“Seriously, Heidi, do you really need 50 pairs of shoes?”
My girlfriend had dropped by for a chat and caught me in my bi-annual shoe-purge. I was sitting on the floor with a huge mound of leather, vinyl, rubber and sequins in front of me. “You don’t wear all of those, do you?” she asked incredulously.
“If the shoe fits,” I quipped, slipping a darling, light teal, bejeweled kitten heel sandal on my foot and waving it in the air. “And there’s not 50 pairs anymore. I’m down to 37.”
“You do realize that you live on a boat?” she laughed.
Yes, I live on a 42 ft sailboat. No, I don’t really have a shoe fetish; I only buy a few pairs a year but I take good care of my shoes and keep them forever. My husband gave up on lecturing me on the fact that high heels really don’t belong on a boat and installed a fabric shoe holder behind my hanging clothes, against the hull. So my collection doesn’t take up needed space and is out of sight. But I know they are there; and that makes me happy.
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She took the pictures from the back of the closet and placed them in a box for the movers. She promised herself that she wasn’t going to look at them, but she couldn’t resist and turned over the small one that used to sit on her makeup table. As her fingers stroked the glass her mind drifted back to that magical day.
It had been a long night filled with people crowding our house and talking all at once. My mother alternated between crying and wailing, giving me a headache. The television blared the local station, flashing scenes from the Rockford Files with the occasional news update interrupting the program. Everyone jumped when the kitchen phone rang and hushed to hear who was calling. The cacophony returned when it was determined to be someone wanting to know if there was any new information. There wasn’t.
It was New Year’s Eve and I was cruising up the Pacific Coast Highway in my Dodge Colt. On a whim, I’d decided that morning to ring in 1987 back home in the Bay Area instead of San Diego, where I had been stationed in the Coast Guard and still lived. My SoCal girlfriends would be whooping it up at the Country Bumpkin, our dive bar of choice, two-stepping and shooting tequila and kissing every cowboy within reach at midnight. A year ago I was matching them shot for shot and kiss for kiss, but not this year.
Mariah set the radar alarm for a 20 mile radius, stretched out in the cockpit and closed her eyes. She had trained herself to take cat naps instead of sleeping multiple hours at a stretch. Solo-sailing required a skipper to be on constant alert.
He was never physically abusive. But he was mean on a regular basis. Over the course of their 10-year marriage it eventually drove Felicia to therapy. It wasn’t couples counseling, of course. Joe didn’t think there was anything wrong with their relationship.
Dr. Zelinsky didn’t just offer good advice to her therapy clients, she walked the walk. When she felt her patience level and usually upbeat attitude dipping she booked a weekend at her favorite spa.
It was hard to ignore the heart-shaped decor in the hotel lobby. When asked if she wanted two keys, Delilah snapped at the receptionist.
Vivo O Sonho 