Flat Shoes Quotes

My shoes I got to pick. I chose worn-out red flats. I figured I should make it clear from the start that I wasn’t princess material.

I never wear flats. My shoes are so high that sometimes when I step out of them, people look around in confusion and ask, "Where'd she go?" and I have to say, "I'm down here.

A House of My Own Not a flat. Not an apartment in back. Not a man's house. Not a daddy's. A house all my own. With my porch and my pillow, my pretty purple petunias. My books and my stories. My two shoes waiting beside the bed. Nobody to shake a stick at. Nobody's garbage to pick up after. Only a house quiet as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem.

Newsflash she already has body image issues.  It's an intrinsic part of being a woman. Every woman in the world has some part of herself that she absolutely hates.  Her hands are too small, her feet are too big, her hair is too straight, too curly, her ears stick out, her bums too flat, her nose is too big and, you know, nothing you can say will change how we feel.  What men don't understand is, the right clothes, the right shoes, the right makeup it just... It, it hides the flaws we think we have.  They make us look beautiful to ourselves.  That's what makes us look beautiful to others. Used to be all she needed to feel beautiful was a pink tutu and a plastic tiara. And we spend our whole lives trying to feel that way again.

Thank you for the shoes, Thomas.” I looked at the stack of boxes, teetering precariously close to the edge of the settee now. He caught my stare and nudged them back to safety. “All of them. It was very sweet. And highly unnecessary.” “Your happiness is always necessary to me.” He tilted my chin up and kissed the tip of my nose. “We’ll find new ways of navigating the world together, Wadsworth. If you can no longer wear heels, we’ll design flats you adore. If you ever find those no longer work, I’ll have a wheeled chair made and bejeweled to your liking. Anything at all in the universe you need, we will make it so. And if you’d prefer to do it on your own, I will always step aside. I also promise to keep my opinion mostly to myself.” “Mostly?” He considered that. “Unless it’s vastly inappropriate. Then I’ll share it with gusto.

I slip off my flats and walk down the front porch steps, while Mother calls out for me to put my shoes back on, threatening ringworm, mosquito, encephalitis. The inevitability of death by no shoes. Death by no husband.

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God! How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this! But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two: So excellent a king; that was, to this, Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother That he might not beteem the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth! Must I remember? why, she would hang on him, As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on: and yet, within a month-- Let me not think on't--Frailty, thy name is woman!-- A little month, or ere those shoes were old With which she follow'd my poor father's body, Like Niobe, all tears:--why she, even she-- O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason, Would have mourn'd longer--married with my uncle, My father's brother, but no more like my father Than I to Hercules: within a month: Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, She married. O, most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! It is not nor it cannot come to good: But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue.

I told her that I flat-out didn’t want to work for someone else. I wanted to build something that was my own, something I could point to and say: I made that. It was the only way I saw to make life meaningful.

Death is a personal matter, arousing sorrow, despair, fervor, or dry-hearted philosophy. Funerals, on the other hand, are social functions. Imagine going to a funeral without first polishing the automobile. Imagine standing at a graveside not dressed in your best dark suit and your best black shoes, polished delightfully. Imagine sending flowers to a funeral with no attached card to prove you had done the correct thing. In no social institution is the codified ritual of behavior more rigid than in funerals. Imagine the indignation if the minister altered his sermon or experimented with facial expression. Consider the shock if, at the funeral parlors, any chairs were used but those little folding yellow torture chairs with the hard seats. No, dying, a man may be loved, hated, mourned, missed; but once dead he becomes the chief ornament of a complicated and formal social celebration.

I focused on him. Everything still seemed blurry, but he was close enough that I could see him. He was completely soaked. His jeans, shoes, jacket, and shirt. He was just as wet as I was. His normally messy blond hair was darker and flat to his head from the weight of the water. Dark shadows haunted his eyes and his lips were pale from the cold. "You jumped in after me," I whispered. "I'd jump into the pits of hell for you, Rim.

If the yellow patent leather flats fit...

Above his head at street level, he saw an angled aileron of a scarlet Porsche, its jaunty fin more or less at the upper edge of his window frame. A pair of very soft, clean glistening black shoes appeared, followed by impeccably creased matt charcoal pinstriped light woollen legs, followed by the beautifully cut lower hem of a jacket, its black vent revealing a scarlet silk lining, its open front revealing a flat muscular stomach under a finely-striped red and white shirt. Val’s legs followed, in powder-blue stockings and saxe-blue shoes, under the limp hem of a crêpey mustard-coloured dress, printed with blue moony flowers. The four feet advanced and retreated, retreated and advanced, the male feet insisting towards the basement stairs, the female feet resisting, parrying. Roland opened the door and went into the area, fired mostly by what always got him, pure curiosity as to what the top half looked like.

When we return from the north,” he promises, hand to his heart in an exaggerated way that lets me know he considers this a silly vow rather than a solemn one, “they will wake to find their shoes filled with fine, fat rubies. They can use them to buy new leggings and another roast chicken.” “How will they sell rubies?” I ask him. “Why not leave them something more practical?” He rolls his eyes. “As a prince of Faerie, I flatly refuse to leave cash. It’s inelegant.” Tiernan shakes his head at both of us, then pokes at the foodstuffs, selecting a handful of nuts. “Gift cards are worse,” Oak says when I do not respond. “I would bring shame on the entire Greenbriar line if I left a gift card.” At that, I can’t help smiling a little, despite my heavy heart. “You’re ridiculous.

The last e-mail I got about the get-together suggested several shoe changes in one day. I only have one pair of nice shoes and they’re flats. MY SISTER: Well, you have arthritis, so you have a good excuse. ME: Yes, but I feel like I need to put that on my shirt: “Please don’t judge my flats. I have a disability.

Panicked, she dropped the suitcase and started edging away. In her haste she caught the backs of her knees on the arm of the sofa, lost her balance and landed flat on her back on the cushions. His eyes gleaming with amusement, Nick looked at the delectable beauty sprawled invitingly across the sofa. "I'm flattered,honey, but I'd like something to eat first.What are you serving-besides baked shoes?

A Mexican newspaper recently ran a story about how the Converse shoe company was making tennis shoes in China using Mexican glue. “The whole article was about why are we giving them our glue,” said Zedillo, “when the right attitude would be, How much more glue can we sell them? We still need to break some mental barriers.

Over a quarter of a century ago she and Vernon had made a household for almost a year, in a tiny rooftop flat on the rue de Seine. There were always damp towels on the floor then, and cataracts of her underwear tumbling from drawers she never closed, a big ironing board that was never folded away, and in the one overfilled wardrobe dresses , crushed and shouldering sideways like commuters on the metro. Magazines, makeup, bank statements, bead necklaces, flowers, knickers, ashtrays, invitations, tampons, LPs, airplane tickets, high heeled shoes- not a single surface was left uncovered by something of Molly's, so that when Vernon was meant to be working at home, he took to writing in a cafe along the street. And yet each morning she arose fresh from the shell of this girly squalor, like a Botticelli Venus, to present herself, not naked, of course, but sleekly groomed, at the offices of Paris Vogue.

The sand was smooth. The damp morning fog had hardened its top layer and the heat of the day had set it so that with every footstep the surface cracked, the crunch almost audible. The heels and balls of their shoes made a path of shallow divots, but it was far easier to walk on than the usual loose and gritty beach. In minutes, the wind worked to sweep their footprints clean and offer a flat, clear expanse all the way to the ocean where the sand became wet and sparkled invitingly with seawater.

All acts of sex were forms of degradation. ... What do you do with the Serious Young Woman (short hair, flat shoes, body slightly hunched, head drifting back and forth between the books she's read)? You slap her, fuck her up the ass and treat her like a boy. The Serious Young Woman looked everywhere for sex but when she got it it became an exercise in disintegration. What was the motivation of these men? Was it hatred she evoked? Was it some kind of challenge, trying to make the Serious Young Woman femme?

Hey,” Fitz said, leaning closer. “You trust me, don’t you?” Sophie’s traitorous heart still fluttered, despite her current annoyance. She did trust Fitz. Probably more than anyone. But having him keep secrets from her was seriously annoying. She was tempted to use her telepathy to steal the information straight from his head. But she’d broken that rule enough times to know the consequences definitely weren’t worth it. “What is with these clothes?” Biana interrupted, appearing out of thin air next to Keefe. Biana was a Vanisher, like her mother, though she was still getting used to the ability. Only one of her legs reappeared, and she had to hop up and down to get the other to show up. She wore a sweatshirt three sizes too big and faded, baggy jeans. “At least I get to wear my shoes,” she said, hitching up her pants to reveal purple flats with diamond-studded toes. “But why do we only have boy stuff?” “Because I’m a boy,” Fitz reminded her. “Besides, this isn’t a fashion contest.” “And if it was, I’d totally win. Right, Foster?” Keefe asked. Sophie actually would’ve given the prize to Fitz—his blue scarf worked perfectly with his dark hair and teal eyes. And his fitted gray coat made him look taller, with broader shoulders and— “Oh please.” Keefe shoved his way between them. “Fitz’s human clothes are a huge snoozefest. Check out what Dex and I found in Alvar’s closet!” They both unzipped their hoodies, revealing T-shirts with logos underneath. “I have no idea what this means, but it’s crazy awesome, right?” Keefe asked, pointing to the black and yellow oval on his shirt. “It’s from Batman,” Sophie said—then regretted the words. Of course Keefe demanded she explain the awesomeness of the Dark Knight. “I’m wearing this shirt forever, guys,” he decided. “Also, I want a Batmobile! Dex, can you make that happen?” Sophie wouldn’t have been surprised if Dex actually could build one. As a Technopath, he worked miracles with technology. He’d made all kinds of cool gadgets for Sophie, including the lopsided ring she wore—a special panic switch that had saved her life during her fight with one of her kidnappers. “What’s my shirt from?” Dex asked, pointing to the logo with interlocking yellow W’s. Sophie didn’t have the heart to tell him it was the symbol for Wonder Woman.

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read to the end just to find out who killed the cook. Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark, in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication. Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot, the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones that crimped your toes, don’t regret those. Not the nights you called god names and cursed your mother, sunk like a dog in the livingroom couch,b chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness. You were meant to inhale those smoky nights over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches. You’ve walked those streets a thousand times and still you end up here. Regret none of it, not one of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing, when the lights from the carnival rides were the only stars you believed in, loving them for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved. You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake, ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied of expectation. Relax. Don’t bother remembering any of it. Let’s stop here, under the lit sign on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

Then she will marry the man whom she is currently trying to find both online and in real life, the man with the smile lines and the dog and/or cat, the man with an interesting surname that she can double-barrel with Jones, the man who earns the same as or more than her, the man who likes hugs more than sex and has nice shoes and beautiful skin and no tattoos and a lovely mum and attractive feet. The man who is at least five feet ten, but preferably five feet eleven or over. The man who has no baggage and a good car and a suggestion of abdominal definition although a flat stomach would suffice. This man has yet to materialize and Libby is aware that she is possibly a little over-proscriptive.

I took off one of the high-heeled sandals, the white sandals my mother prized, and threw it into the pool. That's when I noticed him. He was on the other side of the pool, dressed in a white shirt and khaki pants. He had lowered the chair until it was flat, and he was lying back on it, face to the night sky, smoking a cigarette. He raised himself on his elbows and looked at the pool like he owned it. "Well?" he said. I didn't say anything... "Aren't you going to let the other shoe drop?" I took off the other one and threw it in. "My kind of women," he said.

No worries, girl.” He said and winked. “I will just put the rest of this in your closet, except those pants, we will never be able to make those work.” He shuddered and flung my closet door open. “Ahhh!” he let out a dramatic scream. “What?” I asked and tried to rush over in a panic. I tripped and almost fell flat on my face, but managed to make it to the doorway. When I looked in the closet I was expecting to see a dead body, or maybe a giant spider waiting to devour us, instead I just saw one of my hoodies opposite two pairs of my shoes in the closet. He turned to me with his hand over his heart. “You’ve been robbed!” I just laughed. “No, I just have everything else in the drawers.” He went through them dramatically. “Ahhh!” he let out another dismayed, high pitched scream. “Honey, no one told me that you were like….a… a refugee.

Being gay. This has surprisingly little to do with what you do with your private parts (or, more accurately, what you’d like to do with your private parts). Being gay is more a state of mind, or sometimes, less often, a state of body. You could almost include it as a sub-crime in 2) and 3), but really, it goes beyond both of these categories. And because of the number of times it crops up as a specific accusation, it definitely deserves its own special category. But the best way to explain what ‘being gay’ means is to tell you some of the things that are gay. If you’re a boy, any display of sensitivity is gay. Compassion is gay. Crying is supergay. Reading is usually gay. Certain songs and types of music are gay. ‘Enola Gay’ would certainly be thought gay. Love songs are gay. Love itself is incredibly gay, as are any other heartfelt emotions. Singing is gay, but chanting is not gay. Wanking contests are not gay. Neither is all-male cuddling during specially designated periods in football matches, or communal bathing thereafter. (I didn’t invent the rules of gay–I’m just telling you what they are.) Girls can be gay too, but it’s much harder for them. And girls don’t tend to call each other gay as much as boys do. When a girl is gay, she’s called a dyke. Reasons for being a dyke include having thick limbs, bad hair or flat shoes.

No. I won’t. I won’t bend my knee, or kiss your charming shoes either. I may possibly fall flat on my face, but that will be quite inadvertent.

Mum was right, he didn't need these relics of mundanity, but I understood his inclination to hold on to them. I too had shoe boxes of cinema tickets from first dates with Joe and utility bills from flats I no longer lived in. I'd never known why they were important, but they were - they felt like proof of life lived, in case a time came when it was needed, like a driving license or a passport.

233 - Answer to 82 - There is a lad in Missouri with afoot that's flat, with seeds in his pocket and a brick in his hat, with an eye that is blue and a No. 10 shoe - he's the "Bull of the Woods" and the boy for you.

Twenty pairs of shoes but they never know where the shoehorn is; houses filled with microwave ovens and flat-screen televisions, yet they couldn’t tell you which anchor bolt to use for a concrete wall if you threatened them with a box cutter.

Where are we?” she asked when I pulled into a parking lot. “The park.” “Isn’t it dangerous at night?” “Not here. Come on.” I pulled her out of her seat and grabbed a blanket from the trunk before trekking through the soft grass. “You always keep a blanket in your car?” “Yeah, for emergencies. Never know when you might need it. Food, water, first-aid kit, too.” “Oh!” she grunted and caught my arm as one of her heels pierced the soft dirt and sank. “You should take those off.” “And walk around barefoot? Hello? Ever heard of hookworms and tetanus?” “Ever heard of snapping your ankles as you fall flat on your face in the dark?” I asked as I squatted in front of her and slipped her foot out of the high heels. “What are you doing?” she gasped, tumbling forward and grabbing onto my shoulders for support. “Removing your obstacles.” She landed a bare foot on the grass as I undid the other shoe. “So now I get tetanus?” I looked up at her, my hands lightly stroking her ankles up to her calves. “You worry too much.” “It’s a real risk. Ask Preeti.” I stood slowly, moving up her body, and hovered above her. “How…how far are we walking?” she asked. “To the river.” “In the dark?” I nodded and handed her the shoes. “Took these off and you won’t even carry them?” “I’ll carry them,” I replied, swooped down, and threw her over the blanket on my shoulder. Liya yelped. “Put me down!” “So you can get tetanus?” I asked and walked toward the river. She laughed. “I hate you!” “You love it.” She slapped my butt and then poked her pointy elbows into my shoulder as she arched her back. “Enjoying the view of my backside from over there?” I slid my hand up the back of her thighs and tugged her dress down to keep her covered. “This isn’t so bad,” she said. “Oh, yeah?” “Yeah.” She slapped my butt again. “Giddyap!” “All right. You asked for it.” Her next words were swallowed up in a scream as I took off at a full sprint. She gripped my shirt, clutching for my waist, as the breeze broke around us. I ran the short distance to the riverside in no time, slowing only when the moonlit gleam on the water’s surface appeared. I placed Liya on the grass, but she swayed away. I grabbed her by the waist to steady her and chuckled. “Are you okay?” “You try doing that upside down.

It doesn't talk back,' he said ruefully as I approached, without looking round. I glanced up at the griffin. 'No,' I said. Then something, an impulse of gaiety perhaps, made me add, 'Perhaps you need to stroke it between the ears. Timothy likes that.' Timothy is my cat. Although the Doctor was evidently an eccentric man - who else talks to a statue - I was nonetheless taken aback when he jumped up into the air like a circus performer and, holding on to the iron standard of a lamp, swung himself on to the narrow sill above the carving. There he teetered for a moment, arms extended flat against the wall, his shoes dislodging small pieces of debris which clattered on to the yard. He somehow found a secure foothold, then reached down and petted the stone animal between the ears, or what would have been the ears if it hadn't been a relief carving. 'Hello, Timothy. Would you care for a stick of liquorice?' There was a brief silence, and I was struck by the puzzled, almost grief-stricken expression that crossed the Doctor's face when the carving made no reply. It could have been drollery, but it seemed genuine. Then he looked down at me, and grinned, as if it had been a joke. 'He still doesn't talk! Did you say he was called Timothy?' I decided it was time to inject some sanity into the conversation. 'Timothy.' I said, precisely and quietly, ' is the name of my cat.

...it turned out to be only our former chauffeur, Tsiganov, who had thought nothing of riding all the way from St. Petersburg, on buffers and freight cars, through the immense, frosty and savage expanse of revolutionary Russia, for the mere purpose of bringing us a very welcome sum of money sent us by good friends of ours. After a month's stay, Tsiganov declared the Crimean scenary bored him and departed---to go all the way back north, with a big bag over his shoulder, containing various articles which we would have gladly given him had we thought he coveted them (such as a tourser press, tennis shoes, a nigthshirt, an alarm clock, a flat iron, several other ridiculous things I have forgotten) and the absence of which only gradually came to light if not pointed out, with vindictive zeal, by an anemic servant girl whose pale charms he had also rifled.

Funnel The family story tells, and it was told true, of my great-grandfather who begat eight genius children and bought twelve almost-new grand pianos. He left a considerable estate when he died. The children honored their separate arts; two became moderately famous, three married and fattened their delicate share of wealth and brilliance. The sixth one was a concert pianist. She had a notable career and wore cropped hair and walked like a man, or so I heard when prying a childhood car into the hushed talk of the straight Maine clan. One died a pinafore child, she stays her five years forever. And here is one that wrote- I sort his odd books and wonder his once alive words and scratch out my short marginal notes and finger my accounts. back from that great-grandfather I have come to tidy a country graveyard for his sake, to chat with the custodian under a yearly sun and touch a ghost sound where it lies awake. I like best to think of that Bunyan man slapping his thighs and trading the yankee sale for one dozen grand pianos. it fit his plan of culture to do it big. On this same scale he built seven arking houses and they still stand. One, five stories up, straight up like a square box, still dominates its coastal edge of land. It is rented cheap in the summer musted air to sneaker-footed families who pad through its rooms and sometimes finger the yellow keys of an old piano that wheezes bells of mildew. Like a shoe factory amid the spruce trees it squats; flat roof and rows of windows spying through the mist. Where those eight children danced their starfished summers, the thirty-six pines sighing, that bearded man walked giant steps and chanced his gifts in numbers. Back from that great-grandfather I have come to puzzle a bending gravestone for his sake, to question this diminishing and feed a minimum of children their careful slice of suburban cake.

Look at me, Regina.” She glanced up at him, appearing tiny. He stood almost a foot taller than her in his boots while she wore flats, which looked like ballet shoes. His palms heated and his heartbeat raced. Her scent that had teased him from afar now tormented him up close. God, he wanted to wrap himself in that scent, bury himself deep inside her.

Full of screws and nails and spanner sets and that sort of thing. People don’t have useful things any more. People just have shit. Twenty pairs of shoes but they never know where the shoe-horn is; houses filled with microwave ovens and flat-screen televisions, yet they couldn’t tell you which plug to use for a concrete wall if you threatened them with a box-cutter.

Sorry, it’s such a mess.” He shoves his hands into his pockets. “I cleared off the bed, though, and the sheets are clean.” My eyebrows practically hit my hairline. “To sit on.” His accusation is made jokingly, but his skin turns melon pink. “Nice shoes, by the way.” I’m wearing flats. “Nice deflection, by the way.” “Nice to see you, by the way.” “Nice save, by the way.

Back at the office, Lou’s not in yet. He rarely shows up before eleven. As if each morning, fresh mediocrity slides out of the ocean, slimes its way over mossy rocks and sand, then sprouts skittering appendages that stretch and morph and twist into limbs as it forges on inland until finally, fully formed, Lou! Strolls into the lobby on two flat feet in shined shoes. Shining, tapping, waiting for the lift to our floor.

I can’t bear to wear flats, and it’s not a height thing. The rounded toe of the ballet slipper-style shoes do not appeal to me. Let’s face it, none of us over thirty, forty, fifty and on, are ballerinas. No, girls, Pilates is not ballet. I’ve been told I am built like a ballerina, but I’ve also been told I dance like a stripper. Did you ever ask someone how they thought you dance? You may be in shock, or maybe they will be.

Four hours later Liv wakes in a box room with an Arsenal duet cover and a head that thumps so hard she has to reach up a hand to check she isn't being assaulted. She blinks, stares blearily at the little Japanese cartoon creatures on the wall opposite and lets her mind slowly bring together the pieces of information from the previous night. Stolen bag...she closes her eyes. Oh, no. Strange bed...she has no keys. Oh, God she has no keys. And no money. She attempts to move, and pain slices through her head so that she almost yelps. And then she remembers the man. Pete? Paul? She sees herself walking through deserted streets in the early hours. And then she sees herself lurching forward to kiss him, his own polite retreat. "You are delicious..." "Oh, no," she says softly, then puts her hands over her eyes. "Oh, I didn't..." She sits up and moves to the side of the bed, noticing a small yellow plastic car near his right foot. Then, when she hears the sound of a door opening, the shower starting up next door, Liv grabs her shoes and her jacket and lets herself out of the flat into the cacophonous daylight.

Madge, her eldest sister, looked about forty, rather than thirty two. Her black dress drained her of colour; her shoulders had adopted their perpetual hunched position, which she had adopted to compensate for her height. As a child Madge had towered over her peers, stopping only when she reached five foot eleven. Lesley knew, without seeing them, that she would be wearing the usual flat shoes, the only footwear she would allow anywhere near her size eight feet. Sitting beside Madge, Pamela, her youngest sister, blonde hair flowing over her shoulders, was thankfully dressed fairly decorously in a black coat over a black pinstripe tunic dress with a high neckline. Remembering Pamela’s usual mode of dress, Lesley could only deduce that their mother must have prevailed upon her this time, in deference to the occasion. To her left Alan, at twenty four, the baby of the family, was talking in low tones to his girlfriend Erica, his fair hair and her dark locks forming a striking contrast. From Erica’s expression however, she guessed that Alan was currently on the receiving end of her infamous (and often malicious) acerbic wit.

As we were chatting in the back room, her gaze suddenly fell on the ballet flats I was wearing. "Oh, those shoes are from that shop in Omotesando, aren't they? I like that place too. I have some boots from there." In the back room she speaks in a languid drawl, the end of her words slightly drawn out. I bought these flats after checking the brand name of the shoes she wears for work while she was in the toilet. "Oh really? Wait, do you mean those dark blue ones you wore to the shop before? Those were cute!" I answered, copying Sugawara's speech pattern but using a slightly more adult tone.

Mind what's left to you." "You saying take it? Don't fight?" Alice put down her iron, hard. "Fight what, who? Some mishandled child who saw her parents burn up? Who knew better than you or me or anybody just how small and quick this little bitty life is? Or maybe you want to stomp somebody with three kids and one pair of shoes. Somebody in a raggedy dress, the hem dragging in the mud. Somebody wanting arms just like you do and you want to go over there and hold her but her dress is muddy at the hem and the people standing around wouldn't understand how could anybody's eyes go so flat, how could they? Nobody's asking you to take it. I'm sayin make it, make it!

All my bones, they are gone, gone, gone Take my bones, I don’t need none Cold, cold cupboard, lord, nothing to chew on Suck all day on a cherry stone Dig a little hole not three inches round Spit your pit in a hole in the ground Weep upon the spot for the starving of me ‘Til up grows a fine young cherry tree When the bough breaks what’ll you make for me A little willow cabin to rest on your knee What’ll I do with a trinket such as this? Think of your woman who’s gone to the west But I’m starving and freezing in my measly old bed Then I’ll crawl across the salt flats to stroke your sweet head Come across the desert with no shoes on I love you truly or I love no one

That’s one of the harsh realities I learned early on about the modeling industry: ultimately, your body doesn’t really belong to you. It belongs to the client. Since they’re paying, they figure they can do pretty much whatever they want to you. They can curl your hair, straighten it, dye it, cut it –even shave it. I’ve seen hair extensions being pulled out by the roots and smoke billowing out of flat irons while the hair inside gets singed and fried. I’ve watched models squeeze their feet into shoes so small their feet literally bled, and I’ve seen false eyelashes torn off so quickly that the natural lashes came off with them. Modeling may look glamorous on the outside, but believe me, beauty can be an ugly business.

...wandered into a shoe store. A lone customer stood at the display rack, turning the shoes over, one after another, to look at their soles. Jessica recalled the proverb "Hell is a stylish shoe." A salesman greeted her at the door, a young man with a shaved head and a black turtleneck. Too intimate from the start, he held each selection so close to her face that she had to lean back to get a better look. She felt his breath as he pressed some studded sparkly sneakers on her. Jessica found it fascinating that he thought she would want these, or the next pair he held up--stiletto-heeled jobs that seemed lewd, as did his smirk. The salesman didn't conceal his disappointment when she bought a pair of marked-down Vera Wang flats. She bought them because they seemed so pedestrian. Men preferred women teetering so she chose to walk like a Neanderthal.

Temperance Dews stood with quiet confidence, a respectable women who lived in the sewer that was St. Giles. Her eyes had widened at the sight of Lazarus, but she made no move to flee. Indeed, finding a strange man in her pathetic sitting room seemed not to frighten her at all. Interesting. “I am Lazarus Huntington, Lord Caire,” he said. “I know. What are you doing here?” He tilted his head, studying her. She knew him, yet did not recoil in horror? Yes, she’d do quite well. “I’ve come to make a proposition to you, Mrs. Dews.” Still no sign of fear, though she eyed the doorway. “You’ve chosen the wrong woman, my lord. The night is late. Please leave my house.” No fear and no deference to his rank. An interesting woman indeed. “My proposition is not, er, illicit in nature,” he drawled. “In fact, it’s quite respectable. Or nearly so.” She sighed, looked down at her tray, and then back up at him. “Would you like a cup of tea?” He almost smiled. Tea? When had he last been offered something so very prosaic by a woman? He couldn’t remember. But he replied gravely enough. “Thank you, no.” She nodded. “Then if you don’t mind?” He waved a hand to indicate permission. She set the tea tray on the wretched little table and sat on the padded footstool to pour herself a cup. He watched her. She was a monochromatic study. Her dress, bodice, hose, and shoes were all flat black. A fichu tucked in at her severe neckline, an apron, and cap—no lace or ruffles—were all white. No color marred her aspect, making the lush red of her full lips all the more startling. She wore the clothes of a nun, yet had the mouth of a sybarite. The contrast was fascinating—and arousing. “You’re a Puritan?” he asked. Her beautiful mouth compressed. “No.

Things can get out of hand quickly, especially with Sid around. I also decide never to wear heels again when I'm out with him. I go to Holt's in Camden Town and buy a pair of black Dr Martens. (You can get them in black, brown or maroon, the skinhead boys at school used to buy the brown ones and polish them with Kiwi Oxblood shoe polish — this gives them a deep reddish brown colour, much subtler than the flat red of the originals. They also keep them pristinely clean and polished at all times.) I wear my new boots with everything — dresses, tutus — it’s a great feeling to be able to run again. No other girl wears DMs with dresses, so I get a lot of funny looks. (Skinhead girls only wear DMs with Sta-Prest trousers. With their boring grey skirts, they west plain white or holey ecru tights and black patent brogues.) Bit I wear them all the time to clubs and pubs, it eventually catches on with other girls and I don’t look so odd.

Allison got to the lobby first, dressed in jeans, a red sweater, and a cropped black jacket. Her feet had ordered her directly into flats the moment she’d gotten into her room, so she’d put on a pair of short black boots. She didn’t see Rick or Kim and flopped down on an overstuffed, garishly-clad club chair to wait. Despite the time of night, the place was packed, and she amused herself by watching people and guessing their stories. Caught up in trying to determine if a woman near the door dressed in a skin-tight black dress and bright red, four-inch, platform shoes was a high-class call girl, or a model, she almost vaulted out of her seat when a voice said, “Anyone sitting here?” She looked up at a man of about forty, dressed in olive green silk pants and a cream colored sweater. He was so attractive Allison couldn’t answer with anything other than a shake of her head. The fact that his eyes were the same color as hers only added to her disquiet. “Great.” He flashed a set of perfect teeth at her briefly, and dropped into the matching chair across from her. “I know you,” he added, “saw you on the ATCE show floor today. You work for Hoyt right? In marketing?” Allison nodded. The man put out his hand, “Craig Simmons.

I missed my workout this morning, so I vault up the stairs to my flat. Breakfast has taken longer than intended, and I'm expecting Oliver at any minute. Part of me also hopes that Alessia will still be there. As I approach my front door, I hear music coming from the flat. Music? What's going on? I slide my key into the lock and cautiously open the door. It's Bach, one of his preludes in G Major. Perhaps Alessia is playing music through my computer. But how can she? She doesn't know the password. Does she? Maybe she's playing her phone through the sound system, though from the look of her tatty anorak she doesn't strike me as someone who has a smartphone. I've never seen her with one. The music rings through my flat, lighting up its darkest corners. Who knew that my daily likes classical? This is a tiny piece of the Alessia Demachi puzzle. Quickly I close the door, but as I stand in the hallway, it becomes apparent that the music is not coming from the sound system. It's from my piano. Bach. Fluid and light, played with a deftness and understanding I've only heard from concert-standard performers. Alessia? I've never managed to make my piano sing like this. Taking off my shoes, I creep down the hallway and peer around the door into the drawing room. She is seated at the piano in her housecoat and scarf, swaying a little, completely lost in the music, her eyes closed in concentration as her hands move with graceful dexterity across the keys. The music flows through her, echoing off the walls and ceiling in a flawless performance worthy of any concert pianist. I watch her in awe as she plays, her head bowed. She is brilliant. In every way. And I'm completely spellbound. She finishes the prelude, and I step back into the hall, flattening myself against the wall in case she looks up, not daring to breath. However, without missing a beat she goes straight into the fugue. I lean against the wall and close my eyes, marveling at her artistry and the feeling that she puts into each phrase. I'm carried away by the music, and as I listen, I realize that she wasn't reading the music. She's playing from memory. Good God. She's a fucking virtuoso. And I remember her intense focus when she examined my score while she was dusting the piano. Clearly she was reading the music. Shit. She plays at this standard and she was reading my composition? The fugue ends, and seamlessly she launches into another piece. Again Bach, Prelude in C-sharp Major, I think.

All you ever have is lard on bread,” said Valentine. Patrice shut her mouth. Nobody said anything. Valentine was trying to say that was poor people food. But everybody ate lard on bread with salt and pepper. “That sounds good. Anybody have a piece?” said Doris. “Break me off some.” “Here,” said Curly Jay, who got her name for her hair when she was little. The name stuck even though her hair was now stick-straight. Everybody looked at Doris as she tried the lard on bread. “Not half bad,” she pronounced. Patrice looked pityingly at Valentine. Or was it Pixie who did that? Anyway, lunchtime was over and now her stomach wouldn’t growl all afternoon. She said thank you, loudly, to the whole table, and went into the bathroom. There were two stalls. Valentine was the only other woman in the bathroom. Patrice recognized her brown shoes with the scuffs painted over. They were both on their times. “Oh no,” said Valentine through the partition. “Oh, it’s bad.” Patrice opened her purse, struggled with her thoughts, then handed one of her folded rags beneath the wooden divider. It was clean, white, bleached. Valentine took it out of her hand. “Thanks.” “Thanks who?” A pause. “Thank you damn well much. Patrice.” Then a laugh. “You saved my ass.” “Saved your flat ass.” Another laugh. “Your ass is flatter.

Marcelina loved that miniscule, precise moment when the needle entered her face. It was silver; it was pure. It was the violence that healed, the violation that brought perfection. There was no pain, never any pain, only a sense of the most delicate of penetrations, like a mosquito exquisitely sipping blood, a precision piece of human technology slipping between the gross tissues and cells of her flesh. She could see the needle out of the corner of her eye; in the foreshortened reality of the ultra-close-up it was like the stem of a steel flower. The latex-gloved hand that held the syringe was as vast as the creating hand of God: Marcelina had watched it swim across her field of vision, seeking its spot, so close, so thrillingly, dangerously close to her naked eyeball. And then the gentle stab. Always she closed her eyes as the fingers applied pressure to the plunger. She wanted to feel the poison entering her flesh, imagine it whipping the bloated, slack, lazy cells into panic, the washes of immune response chemicals as they realized they were under toxic attack; the blessed inflammation, the swelling of the wrinkled, lined skin into smoothness, tightness, beauty, youth. Marcelina Hoffman was well on her way to becoming a Botox junkie. Such a simple treat; the beauty salon was on the same block as Canal Quatro. Marcelina had pioneered the lunch-hour face lift to such an extent that Lisandra had appropriated it as the premise for an entire series. Whore. But the joy began in the lobby with Luesa the receptionist in her high-collared white dress saying “Good afternoon, Senhora Hoffman,” and the smell of the beautiful chemicals and the scented candles, the lightness and smell of the beautiful chemicals and the scented candles, the lightness and brightness of the frosted glass panels and the bare wood floor and the cream-on-white cotton wall hangings, the New Age music that she scorned anywhere else (Tropicalismo hippy-shit) but here told her, “you’re wonderful, you’re special, you’re robed in light, the universe loves you, all you have to do is reach out your hand and take anything you desire.” Eyes closed, lying flat on the reclining chair, she felt her work-weary crow’s-feet smoothed away, the young, energizing tautness of her skin. Two years before she had been to New York on the Real Sex in the City production and had been struck by how the ianqui women styled themselves out of personal empowerment and not, as a carioca would have done, because it was her duty before a scrutinizing, judgmental city. An alien creed: thousand-dollar shoes but no pedicure. But she had brought back one mantra among her shopping bags, an enlightenment she had stolen from a Jennifer Aniston cosmetics ad. She whispered it to herself now, in the warm, jasmine-and vetiver-scented sanctuary as the botulin toxins diffused through her skin. Because I’m worth it.

When it begins it is like a light in a tunnel, a rush of steel and steam across a torn up life. It is a low rumble, an earthquake in the back of the mind. My spine is a track with cold black steel racing on it, a trail of steam and dust following behind, ghost like. It feels like my whole life is holding its breath. By the time she leaves the room I am surprised that she can’t see the train. It has jumped the track of my spine and landed in my mothers’ living room. A cold dark thing, black steel and redwood paneling. It is the old type, from the western movies I loved as a kid. He throws open the doors to the outside world, to the dark ocean. I feel a breeze tugging at me, a slender finger of wind that catches at my shirt. Pulling. Grabbing. I can feel the panic build in me, the need to scream or cry rising in my throat. And then I am out the door, running, tumbling down the steps falling out into the darkened world, falling out into the lifeless ocean. Out into the blackness. Out among the stars and shadows. And underneath my skin, in the back of my head and down the back of my spine I can feel the desperation and I can feel the noise. I can feel the deep and ancient ache of loudness that litters across my bones. It’s like an old lover, comfortable and well known, but unwelcome and inappropriate with her stories of our frolicking. And then she’s gone and the Conductor is closing the door. The darkness swells around us, enveloping us in a cocoon, pressing flat against the train like a storm. I wonder, what is this place? Those had been heady days, full and intense. It’s funny. I remember the problems, the confusions and the fears of life we all dealt with. But, that all seems to fade. It all seems to be replaced by images of the days when it was all just okay. We all had plans back then, patterns in which we expected the world to fit, how it was to be deciphered. Eventually you just can’t carry yourself any longer, can’t keep your eyelids open, and can’t focus on anything but the flickering light of the stars. Hours pass, at first slowly like a river and then all in a rush, a climax and I am home in the dorm, waking up to the ringing of the telephone. When she is gone the apartment is silent, empty, almost like a person sleeping, waiting to wake up. When she is gone, and I am alone, I curl up on the bed, wait for the house to eject me from its dying corpse. Crazy thoughts cross through my head, like slants of light in an attic. The Boston 395 rocks a bit, a creaking noise spilling in from the undercarriage. I have decided that whatever this place is, all these noises, sensations - all the train-ness of this place - is a fabrication. It lulls you into a sense of security, allows you to feel as if it’s a familiar place. But whatever it is, it’s not a train, or at least not just a train. The air, heightened, tense against the glass. I can hear the squeak of shoes on linoleum, I can hear the soft rattle of a dying man’s breathing. Men in white uniforms, sharp pressed lines, run past, rolling gurneys down florescent hallways.

I take her to the rocks that Zeke, Shauna, and I go to sometimes, late at night. Tris and I sit on a flat stone suspended over the water, and the spray soaks my shoes, but it’s not so cold that I mind. Like all initiates, she’s too focused on the aptitude test, and I’m struggling with talking to her about it. I thought that when I spilled one secret, the rest would come tumbling after, but openness is a habit you form over time, and not a switch you flip whenever you want to, I’m finding. “These are things I don’t tell people, you know. Not even my friends.” I watch the dark, murky water and the things it carries--pieces of trash, discarded clothing, floating bottles like small boats setting out on a journey. “My result was as expected. Abnegation.” “Oh.” She frowns. “But you chose Dauntless anyway?” “Out of necessity.” “Why did you have to leave?” I look away, not sure I can give voice to my reasons, because admitting them makes me a faction traitor, makes me feel like a coward. “You had to get away from your dad,” she says. “Is that why you don’t want to be a Dauntless leader? Because if you were, you might have to see him again?” I shrug. “That, and I’ve always felt that I don’t quite belong among the Dauntless. Not the way they are now, anyway.” It’s not quite the truth. I’m not sure this is the moment to tell her what I know about Max and Jeanine and the attack--selfishly, I want to keep this moment to myself, just for a little while. “But…you’re incredible,” she says. I raise my eyebrows at her. She seems embarrassed. “I mean, by Dauntless standards. Four fears is unheard of. How could you not belong here?

what I knew that morning in March 1977 as we settled around the conference table. I wasn’t even sure how these guys reached us, or how they’d arranged this meeting. “Okay, fellas,” I said, “what’ve you got?” It was a beautiful day, I remember. The light outside the room was a buttery pale yellow, and the sky was blue for the first time in months, so I was distracted, a little spring feverish, as Rudy leaned his weight on the edge of the conference table and smiled. “Mr. Knight, we’ve come up with a way to inject . . . air . . . into a running shoe.” I frowned and dropped my pencil. “Why?” I said. “For greater cushioning,” he said. “For greater support. For the ride of a lifetime.” I stared. “You’re kidding me, right?” I’d heard a lot of silliness from a lot of different people in the shoe business, but this. Oh. Brother. Rudy handed me a pair of soles that looked as if they’d been teleported from the twenty-second century. Big, clunky, they were clear thick plastic and inside were—bubbles? I turned them over. “Bubbles?” I said. “Pressurized air bags,” he said. I set down the soles and gave Rudy a closer look, a full head-to-toe. Six-three, lanky, with unruly dark hair, bottle-bottom glasses, a lopsided grin, and a severe vitamin D deficiency, I thought. Not enough sunshine. Or else a long-lost member of the Addams Family. He saw me appraising him, saw my skepticism, and wasn’t the least fazed. He walked to the blackboard, picked up a piece of chalk, and began writing numbers, symbols, equations. He explained at some length why an air shoe would work, why it would never go flat, why it was the Next Big Thing. When he finished I stared at the blackboard. As a trained accountant I’d spent a good part of my life looking at blackboards, but this Rudy fella’s scribbles were something else. Indecipherable.

The translucent, golden punch tastes velvety, voluptuous and not off-puttingly milky. Under its influence, I stage a party for my heroines in my imagination, and in my flat. It's less like the glowering encounter I imagined between Cathy Earnshaw and Flora Poste, and more like the riotous bash in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Not everyone is going to like milk punch. So there are also dirty martinis, and bagels and baklava, and my mother's masafan, Iraqi marzipan. The Little Mermaid is in the bath, with her tail still on, singing because she never did give up her soaring voice. Anne Shirley and Jo March are having a furious argument about plot versus character, gesticulating with ink-stained hands. Scarlett is in the living room, her skirts taking up half the space, trying to show Lizzy how to bat her eyelashes. Lizzy is laughing her head off ut Scarlett has acquired a sense of humour, and doesn't mind a bit. Melanie is talking book with Esther Greenwood, who has brought her baby and also the proofs of her first poetry collection. Franny and Zooey have rolled back the rug and are doing a soft shoe shuffle in rhinestone hats. Lucy Honeychurch is hammering out some Beethoven (in this scenario I have a piano. A ground piano. Well, why not?) Marjorie Morningstar is gossiping about directors with Pauline and Posy Fossil. They've come straight from the shows they're in, till in stage make-up and full of stories. Petrova, in a leather aviator jacket, goggles pushed back, a chic scarf knotted around her neck, is telling the thrilling story of her latest flight and how she fixed an engine fault in mid-air. Mira, in her paint-stained jeans and poncho, is listening, fascinated, asking a thousand questions. Mildred has been persuaded to drink a tiny glass of sherry, then another tiny glass, then another and now she and Lolly are doing a wild, strange dance in the hallway, stamping their feet, their hair flying wild and electric. Lolly's cakes, in the shape of patriarchs she hates, are going down a treat. The Dolls from the Valley are telling Flora some truly scandalous and unrepeatable stories, and she is firmly advising them to get rid of their men and find worthier paramours. Celie is modelling trousers of her own design and taking orders from the Lace women; Judy is giving her a ten-point plan on how to expand her business to an international market. She is quite drunk but nevertheless the plan seems quite coherent, even if it is punctuated by her bellowing 'More leopard print, more leopard print!' Cathy looks tumultuous and on the edge of violent weeping and just as I think she's going to storm out or trash my flat, Jane arrives, late, with an unexpected guest. Cathy turns in anticipation: is it Heathcliff? Once I would have joined her but now I'm glad it isn't him. It's a better surprise. It's Emily's hawk. Hero or Nero. Jane's found him at last, and has him on her arm, perched on her glove; small for a bird of prey, he is dashing and patrician looking, brown and white, observing the room with dark, flinty eyes. When Cathy sees him, she looks at Jane and smiles. And in the kitchen is a heroine I probably should have had when I was four and sitting on my parents' carpet, wishing it would fly. In the kitchen is Scheherazade.

On the pavement by the side of the road was planted a banner two storeys high. Even in the blow-up the celebrity appeared stunted. He stood in a safari suit, his palms joined in greeting. His face was a light pink because poster artists did not have the freedom to paint his face black. His little mop of hair was spread thinly over an almost flat scalp. And his thick moustache had sharp edges. Just above his head was an English introduction in large font - DYNAMIC PERSONALITY. A thinner line that followed said he was the honourable Minister S Waman. It seemed appropriate that it was at Waman's black shoes the author took credit, in Marathi and in diplomatically-chosen small font - 'Hoarding Presented by P.Bikaji.

Today—June the first—Robin was able to say for the first time: “I’m getting married next month.” July the second suddenly seemed very close. The dressmaker back in Harrogate wanted a final fitting, but she had no idea when she would be able to fit in a trip home. At least she had her shoes. Her mother was taking the RSVPs and updating her regularly on the guest list. Robin felt strangely disconnected from it all. Her tedious hours of surveillance in Catford Broadway, staking out the flat over the chip shop, were a world away from queries on the flowers, who should sit beside whom at the reception, and (this last from Matthew) whether or not she had yet asked Strike for the fortnight off for the honeymoon, which Matthew had booked and which was to be a surprise

Alex took the train down from Boston on the appointed day. She wore a new navy blue dress and matching coat she had bought to wear to her graduation dinner in six weeks. And in case she was late and had to run through the station to make it in time, she had worn little flat black suede shoes, and she looked more than ever like a schoolgirl with her shining dark straight hair down her back, when she arrived at Rose’s office at two-thirty. She was very nervous and her eyes were huge, as she sat anxiously at the edge of a chair across from Rose’s desk.

Mummy?’ Anna called ahead, as was her habit, making her way along the hallway of their flat, stepping over her school shoes that were lined up side by side underneath the radiator. Their laces had been looped on the outside, making it a doddle for her to slip them on. This was just one of the small things her mummy did to make her life easier. She also cut Anna’s toast into soldiers so she could hold a slice in her fingers and still colour in with her free hand. And she turned down Anna’s bed at night so when her teeth had been cleaned, Anna could, with no more than a hop, a skip and a jump from the bathroom across the narrow hallway, land in her bed and onto the stripey, bobbly, flannelette sheet

I drove to the bar Theodosha had called from and parked on the street. The bar was a gray, dismal place, ensconced like a broken matchbox under a dying oak tree, its only indication of gaiety a neon beer sign that flickered in one window. She was at a table in back, the glow of the jukebox lighting her face and the deep blackness of her hair. She tipped a collins glass to her mouth, her eyes locked on mine. “Let me take you home,” I said. “No, thanks,” she replied. “Getting swacked?” “Merchie and I had another fight. He says he can’t take my pretensions anymore. I love the word ‘pretensions.’” “That doesn’t mean you have to get drunk,” I said. “You’re right. I can get drunk for any reason I choose,” she replied, and took another hit from the glass. Then she added incongruously, “You once asked Merchie what he was doing in Afghanistan. The answer is he wasn’t in Afghanistan. He was in one of those other God-forsaken Stone Age countries to the north, helping build American airbases to protect American oil interests. Merchie says they’re going to make a fortune. All for the red, white, and blue.” “Who is they?” But her eyes were empty now, her concentration and anger temporarily spent. I glanced at the surroundings, the dour men sitting at the bar, a black woman sleeping with her head on a table, a parolee putting moves on a twenty-year-old junkie and mother of two children who was waiting for her connection. These were the people we cycled in and out of the system for decades, without beneficial influence or purpose of any kind that was detectable. “Let’s clear up one thing. Your old man came looking for trouble at the club today. I didn’t start it,” I said. “Go to a meeting, Dave. You’re a drag,” she said. “Give your guff to Merchie,” I said, and got up to leave. “I would. Except he’s probably banging his newest flop in the hay. And the saddest thing is I can’t blame him.” “I think I’m going to ease on out of this. Take care of yourself, kiddo,” I said. “Fuck that ‘kiddo’ stuff. I loved you and you were too stupid to know it.” I walked back outside into a misting rain and the clean smell of the night. I walked past a house where people were fighting behind the shades. I heard doors slamming, the sound of either a car backfiring or gunshots on another street, a siren wailing in the distance. On the corner I saw an expensive automobile pull to the curb and a black kid emerge from the darkness, wearing a skintight bandanna on his head. The driver of the car, a white man, exchanged money for something in the black kid’s hand. Welcome to the twenty-first century, I thought. I opened my truck door, then noticed the sag on the frame and glanced at the right rear tire. It was totally flat, the steel rim buried deep in the folds of collapsed rubber. I dropped the tailgate, pulled the jack and lug wrench out of the toolbox that was arc-welded to the bed of the truck, and fitted the jack under the frame. Just as I had pumped the flat tire clear of the puddle it rested in, I heard footsteps crunch on the gravel behind me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a short, thick billy club whip through the air. Just before it exploded across the side of my head, my eyes seemed to close like a camera lens on a haystack that smelled of damp-rot and unwashed hair and old shoes. I was sure as I slipped into unconsciousness that I was inside an ephemeral dream from which I would soon awake.

It’s a culture of indirection. No one ever turns you down flat. No one ever says, straight out, no. But they don’t say yes, either. They speak in circles, sentences with no clear subject or object. Don’t be discouraged, but don’t be cocky. You might leave a man’s office thinking you’ve blown it, when in fact he’s ready to do a deal. You might leave thinking you’ve closed a deal, when in fact you’ve just been rejected. You never know.” I

Jennifer was good at her job and loved it. However, I hated the fact she was forced on me. She was young, beautiful, and thin. Everything I never felt that I was, and she always insisted on wearing heels and cute little suits in the office. Really? Who had such bionic feet that they could wear those day in and day out. My attitude toward her bordered on civil with a touch of sarcasm. I was sure she had stories to tell the women in the church on how hard I was to work with. I told myself I didn’t care. I’d wear flip-flops and flats at my desk and sequester all shoes over a two-inch heel to be worn only on Sundays.

Daniel. She’d been waiting twenty-two years to touch him again and she didn’t intend to stop any time soon. ‘Indeed you are. Welcome home, my darling.’ 21 BREAKING POINT A couple of weeks after my visit to the flat, I went to clear the table after the nanny and Daniel had left, and there, on the red plastic

He arranged three hundred pairs of women’s shoes on the stairway that climbed from Taylor Street to Broadway. High heels and flats, running shoes and loafers, all of them heading uphill, as if an army of invisible women had paused to rest while climbing. Danny-boy

I won’t judge you for dishes in your sink and shoes over your floor and laundry on your couch. I won’t judge you for choosing not to spend your one life weeding the garden or washing the windows or working on organizing the pantry. I won’t judge you for the size of your waist, the flatness, bigness, cut or color of your hair, the hipness or the matronliness of your clothes, and I won’t judge whether you work at a stove, a screen, a store, a steering wheel, a sink or a stage. I won’t judge you for where you are on your road, won’t belittle your offering, your creativity, your battle, your work.2

You feel so overwritten you're like a palimpsest; the original girl almost lost under years of scrawling yet you nurture an illusion of beauty, brush your hair in the dark so when your reflection finally catches up with you you stare straight past that older woman to the skateboard dancers behind hitting the frosty air with exuberant grace. On the loose in the morning city reminds you of lovers, catching the tram to work in last night's laddered stockings, the sharp-edged day already intruding like a hangover. It's not the sex you miss or the hotel mornings but the reassurance of strangers and that wild card. Now everything's played out the same, no surprises in the pack except those dealt by disaster. Early this morning such certainty dragged on your thoughts they stumbled flat-footed through the breakfast silence and you knew neither the apples orchard fresh, crisp as snow nor the blue bowl they posed in were enough. People disappear all the time, emerge like summer snakes newly marked and glittering into a clean desert. Without the photo of a child you carry in your wallet which reminds you who you have become you'd catch a train to Musk or Mollymook, some place your fingers have strayed over. Even thinking that, you turn your face into the wind, keep walking that same old line in your new flamboyant shoes. Oh my treacherous heart.

Even at a distance he recognized the way she sat a horse, the tilt of her head. He couldn’t believe she had come so far and so quickly. Fate had indeed led her in a circle back to him. Ordering Blackbird back to his mother’s lodge, Hunter increased his pace, the dread of leaving his people forgotten. Destiny. A month ago he had railed against it. Now he wasn’t certain how he felt. Resentful, yet pleased. And relieved. Deep in the quiet places of his heart, he sensed the rightness. Fate. Today it had brought him a woman, a woman like no other, with skin as white as a night moon, hair like honey, and eyes like the summer sky. His woman, and this time she came freely. From the hilltop Loretta watched the lone man walking toward her from the village. Relief flooded through her when she recognized Hunter’s loose-hipped, graceful stride. She crossed herself quickly and murmured thanks to the Holy Mother for her intercession. A dozen emotions surging through her, she urged Friend down the embankment. Hunter met her halfway across the flat. As Loretta rode toward him, she couldn’t stop staring. Even though she had been away from him only a short while, she had forgotten how Indian he looked. How savage. He moved with the fluid strength of a well-muscled animal, his shoulders, arms, and chest in constant motion, a bronzed play of tendon and flesh. The wind whipped his hair about his face. Mercy. He wasn’t wearing any breeches, just a breechcloth and knee-high moccasins. She drew Friend to a halt and swallowed a rush of anxiety. Aunt Rachel was right. He was a Comanche, first, last, and always. Yet she had come to him. “Blue Eyes?” He slowed his pace as he got closer, his indigo eyes traveling the length of her, taking in every detail of her dress, from the high neckline down to the bit of petticoat and black high-topped shoes showing below the hem of her full skirts. His eyes warmed with the familiar gleam of laughter that had once irritated her so much. She fastened her gaze on his face and, resisting the need to blurt out her troubles, searched her mind for the appropriate Comanche greeting, determined to begin this encounter on the right note. “Hi, hites,” she said, lifting her right hand. He caught the stallion’s bridle and stepped close. He was so tall that he didn’t have to tip his head back to see her face. With a smile in his voice, he replied, “Hello.” Loretta caught her bottom lip between her teeth to stop its trembling. How like him to remember her word of greeting. He was her friend. She had been right to come here.

Rachel’s preference for comfortable clothes was only partly responsible for her usual, lazier look; she felt less exposed, less obviously fleshy, when she wore boxy sweaters and flat shoes. Also, random men catcalled at her

He leaned forward to get a closer look and received an instant rebuke from a nearby woman. “Otstupit,” she said firmly. Paris turned to Mother and whispered, “Did she just call me stupid?” “Otstupit,” he said. “It means ‘back away.’ She’s the guard.” Paris raised an eyebrow because she didn’t look like a guard. She was in her midsixties and barely five feet tall. She had gray hair, sensible shoes, and wore a sweater over a long-sleeved shirt, even though it was the middle of summer. “Really?” he asked. “It’s tradition in Russian art museums,” Mother answered. “Rather than imposing guards in uniforms they have…” “What? Grannies in cardigans?” “Pretty much,” Mother said with a smirk. “But don’t be fooled. She’s probably ex-KGB. If you get too close to the art, she’ll go from babushka to ninja in no time flat.

I stare at the woman in question and wonder what happened to the concept of sisterhood. If women stopped doing this kind of thing to other women, there would be a lot less pain in this world. Men, I'll admit, are probably a lost cause, but we could stop cheating on other women with their husbands, boyfriends, fiancés. Jo props herself up on her elbows and gives me a defiant look which, frankly, I'd like to wipe off her face---preferably with a cricket bat. "Who'd have thought that I'd be seeing so much of you," I say. "And so soon." Marcus's breakfast dish looks rather rattled. "I can explain," Marcus says as he tries to dismount from the table with some dignity. Difficult to pull off. "I'm all ears." "This was the last time," he says earnestly. There are raspberries crushed on his knees. "The last time ever. I was having one last fling before settling down. As soon as you moved in, I was going to be completely and utterly faithful." Jo doesn't look as if she knows about this particular part of the arrangement and she glares darkly at my fiancé. Perhaps she'll be sneaking into his flat and filling his clothes and his shoes with leftovers and leaving stinking prawns in his soft furnishings. Because, for sure, I won't be troubling myself to do it again. "You called to tell me you love me while she was here?" Jo clearly doesn't know about that bit either. Marcus chews his lip. I stare at Marcus as if I'm seeing him for the first time. He looks ridiculous---yogurt on his knob, smears of berry juice all over his chest and legs, breakfast cereal in his hair. I burst out laughing. Marcus laughs too---nervously. "Oh, Marcus," I say, clutching at my sides. "I can't believe you've done this again." I double over and belly laugh right the way up from my boots. "I love you," he says bleakly, and then he continues to laugh along with me, although it sounds forced. When I finally wrest control of my voice once more, I say softly, "I'm not laughing with you, Marcus. I'm laughing at you." Slipping my engagement ring from my finger, I put it delicately into the bowl of yogurt that's lying by Jo's feet. Then, picking it up, I tip the bowl upside down on Marcus's head. Yogurt drips slowly down his face. He licks it from his lips. Perhaps he can get Jo to do it for him when I'm gone. "This really is the very last time you do this to me, Marcus.

There are signs, however, that a good time was had all last night. Jo might have found herself caught in the middle of a love triangle, but she clearly didn't mind staying around when she thought that one of the angles had been dispensed with. The remains of dinner still grace the table---dirty dishes, rumpled napkins, a champagne flute bearing a lipstick mark. There's even one of the Chocolate Heaven goodies left in the box---which is absolute sacrilege in my book, so I pop it in my mouth and enjoy the brief lift it gives me. I huff unhappily to myself. If they left chocolate uneaten, that must be because they couldn't wait to get down to it. Two of the red cushions from the sofa are on the floor, which shows a certain carelessness that Marcus doesn't normally exhibit. They're scattered on the white, fluffy sheepskin rug, which should immediately make me suspicious---and it does. I walk through to the bedroom and, of course, it isn't looking quite as pristine as it did yesterday. Both sides of the bed are disheveled and I think that tells me just one thing. But, if I needed confirmation, there's a bottle of champagne and two more flutes by the side of the bed. It seems that Marcus didn't sleep alone. Heavy of heart and footstep, I trail back through to the kitchen. More devastation faces me. Marcus had made no attempt to clear up. The dishes haven't been put into the dishwasher and the congealed remnants of last night's Moroccan chicken with olives and saffron-scented mash still stand in their respective saucepans on the cooker. Tipping the contents of one pan into the other, I then pick up a serving spoon and carry them both through the bedroom. I slide open the wardrobe doors and the sight of Marcus's neatly organized rows of shirts and shoes greet me. Balancing the pan rather precariously on my hip, I dip the serving spoon into the chicken and mashed potatoes and scoop up as much as I can. Opening the pocket of Marcus's favorite Hugo Boss suit, I deposit the cold mash into it. To give the man credit where credit is due, his mash is very light and fluffy. I move along the row, garnishing each of his suits with some of his gourmet dish, and when I've done all of them, find that I still have some food remaining. Seems as if the lovers didn't have much of an appetite, after all. I move onto Marcus's shoes---rows and rows of lovely designer footwear---casual at one end, smart at the other. He has a shoe collection that far surpasses mine. Ted Baker, Paul Smith, Prada, Miu Miu, Tod's... I slot a full spoon delicately into each one, pressing it down into the toe area for maximum impact. I take the saucepan back into the kitchen and return it to the hob. With the way I'm feeling, Marcus is very lucky that I don't just burn his flat down. Instead, I open the freezer. My boyfriend---ex-boyfriend---has a love of seafood. (And other women, of course.) I take out a bag of frozen tiger prawns and rip it open. In the living room, I remove the cushions from the sofa and gently but firmly push a couple of handfuls of the prawns down the back. Through to the bedroom and I lift the mattress on Marcus's lovely leather bed and slip the remaining prawns beneath it, pressing them as flat as I can. In a couple of days, they should smell quite interesting. As my pièce de résistance, I go back to the kitchen and take the half-finished bottle of red wine---the one that I didn't even get a sniff at---and pour it all over Marcus's white, fluffy rug. I place my key in the middle of the spreading stain. Then I take out my lipstick, a nice red one called Bitter Scarlet---which is quite appropriate, if you ask me---and I write on his white leather sofa, in my best possible script: MARCUS CANNING, YOU ARE A CHEATING BASTARD.

Zen is Buddhism made simple again. The robes worn by Zen priests are plain black affairs (unlike the colorful getups favored by the Tibetans and their other Buddhist cousins), and even after receiving Transmission, the Zen master's daily dress is a dull brown robe. You can sit anywhere; Dogen Zenji said that the heart is the real zendo. This informs temple architecture. Plainness here is neither false humility nor a facade. It is true to the bone. Skeletal beams and rafters are seamlessly joined; they are not nailed or screwed into place; they are made to fit together. Inside a zendo, there is mostly open space, dimly lit, with a small central altar and a tan, a two-foot-high wooden platform built around the perimeter, where meditators sit on plain black cushions, facing the wall. There are few ceremonial objects—the teacher's staff, a stick of incense burning in a bowl—and it is rare to run into more than one or two bronze or wooden Buddhas. Zen rituals are spare, too. Music is reduced to an isolated ding or bong of a bell, the flat report of a mallet tapped against a slab of wood, and a thrumming bang from a giant bass drum. Even the chanting is monochromatic; students pitch their voices toward the deep, dark end of the register and grumble in unison.

A school in the East Midlands, new term 1981-82. A new boy enters the class and is introduced by the teacher. He has spiky hair and wears a T-shirt, Doc Martens and tight denims with tiny turn-ups. He is instructed to sit [in] the nearest empty seat. The boy beside him has a flat-top and wears a tartan shirt, crepe shoes and loose denims with big turn-ups. As the latest addition to the class takes his seat he mutters to his new neighbour “Rockabilly bastard!” “Fucking Punk” replies his schoolmate, and they glare at each other menacingly. One year later they are wrecking wildly together at a Meteors gig – best of mates.

Sofia just stared at me and I shook my head, turning back towards my door as Roxy mumbled something against my chest. “Forget it,” I muttered, my gut twisting as I failed him again. “You know,” Sofia said softly behind me. “Everyone says Darius Acrux is heartless and cold blooded just like the Dragon he turns into. But you’re not, are you?” I gave her a flat look over my shoulder but she carried on anyway. “You actually give a shit about other people, don’t you? You want to protect them, look after them…” Her gaze fell on the unconscious girl in my arms like that was proof and I growled at her. “Is there a point to your inaccurate analysis?” Sofia had the nerve to roll her fucking eyes at me. “I’ll message you my number. You can tell Phillip to message me whenever he likes.” I raised an eyebrow at her in surprise and she threw a final look at Roxy in my arms before turning and heading away from us. I unlocked my door awkwardly while still holding her and headed inside, kicking it closed behind me as I dropped her bag and crossed the wide space towards the bed. Roxy’s head lolled back against my shoulder and her hair hung over my arm. She was still soaking wet and I hadn’t realised how much she’d been shivering as I’d walked here but now I could feel the tremors of her body where it was pressed to mine. I quickly used my water magic to pull every bit of moisture from her clothes and hair then pushed some warmth from my body into hers. She drifted near to consciousness as she stopped shivering and shifted in my arms, mumbling something incoherent as she pressed her cheek to my chest. My heart thumped a little harder than usual and I cleared my throat uncomfortably as I lowered her down onto the bed. Her brows pinched and she started mumbling something again as I released her. I pulled her shoes off and tossed them on the floor and she kicked out at me, forcing me to step back. “I can do it myself, Darcy,” she muttered, still slurring. “You shouldn’t have to look after me like this.” Before I could stop her, she lifted her hips up, pulled her skirt off and threw it at me. She still hadn’t opened her eyes and I didn’t think she was really awake at all. The gold panties she wore matched the bra which I could still see as her buttonless shirt had fallen open. I tried not to stare at her, I really tried but I couldn’t stop looking at her bronze skin, her narrow waist, the swell of her breasts as they rose and fell in time with her deep breaths... Fuck it’s like someone picked apart my deepest desires and brought every fantasy I’ve ever had to life. Why did it have to be her? Why did I have to lust after one of the only people in the whole of Solaria who I could never have? I knew I was going to have to marry a Dragon Shifter one day but that didn’t stop me from having other women. But this one would never be mine in any way. She hated me more viscerally than I thought anyone else ever had. And I couldn’t even blame her. I’d hate me too if I was her. What we’d done to her, what I’d done... it was necessary but I still didn’t like it. I was supposed to be working with the other heirs to get rid of them and instead here I was protecting her like I'd lost my fucking mind. (Darius POV)

That was one of the hardest things about breaking up. It's not a pair of bookends, the beginning and the end. It's the unravelling of the future. The flat we would never move into together, the cat we would never pick up from the shelter. It was all the times I wouldn't hear her go on and on about some boring film I couldn't sit through, or the way I wouldn't see her do that silly tap dance she does when she's trying on new shoes. It's all the things we used to do that we'd never do again and all the things we'd never do for the first time together.

So what is the “secret sauce” of long-term healthy running? • Slow down! • Run for joy • Recover • Do not run too hard • Finish each run as if you could do it again • Keep fast and agile with short sprints and drills • Keep mobile, especially in the ankles and hips • Keep your foundation strong—this is your foot. Wear flat shoes shaped like your foot to stand, walk, run, and play. • Go barefoot as often as you can. • Learn the skill of running and keep trying to master this. A tool like TrueForm motor-less treadmill helps. • Do simple strength training with Kettle Bells and Burpees • Be your own body sensor and coach • Don’t sit • Eat real food • Do not put pain into your body • And pass it forward—we all continue to learn by teaching and sharing with others.

The key,” they said, “is don’t be pushy. Don’t come on like the typical asshole American, the typical gaijin—rude, loud, aggressive, not taking no for an answer. The Japanese do not react well to the hard sell. Negotiations here tend to be soft, sinewy. Look how long it took the Americans and Russians to coax Hirohito into surrendering. And even when he did surrender, when his country was reduced to a heap of ashes, what did he tell his people? ‘The war situation hasn’t developed to Japan’s advantage.’ It’s a culture of indirection. No one ever turns you down flat. No one ever says, straight out, no. But they don’t say yes, either. They speak in circles, sentences with no clear subject or object. Don’t be discouraged, but don’t be cocky. You might leave a man’s office thinking you’ve blown it, when in fact he’s ready to do a deal. You might leave thinking you’ve closed a deal, when in fact you’ve just been rejected. You never know.

Get shoes with flat, hard soles like Chuck Taylors.

2 pairs of comfortable pants 1 pair of shorts 1 top and 1 bottom insulating layer 1 swimsuit 3 t-shirts 3 tank tops 1 long sleeve shirt 1 button up/collared shirt 1 pair of light, flat shoes 4 pairs of underwear 2 pairs of socks 1 belt 1 wool knit cap 1 light, water-resistant windbreaker/jacket 1 fleece shell

I focused on him. Everything still seemed blurry, but he was close enough that I could see him. He was completely soaked. His jeans, shoes, jacket, and shirt. He was just as wet as I was. His normally messy blond hair was darker and flat to his head from the weight of the water. Dark shadows haunted his eyes and his lips were pale from the cold. “You jumped in after me,” I whispered. “I’d jump into the pits of hell for you, Rim.

At heart, this perfect storm involves the collision of an older generation of American engineers and scientists who are retiring at the same time that a younger generation is not stepping into their shoes in sufficient numbers—and at the same time that the foreigners who used to make up the difference are either staying home or being kept out of America for security reasons.

I cried the entire way home as my mom berated me for not appreciating the life I had. I didn’t care that we had a roof over our heads and food on the table every night.  What good are basic human amenities without a pair of faux fur flats? I wanted those shoes more than anything.

Where is he?” I say. I have been waiting for hours to ask that question. I fell asleep and dreamed that I was chasing Tobias through Dauntless headquarters. No matter how fast I ran he was always just far enough ahead of me that I watched him disappear around corners, catching sight of a sleeve or the heel of a shoe. Jeanine gives me a puzzled look. But she is not puzzled. She is playing with me. “Tobias,” I say anyway. My hands shake, but not from fear this time--from anger. “Where is he? What are you doing to him?” “I see no reason to provide that information,” says Jeanine. “And since you are all out of leverage, I see no way for you to give me a reason, unless you would like to change the terms of our agreement.” I want to scream at her that of course, of course I would rather know about Tobias than about my Divergence, but I don’t. I can’t make hasty decisions. She will do what she intends to do to Tobias whether I know about it or not. It is more important that I fully understand what is happening to me. I breathe in through my nose, and out through my nose. I shake my hands. I sit down in the chair. “Interesting,” she says. “Aren’t you supposed to be running a faction and planning a war?” I say. “What are you doing here, running tests on a sixteen-year-old girl?” “You choose different ways of referring to yourself depending on what is convenient,” she says, leaning back in her chair. “Sometimes you insist that you are not a little girl, and sometimes you insist that you are. What I am curious to know is: How do you really view yourself? As one or the other? As both? As neither?” I make my voice flat and factual, like hers. “I see no reason to provide that information.” I hear a faint snort. Peter is covering his mouth. Jeanine glares at him, and his laughter effortlessly transforms into a coughing fit. “Mockery is childish, Beatrice,” she says. “It does not become you.” “Mockery is childish, Beatrice,” I repeat in my best imitation of her voice. “It does not become you.” “The serum,” Jeanine says, eyeing Peter. He steps forward and fumbles with a black box on the desk, taking out a syringe with a needle already attached to it. Peter starts toward me, and I hold out my hand. “Allow me,” I say. He looks at Jeanine for permission, and she says, “All right, then.” He hands me the syringe and I shove the needle into the side of my neck, pressing down on the plunger. Jeanine jabs one of the buttons with her finger, and everything goes dark.

might put it off and run when they got there, but contrary to popular opinion, beach running is only jolly fun for the first five miles or so. After that, the cute little waves become redundant, the sand reflects the sun up into the eyes blindingly, grains of sand slip annoyingly into the heel of the shoe or flip up on the back of the leg. Fifteen hot miles on a long, flat beach sounds like good sport only to those who haven’t actually done it. Also, the ocean is too infinite; the run seems as if it will never end.

Stepmother taps her chin and frowns at Moody’s dress. “She needs some pin tucks in the skirt to give it more lift. And put some padding into the bodice to fill out her bosom-” “Motherrr!” Moody whines. “What? It’s no secret you’re flat as a floor.” Loony cackles while Moody throws a murderous look. “At least my chest doesn’t fall on my lap when I sit down.” Loony frowns. “Are you calling me fat?” “Well, if the shoe fits-” “Come, come, girls,” Stepmother says. I’m glad she stopped them. I’ve seen my stepsisters fight before and it’s like cats, all clawing and hissing. I don’t care if they go to the ball with red scratches on their faces but they could ruin Moody’s gown. “You

I said, what’s yer first name, kid?” Bumpus, backed up flat against the school wall, finally spoke up: “Delbert.” “Delbert! DELBERT!” Outraged by such a name, Dill addressed the crowd, with scorn dripping from his every word. “Delbert Bumpus! They’re letting everybody in Harding School these days! What the hell kind of a name is that? That must be some kind of hillbilly name!” It was the last time anyone at Warren G. Harding ever said, or even thought, anything like that about Delbert Bumpus. Everything happened so fast after that that no two accounts of it were the same. The way I saw it, Bumpus’ head snapped down low between his shoulder blades. He bent over from the waist, charged over the sand like a wounded wart hog insane with fury, left his feet and butted his black, furry head like a battering-ram into Dill’s rib cage, the sickening thump sounding exactly like a watermelon dropped from a second-story window. Dill, knocked backward by the charge, landed on his neck and slid for three or four feet, his face alternating green and white. His eyes, usually almost unseen behind his cobra lids, popped out like a tromped-on toad-frog’s. He lay flat, gazing paralyzed at the spring sky, one shoe wrenched off his foot by the impact. The schoolyard was hushed, except for the sound of a prolonged gurling and wheezing as Dill, now half his original size, lay retching. It was obvious that he was out of action for some time. Bumpus

Most “squat” shoes (and I mean the ones that are designed for lifters_ have a slight heal to them. This is great if you have strong quads and use your legs to push the weight, but if you want to get your hamstrings and hips (which are stronger) involved, you will want a flat sole.

This Girl I Knew Glasses, bad bangs, patched blue jeans, creek-stained tennis shoes caked in mud, a father who sells vacuum cleaners, a mother skinny as a nun, a little brother with straw-colored hair and a scowling, confused look in the pews at church: this girl I knew. House at the edge of town, crumbling white stucco. Dog on a chain. Weeds. Wildcat Creek trickling brown and frothy over rocks out back, past an abandoned train trestle and the wreck of an old school bus left to rot. This girl I knew, in whatever room is hers, in that house with its dust-fogged attic windows, its after-dinner hours like onions soft in a pan. Her father sometimes comes for her, runs a hand through her hair. Her mother washes every last stick of silverware, every dish. The night sky presses down on their roof, a long black yawn spiked with stars, bleating crickets. The dog barks once, twice. Outside town, a motorcycle revs its engine: someone bearing down. Then nothing. Sleep. This girl I knew dreams whatever this girl I knew dreams. In the morning it’s back to school, desks, workbooks, an awkwardly held pencil in the cramped claw of a hand. The cigarette and rosewater scent of Ms. Thompson at the blackboard. The flat of Ms. Thompson’s chest, sunburned and freckled, where her sweater makes a V. You should be nice to her, my mother says about this girl I knew. I don’t want to be nice to her, I say to my mother. At recess this girl I knew walks around the playground, alone, talking to herself: elaborate conversations, hand gestures, hysterical laughing. On a dare from the other girls this girl I knew picks a dandelion, pops its head with her thumbnail, sucks the milky stem. I don’t want to be nice to her. Scabbed where she’s scratched them, mosquito bites on her ankles break and bleed. Fuzzy as a peach, the brown splotch of a birthmark on her arm. The way her glasses keep slipping down her nose. The way she pushes them up.

Despite an icy northeast wind huffing across the bay I sneak out after dark, after my mother falls asleep clutching her leather Bible, and I hike up the rutted road to the frosted meadow to stand in mist, my shoes in muck, and toss my echo against the moss-covered fieldstone corners of the burned-out church where Sunday nights in summer for years Father Thomas, that mad handsome priest, would gather us girls in the basement to dye the rose cotton linen cut-outs that the deacon’s daughter, a thin beauty with short white hair and long trim nails, would stitch by hand each folded edge then steam-iron flat so full of starch, stiffening fabric petals, which we silly Sunday school girls curled with quick sharp pulls of a scissor blade, forming clusters of curved petals the younger children assembled with Krazy glue and fuzzy green wire, sometimes adding tissue paper leaves, all of us gladly laboring like factory workers rather than have to color with crayon stubs the robe of Christ again, Christ with his empty hands inviting us to dine, Christ with a shepherd's staff signaling to another flock of puffy lambs, or naked Christ with a drooping head crowned with blackened thorns, and Lord how we laughed later when we went door to door in groups, visiting the old parishioners, the sick and bittersweet, all the near dead, and we dropped our bikes on the perfect lawns of dull neighbors, agnostics we suspected, hawking our handmade linen roses for a donation, bragging how each petal was hand-cut from a pattern drawn by Father Thomas himself, that mad handsome priest, who personally told the Monsignor to go fornicate himself, saying he was a disgruntled altar boy calling home from a phone booth outside a pub in North Dublin, while I sat half-dressed, sniffing incense, giddy and drunk with sacrament wine stains on my panties, whispering my oath of unholy love while wiggling uncomfortably on the mad priest's lap, but God he was beautiful with a fine chiseled chin and perfect teeth and a smile that would melt the Madonna, and God he was kind with a slow gentle touch, never harsh or too quick, and Christ how that crafty devil could draw, imitate a rose petal in perfect outline, his sharp pencil slanted just so, the tip barely touching so that he could sketch and drink, and cough without jerking, without ruining the work, or tearing the tissue paper, thin as a membrane, which like a clean skin arrived fresh each Saturday delivered by the dry cleaners, tucked into the crisp black vestment, wrapped around shirt cardboard, pinned to protect the high collar.

Whoa.” She tilts her head back to look up at him. He’s almost a foot taller than her when she has flat shoes on. “Hot and chivalrous. Rest in peace to my panties.

What are you wearing?” he said, his mouth warping around the sound so she could only assume he hissed the words. “Bitsy, turn translation back on,” she said, certain that she was a little too loud. “I’m sorry, Dad, what did you say?” Again the nostril flare. Again, the pinched lips that surely meant he was about to explode. “I said, what are you wearing?” She liked to remind him whenever she could that she’d lost her hearing. It was, after all, his fault. And the man had been exposing her to situations that made her uncomfortable ever since. Oh, his poor baby girl was surely too fragile to do things on her own. That was the excuse he always said. But it wasn’t for that reason. No, he wanted to keep her under his thumb because he didn’t trust her. The old man was far too observant. “The clothes you sent me,” she replied. “You are wearing flat shoes!” Bitsy underlined and made the words shake in red.

They took turns stepping over a pile of cracked leather purses to get to the women’s department. Kate wrinkled her nose at the donated shoes—sandals, flats, boots—all in dull shades. She preferred her shoes new, of course, and always with at least a two-inch heel to compensate for her height. Joely sorted through a long row of tops. Her face brightened when she discovered a floral-patterned blouse. “These colors remind me of the lilacs I’m painting for my new client. She’s a heart surgeon and appears to have everything—an amazing career, a house decorated with antique furniture, a Jaguar in the garage. . . .” She held the material

There was a time when people kept their fly buttons fastened. And man’s freedom was boiling off. And even childhood was no good any more—not the way it was. No worry then but how to find a good stone, not round exactly but flattened and water-shaped, to use in a sling pouch cut from a discarded shoe. Where did all the good stones go, and all simplicity? A man’s mind vagued up a little, for how can you remember the feel of pleasure or pain or choking emotion? You can remember only that you had them. An elder man might truly recall through water the delicate doctor-testing of little girls, but such a man forgets, and wants to, the acid emotion eating at the spleen so that a boy had to put his face flat down in the young wild oats and drum his fists against the ground and sob “Christ! Christ!” Such a man might say, and did, “What’s that damned kid lying out there in the grass for? He’ll catch a cold.

All acts of sex were forms of degradation. Some random recollections: East 11th Street, on the bed with Murray Groman: “Swallow this mother ’til you choke.” East 11th Street, in the bed with Gary Becker: “The trouble with you is, you’re such a shallow person.” East 11th Street, up against the wall with Peter Baumann: “The only thing that turns me on about you is pretending you’re a whore.” Second Avenue, the kitchen, Michael Wainwright: “Quite frankly, I deserve a better-looking, better-educated girlfriend.” What do you do with the Serious Young Woman (short hair, flat shoes, body slightly hunched, head drifting back and forth between the books she’s read)? You slap her, fuck her up the ass and treat her like a boy. The Serious Young Woman looked everywhere for sex but when she got it it became an exercise in disintegration. What was the motivation of these men? Was it hatred she evoked? Was it some kind of challenge, trying to make the Serious Young Woman femme?

You are wearing flat shoes!” Bitsy underlined and made the words shake in red. Then her little droid added in blue, “Heavens forbid!

Sometimes at night I try on her shoes. Her strappy sandals and leather ballet flats. The shoes she never would've let me borrow if she were still alive.

That was one f the hardest things about breaking up. It's not a pair of bookends, the beginning and the end. It's the unravelling of the future. The flat we would never move into together, the cat we would never pick up from the shelter. It was all the times I wouldn't hear her go on about some boring film I couldn't sit through, or the way I wouldn't see her do that silly tap dance she does when she is trying on new shoes. It's all the things we used to do we'd never do again and all the things we'd never do for the first time together.

By early afternoon the Carpathia had passed the last of the ice and could begin to pick up speed, but at 4:00 p.m its engines were stopped. Father Anderson then appeared on deck in his clerical garb, followed by Carpathia crewmen carrying four corpses sewn into canvas bags. These were the bodies of two male passengers, one fireman, and one seaman, that had been brought aboard from the lifeboats. Each of the canvas bags in turn was laid on a wide plank and covered with a flag. As the words “Unto Almighty God we commend the soul of our brother departed, and we commit his body to the deep” were read aloud, the bodies were tipped into the sea one at a time. A large crowd stood nearby with heads bared. The canvas bags had been weighted so that the bodies would fall feet first but one of them struck the water flat. A Carpathia passenger wrote that he would never forget the sound of that splash. One of those buried at sea was first-class passenger William F. Hoyt, the heavy man who had been pulled into Boat 14 and died shortly thereafter. When May Futrelle learned that a large man had been lifted into one of the lifeboats, she questioned the crew of Boat 14 but soon realized that the man they described could not have been her husband. She also heard that Archibald Gracie had been pulled under with the ship and worked up her courage to ask him if he had suffered as he was being dragged down. Gracie reassured her that if he had never come up, he would have had no more suffering, giving May some comfort that perhaps Jacques had not endured an agonizing death. That afternoon Charles Lightoller had a serious talk with the three other surviving officers, Pitman, Boxhall, and Lowe, about what lay ahead. It was agreed that their best hope for escaping what Lightoller called “the inquisition” that awaited in New York was to immediately board the Cedric, scheduled to sail for Liverpool on Thursday. Their case was taken to Bruce Ismay who sent a message to Philip Franklin suggesting that the Cedric be held for the Titanic’s crew and himself. Ismay also asked that clothes and shoes be put on board for him. The cable was signed “Yamsi,” his coded signature for personal messages.

My music is not staid or proper, pretty or respectable. It is not for the mother looking for a biddable bride for her son at church or for the son looking for a pretty housekeeper to call his wife. It is adventurous and weighty, loud and boisterous, fuming when it wants to be and despondent when it needs to be. It is unapologetically emotional in a way I am never allowed to be without consequence. My music is a girl who behaves like a boy: flat shoes and comfortable slacks, loud-mouthed and ready to take on the world. My music is black in a place where black isn’t an insult: it’s shining, proud, and unworried. I let myself transform into wood and sound and vibration.

It gave him hope: something he had been trying to give up like a too big flat, where you don't feel safe, but only lost. Like too big shoes that will never fit your feet and forever leave disturbing blisters.