whiskers, condition their fur, blow them dry. It’s eight bucks an hour,” she added, picking the shih tzu up by its tail and its collar and depositing it into a plastic pet crate.

  “Fine,” said Maggie.

  Bea handed her an apron, and a bottle of Johnson’s baby shampoo, and nodded toward a small and dingy-looking poodle. “You know about the anal glands?”

  Maggie stared at her, hoping she’d heard wrong. “Excuse me?”

  Bea smiled. “Anal glands,” she repeated. “Let me show you.” Maggie had watched, revolted, as Bea lifted the dog’s tail. “See here?” She pointed at the pertinent area. “Squeeze.” She demonstrated. The smell was revolting. Maggie felt like throwing up. Even the poodle looked ashamed of itself.

  “Do I have to do this for every dog?” she’d asked.

  “Just the ones that need it,” said Bea. Like that was some big consolation.

  “And how do I tell which ones need it?” Maggie persisted.

  Bea laughed. “Check to see if they’re swollen,” she said. Maggie shuddered, but swallowed hard and tentatively approached her first dog, who looked just as dubious about the whole enterprise as she was.

  After eight hours, Maggie had washed sixteen dogs and had sixteen different kinds of dog fur clinging to her sweater.

  “Good work,” said Bea, nodding her approval as she tied a candy-cane-striped bandana around a sheltie’s collar. “Next time wear better shoes. Flats, sneakers. You got shoes like that?”

  Well, she didn’t, but Rose did. Maggie limped onto the street, shoving her pruney hands into her pocket, glad that at least she’d have the place to herself for the night. She could make a bowl of popcorn and a drink, and there’d be no sister to complain that she was playing the music too loud or wearing too much perfume, or to ask pesky questions about where she was going, and when she’d be back.

  Maggie squinted at the space on the street where Rose’s car had been . . . a space that was presently occupied by only an iced-over puddle and a few dead leaves.

  Okay, maybe it wasn’t this space precisely, Maggie thought, trying to calm herself even as her heart started hammering in her chest. Pine Street. It had definitely been Pine Street. She walked to the stop sign by one of the French bistros, crossed at the corner, walked back down the length of the street, past the cigar bar and Kiss and Make Up, which were both closed for the night, moving from streetlight to streetlight, from lamplit glow to absolute darkness, and still, no car.

  She walked to the corner, then back again, underneath the street-lamps decorated with gold tinsel Christmas wreaths, feeling the icy air biting at her neck. It had been Pine Street, she was sure of it . . . except, what if she was wrong? That would be it for Rose, Maggie realized, imagining her sister coming home from Chicago to learn that her car had disappeared. She’d have Maggie out the door and on her way back to Sydelle’s house before Maggie could even start explaining. And wasn’t this the way her life always worked? One step forward, two steps back. Get an audition at MTV and get tripped up by the TelePrompTer. Get a job and find out that the car’s been stolen. Get your foot in the door and have the thing swing shut on your toes. Fuck, she thought, turning in a circle. Fuck, fuck, fuck!

  “They get you, too?” A man in a leather jacket was walking toward her. He cocked his thumb at the sign Maggie hadn’t noticed until then. “Street cleaning,” he said, and shook his head. “They used to just give tickets, but everyone ignored them, so they started towing last week.”

  Shit. “Where do they take the cars?”

  “Impound lot,” he said, shrugging. “I’d give you a ride, but ...” And he looked at the space where his car had presumably been parked with such a mournful expression that Maggie had to laugh. “Come with me,” he said. She looked at him, trying to puzzle out his features, but it was dark and he had the hood of his coat pulled up. “I’m just going to grab a quick beer while I wait for my buddy, and then he can run us over there. You got your checkbook?”

  “Um ...” said Maggie. “Will they take a credit card?”

  The guy shrugged. “Guess we’ll find out,” he said.

  The guy’s name was Grant, and Tim was his buddy, and one beer was actually more like three, plus an Irish coffee that Maggie sipped slowly as she rocked her shoulders to the music and tried not to keep looking at the time while she performed the necessary motions. Cross your legs, lick your lips, twirl a lock of your hair around one finger. Look fascinated, yet somewhat mysterious. Look up from underneath your eyelashes, as if the guy is the most interesting guy you’ve ever seen, as if what he’s saying is the most amazing thing you’ve ever heard. Pout like a model in an ad for panty hose or push-up bras. Toy with your swizzle stick. Stare at them, then drop your eyes shyly. Maggie could have done it in her sleep. And the guys, of course, had no clue. The guys never did.

  “Hey, Monique, you want to come to a party with us once we get the cars back?”

  She gave a rote nod, a tiny shrug, and crossed her legs again. Grant laid his hand on her knee, edging it up toward her thigh. “You’re so soft,�
� he said. She leaned into him for a second, then edged away. Forward, then back.

  “Let’s get the cars first. Then we’ll see,” she said, knowing that as soon as she got the car, she was going straight home. She was tired, and she just wanted to get the car, take a shower, collapse into the comfort of her sister’s bed.

  It was after ten o’clock when they finally stood up and shrugged into their coats. Grant held out his arm for her. Maggie breathed a quiet sigh of relief and smiled prettily as she let him help her off her barstool and up into Tim’s truck. They were on the highway, then off, then on again, somewhere in South Philadelphia, Maggie thought. She thought she could see the Delaware River glimmering in the dark. Finally Tim turned onto a long, twisting road with no lights. Maggie felt an icy fingertip poke her in the chest as the men laughed and sang along to the radio and passed a bottle back and forth over her head. This could get bad, she thought. Where was she? Who were these guys? How could she have been so dumb?

  She was trying to form a plan when Tim jerked the truck into a hard right turn, and they bounced alongside a lot full of cars, surrounded by a ghostly pale fence.

  “Here we are,” he said. Maggie peered into the darkness. There were cars upon cars upon cars . . . dozens of rows of them, burnt-out junkers and shiny new models, and there, right in front, was Rose’s little silver Honda. And, at the far end, the dim shapes of guard dogs—German shepherds, Maggie thought—moving slowly along the fence.

  Tim opened his door, crunching what sounded like half a roll of breath mints between his teeth. “Office is this way,” he said, pointing to a cinderblock shack where light shone through the window. “You two coming?”

  Maggie took another look. The gate was open. She could just walk to the car, get in, drive it right through the gate. She slid off the truck seat and onto the ground. “I’m going to get my car,” she announced.

  “Well, sure. That’s what we brought you here for,” said Tim.

  Maggie bit her lip. The truth was, her license had expired six months ago, and she’d meant to get it renewed, but she kept forgetting. And of course the car was registered in Rose’s name, not hers. Chances were, even if they did take her credit card they might not let her leave with the car. She’d have to think of something else.

  She rocked her hips, settling her feet into the ground. It was so cold that her cheeks hurt, so cold that the inside of her nose was freezing, and every inch of her body was covered in goose bumps. And then she started walking, like she was walking on hot coals. Not too slow and not too fast.

  “Hey!” said Grant, “hey!” She felt, rather then saw, him start to move, and she could see what he had in mind as if a movie screen had suddenly lowered before her eyes. First they’d get the cars, then go back to the bar, where one drink would become three or four or five. Then they’d tell her she couldn’t drive, why didn’t she come back to their apartment, sit for a while, have some coffee? And the apartment would smell like dirty laundry and underarms, and there’d be pizza boxes on the counter and dishes in the sink. Want to watch a movie? they’d ask, and it would be a naked-girl porno movie, and there’d be a bottle of something, and one of them would look at her with slow glazed eyes, Hey sweetheart, he’d say, grinning a slow glazed grin, Hey, sweetheart, hey, baby, why don’t you get comfortable? Why don’t you come over here?

  Which was when Maggie started to run.

  “Hey!” Grant yelled one more time, sounding seriously pissed. She could hear him panting behind her as her feet beat a swift tattoo on the frozen ground. She remembered a story, the story of Atalanta who did not want to be married, Atalanta who the gods let race for the golden apple, Atalanta who ran faster than all the men, who would have won the race, except she’d gotten tricked. Well, no one would trick her.

  A-ta-lan-ta, A-ta-lan-ta, her feet pounded, and her breath came in silvery gasps. She was almost there, was almost there, was so close that if she’d stretched out her fingertips, she could have brushed the driver’s side door handle, when Grant grabbed her around the waist and lifted her off of her feet.

  “Where you going,” he panted into her ear, his breath sour and moist, “where you going so fast?” He slipped one hand up her sweater.

  “Hey!” she screamed, flailing her legs, as he held her away from him and laughed, hearing a dog howl in the distance. Tim was running toward them. “C’mon, man, put her down,” he said.

  “Put me down!” Maggie shrieked.

  “Not yet,” said Grant, his hand crawling over her chest. “Don’t you want to have some fun with us before you go?”

  Oh, God, Maggie thought. Oh, no. She remembered a night like this from long ago, a night in high school, a party in someone’s big backyard. She’d had some beer, and then she’d had some pot, and then someone had given her a cup of sticky brown liquor, and she’d downed that, too, and things had started to get fuzzy. She’d hooked up with a guy, and they’d been lying on the grass, behind a tree, his pants unzipped, her sweater shoved up around her neck, and she’d looked up and there’d been two other guys standing there, staring down at them, holding cans of beer. Standing there, waiting their turns. And at that moment, Maggie had had a sense of how slippery a thing her own power was, how fast it could turn in her hands, like a knife in the sink, slick with soap, how quickly and deeply the blade could cut her. She’d staggered to her feet, making convincing gagging noises. “Sick,” she’d gasped, and run into the house with her fingers laced over her mouth, and hidden in the bathroom until four in the morning, when everyone had passed out or gone home. But what would she do now, when there was no bathroom to run to, no party to disappear into, and no one around to save her?

  Maggie kicked out as hard as she could and felt her heel connect with the soft muscle of Grant’s thigh. He sucked in his breath, and she wriggled out of his arms.

  “What the fuck!” she shouted, as Grant glared at her, looking sullen, and Tim stared at the ground. “What the FUCK?!?!” she repeated.

  “Cocktease,” Grant said.

  “Asshole,” Maggie jeered. Her hands were shaking so badly that she dropped the keys twice before she managed to get the car door unlocked.

  “You’ve got to pay for that,” said Tim, walking toward her slowly with his hands held open, palms up. “They’ve got your plate numbers . . . They’ll send you a ticket in the mail, they’ll make you pay all kinds of fines ...”

  “Fuck you,” said Maggie. “Stay away from me. My sister’s a lawyer. She’ll sue you for assault.”

  “Look,” said Tim, “I’m sorry. He had too much to drink . . .”

  “Fuck you,” said Maggie. She started the car and flicked on the high beams. Grant threw his arms over his eyes. Maggie revved the engine and thought for a minute about how it would feel to just stomp on the gas and squash him like a squirrel. Instead, she took a deep breath, tried to steady her hands on the wheel, and drove out of the gate.

  TWENTY

  If Maggie had been a regular roommate, the telephone bill would have been the beginning and the end of it, the straw that broke the camel’s back. But Maggie was no regular roommate, Rose reminded herself. Maggie was her sister. But when she’d gotten home after two days in Chicago (the flight had been late, her luggage had been lost, the airport overheated and jammed with Christmas travelers) and found the phone bill sitting on the counter, she was astonished to see that it was more than three hundred dollars, a significant increase over her normal forty-dollar bill. The culprit: a two hundred and twenty-seven dollar phone call to New Mexico.

  She vowed she wouldn’t confront her sister with it as soon as Maggie walked in the door. She’d let Maggie hang her coat up, take her shoes off, and then she’d casually mention that the phone bill had come, and had Maggie made a new friend in Albuquerque? Except that when she went to the bedroom to put her things away she saw that her entire wardrobe was still in a pile on the floor, and that her sheets and pillows had been tossed on top of Mount Fashion. Which meant that Maggie had been slee
ping in her bed. And wearing her shoes, Rose thought. And eating her porridge if she’d had porridge to eat.

  Rose sat on the couch, fuming, until after midnight, when Maggie sauntered in, smelling like a barroom floor, with something wriggling stuck in her coat.

  “You’re here!” Maggie said.

  “Yes, I am,” said Rose. “And so is the phone bill,” she said, as Maggie kicked her shoes into the corner and dropped her purse on the couch.

  “I brought you something!” Maggie said. Her color was high and her pupils were enormous, and she smelled like whiskey. “Two things, actually,” she said, holding two fingers up in the air and opening her coat with a flourish. “Honey Bun Two!” she announced, as a small, crumpet-shaped brown dog dropped to the floor. It had moist brown eyes and a brown leather collar and a face that looked as though somebody had smashed it in with a frying pan.

  Rose stared. “Maggie . . . what is that?”

  “Honey Bun Two,” Maggie repeated, heading to the kitchen. “My gift to you!”

  “I can’t have dogs in here!” Rose shouted. Meanwhile, the little brown dog had taken a fast tour of Rose’s apartment and was now standing in front of her coffee table, looking like a dowager who was displeased with her hotel room.

  “You’ll have to take it back,” said Rose.

  “Fine, fine,” said Maggie, sauntering back into the living room. “She’s just visiting, anyhow.”

  “Visiting from where?”

  “My new job,” said Maggie. “I’m now a dog groomer at the Elegant Paw.” She sneered at her sister. “I’m employed. I’ve been working for two days. Are you happy?”

  “We need to talk about the phone bill,” said Rose, forgetting her plan to be calm and reasonable. “Did you make a phone call to New Mexico?”

  Maggie shook her head. “Don’t think so.”

  Rose shoved the bill toward her sister. Maggie stared at it. “Oh, yeah.”

  “Oh, yeah what?”

  “I got my tarot cards read. But God, it was only like half an hour! I didn’t think it would cost that much.”