"What happened to your shoes?"
Cassandra looked at the tiny woman in the mirror. Everyone had finally gone and she was more than ready to go home for the evening. She looked down at her size five stockinged feet, a brilliant gleaming white against the dark polished oak flooring of the restaurant foyer. The stockings were mostly opaque, but she could see her ruby colored polish glistening from the tips of her toes through the elegant material.
"What happened to your shoes?"
She examined her reflection in the mirrored wall. Dark brown hair, almost black, held back by a black bow, professional looking but not too severe. Well tailored black double breasted jacket over a white silk blouse, and a black skirt that looked a little bit too long, because she had no shoes.
"What happened to your shoes?"
She ignored the question that kept repeating in her head and returned her attention to the hemline of the skirt. To complete this evening's ensemble, she had worn opaque white stockings that were the exact match for the blouse, along with the perfect shoes for this suit, Black patent leather, and low cut, with a three-inch heel. Three inches was fairly high for a size five shoe, but Cassandra had been sensitive about her height since arriving in America. The people in this country seemed like giants to her, so at four foot eight and a quarter she opted for high heels in most situations.
"What happened to your shoes?"
Cassandra looked at her stockinged feet again. Her feet were small, with a high arch and long straight toes that were well aligned in the white toecap of the stockings. She loved white stockings. As a girl in Romania, the women in her village only wore black stockings, and those mostly to church. Otherwise, they had worn thick woolen tights that were more like leggings. When she was old enough to get her first real stockings, they were not at all like the silken fabric she wore presently. Still, she had often put on the stockings in her room late at night when her mother had gone to bed, enjoying the secret thrill of the feel and look of the smooth fabric. In America, she found that she could get stockings in every color of the rainbow, and she thought that she probably had every color. She had tried pantyhose for a time, and they were all right, but she found that she just liked stockings, especially white stockings.
"What happened to your shoes?"
She had been asked that question at least a hundred times tonight, and there was just no good answer to it. "Well you see, the man that owns the company I work for came in to the restaurant with a woman with only one boot, and he made me take off my shoes so he could put flowers in them and set them on the dinner table and, then, he left and took my high heels as a souvenir, and, well..."
Mr. Grant and the woman had left around eight and Cassandra had finished the rest of her shift in her stockinged feet. What else was she supposed to do? It had all seemed like good harmless fun at first, although she had to admit that she was shocked when he had demanded she hand over her heels. Mr. Grant and the woman had been really fun though, and she didn't even object when he had put he shoes in the doggie bag the bus boy brought, leaving a half-pound of prime rib on his plate. Besides, he had pressed a wad of bills into her hand and told her to buy some new shoes. On closer examination, she determined that he had given her four hundred and ninety-two dollars, plus eight hundred British Pounds that were worth about a thousand dollars more, if her math was right. Not a bad paycheck for a night, and more than her mother earned in a year. She would send half of the money back home to her mother she decided.
Once Mr. Grant and the woman had gone though, she felt self-conscious about her bare feet, and about her height, and about being a foreigner, even though she was a U.S. citizen now, and her English was flawless. For the rest of the evening, every time the elevator door would open, more finely dressed, wealthy, tall Americans would walk toward her and invariably one of them would ask the identical question:
"What happened to your shoes?"
Never, "Where are your shoes?" or, "Why aren't you wearing shoes?" or any other variation, just the same question over and over again:
"What happened to your shoes?"
At first, it was only slightly irritating, and she was professional enough to be polite, but after the fifth or sixth time, she found herself making sarcastic remarks. She told one older gentleman that they had been eaten by wild dogs, and told another man she had been attacked by a werewolf. One woman had sincerely believed her when she told her she had lost them in a card game, and gave her a wink and a business card for gamblers anonymous on the way out. She told another patron that her shoes had been run over by a bus, and still another that the police had taken them.
The only relief in the tedium of the evening came when four Japanese woman, all dressed in Moschino clothes from head to toe, stepped from the elevator, took one look at Cassandra, and without a word, removed all eight of their own shoes, lining them up neatly, heels against the wall next to the elevator. Cassandra had showed them the best table in the house and sent them a complimentary dessert after their meal.
"Time to go," she said aloud to the empty room. She had been dreading this for hours. In order to get back to the employee lockers, she would have to exit to the main floor and walk across the hotel lobby barefoot. Worse still, she knew she did not have any other shoes in her locker, and she was hoping that she might borrow a pair from someone, or she would be going home barefoot as well. She pressed the button for the elevator and looked down at her stocking clad toes. She had painted her nails this morning, and it occurred to her now that she always painted her toes, although, almost no one ever saw her feet. She lived alone. She seldom wore sandals. The occasional shoe salesman, that was about it. Her hometown, Corbeni, was in the mountains of Vallachia, and no one ever walked around without shoes there. She had grown up wearing shoes even in the house. She decided that her feet were not bad looking, but she didn't really appreciate people staring at them.
She arrived on the main floor and started across the vast lobby at a brisk pace, only to see Andrew Marks, the night manager, walking in her direction. She disliked him anyway and thought she might just give him a swift kick when the predictable question arose.
"What happened to your shoes?" he asked blandly, looking and sounding like PeeWee Herman.
"My heel got stuck in a sidewalk grate," she said coolly, and walked past without slowing. She could feel the stares of strangers she walked across the cold marble surface. She thought a man at the front desk was pointing at her, and laughing about something. She felt self conscious, short, and kind of naked in a way, and by the time she reached the employee lounge she was feeling tired and close to tears.
She entered the break room to found it empty, except for Val, the nighttime switchboard operator. Cassandra had met her once or twice but didn't really know her. She braced her self for the question.
"You O.K. honey?" Val asked in her heavy southern drawl. She was an older lady from Mississippi, and she called everybody honey, whether she knew them or not.
It was a question Cassandra did not have the answer to, and she sat down and told Val the whole story, and finished by telling her that she didn't have any shoes and was about to walk out into the third largest city in America in her stockinged feet.
Val lit a cigarette, walked over to where Cassandra was sitting, and stepped out of her own shoes, a pair of pink medium heel pumps. "Them are probly way to big for them little dogs you got, but ya can borrow 'em til tomorrow. My boy Luther picks me up after my shift, so I don't need no shoes goin' home. 'Sides I always takes 'em off when I get to my desk anyways."
Cassandra smiled and thanked her. Val said it "wernt nothing" leaving Cassandra to wonder if they spoke any other languages in the South.
After stopping by the front desk to deposit most of her cash in a safe box, She headed for home. Starting out across the wide plaza at the base of the building, Cassandra was very glad to have the use of these shoes tonight. It was chilly, and she could see her breath in a cloud illuminated by the floodlights of the building. The shoes were size eight, and she walked out of them a few times before she found a stride that worked well. One got stuck in the revolving door, but appeared no worse for the wear.
It was twelve blocks to Union Station. She could afford a cab, especially after her big tip this evening, but she was not in the habit of wasting money, money that could be sent back home to her family. She pulled her knit scarf up over her head and walked toward the river. As she crossed over the bridge, she felt as if she were being followed. Several times, she turned to look, but saw no one there. Just anxiety, she thought, after losing her shoes and all. Still, she touched the base of her neck with her hand, reassured that the cross she had worn since childhood was still there.
Suddenly, she heard a commotion behind her and wheeled around to see two giant black dogs rushing in her direction at full speed. They were nearly a block away, but there was only one direction for her to run. She turned and ran for the far side of the bridge, the barking of the fierce canines getting closer by the second. She lost the left shoe immediately, and the other shoe made it only several yards more. Cassandra ignored the icy concrete underfoot, sprinting for her life. The giant black dogs had stopped momentarily to sniff at the empty shoes, but had continued their pursuit undeterred, each now with a pink shoe protruding from its giant mouth. She had nearly reached the other side of the span, but the game was up. One of the black behemoths circled in front of her while the other blocked her escape from the rear. Each beast was dragging a strand of sinew from it's neck, and as they moved in for the kill, she felt her legs being savagely beaten by the larger dog, it's tail thrashing from side to side and...
It took a moment to fully understand the significance of the beating on her legs. Both of the giant dogs had dropped the shoes in front of her, and while the larger of the two beat her legs with his furiously wagging tail, the other savagely attacked her toes with it's giant pink tongue. She laughed hysterically just as the owner of the dogs approached, an old man who looked seconds away from a heart attack. He picked up the "strands of sinew" and put his wrist through the loop on the end of each one, pulling the dogs back from her feet, one of which was decidedly damp now.
"I'm so sorry," the man said, gasping for breath. "I stopped to get a newspaper from the box and I hooked the leashed on the box while I looked for some change. The damn dogs pulled the box over and took off after you. When they were puppies, the missus gave them shoes that look just like yours to teethe on."
"I can't imagine them ever being puppies," Cassandra said, kneeling to hug both dogs around their giant heads and necks. She had always loved dogs but had never had one, since she was not home enough. "What kind are they?" she asked.
"Newfoundlands," he replied. "They're like Saint Bernards, only black."
After a few minutes conversation, she was felt sure that the man would not collapse, and the dogs would like to get to the park. The dogs looked longingly as she replaced her feet in the shoes, and it seemed like the man did to. With a wave over her shoulder, she continued in the direction of the Station.
How very strange, she thought, that she had told that old man in the restaurant that her shoes had been taken by wild dogs, and then they nearly had been. She shook the thought from her head. That's the superstitious thinking of childhood, of the old country, she told herself. You are a grown woman now, and an American, she reminded herself.
She had almost convinced herself when she saw the werewolf. He was sitting on the sidewalk just ahead, wearing tattered raincoat, and drinking something out of a paper bag. He appeared to be singing something also, a further indication that he was probably not a werewolf, although his hairstyle was similar.
Get a hold of yourself, Cassie, she said out loud, but not loud enough for the werewol..., the homeless person to hear. The homeless were a fact of life in most big cities, and they had never bothered her. She usually gave them spare change if she had it, and if they asked. Nothing to fear at all, she told herself, continuing on. But what about the dogs? She had told a lie about dogs eating her shoes, and then it had nearly happened. Hadn't she told another man a werewolf ate her shoes? Her pulse pounded in her ears as she passed the homeless man without incident, and she let out a breath of relief that he had made no move towards her, but drew her breath in sharply when she felt her toes hit the icy pavement again.
The homeless man looked up at her, and then returned his lethargic gaze to the pink high-heeled pump, that stood empty halfway between them, it's heel wedged into the access grate in the sidewalk.
Cassandra felt her heart skip a beat as panic gripped her. The homeless man rolled to one side and struggled to get to his feet, Cassandra stepped from her other shoe and fled into the night. As her stockinged feet raced down the empty city sidewalk until she could go no further, but her mind raced on, attempting to recall all the strange stories she had told to many strangers tonight, searching for any clue as to what more this strange evening may still have in store for her.
Snowman