Pumps Shoes Quotes

I wasn’t sure, but I thought it kind of suited me. With the right shoes and everything.” I displayed the new blue pumps. “I wanted to look, you know, pretty.” Yves gaped. I felt a little bit sorry for him. “Um…Phee, I don’t know what to say.” I let my bright expression dim. “You… you think I look horrible in it?” My voice rose in a convincing squeak of distress. He put his hands on my soulders. “No, you look great. You always look great, no matter what you’re wearing.” Zed laughed. “Ouch. Wrong thing to say.

The carriage was crammed: waves of silk, ribs of three crinolines, billowed, clashed, entwined almost to the height of their heads; beneath was a tight press of stockings, girls' silken slippers, the Princess's bronze-colored shoes, the Princes patent-leather pumps; each suffered from the others' feet and could find nowhere to put his own.

Because how do people even function like this? Like, how is it that people can even pump gas or pay bills or tie their shoes when they're in love?

We can talk to one another on telephones in banks, in cars, in line. No more sitting on the floor attached to a cord while everybody listens. No more standing outside the booth in the cold, fingering an adulterous dime. We send each other mail without stamps. Watch television without antennas. Wear seatbelts, smoke less, and never on a bus, never in the lobby while we’re waiting for the lawyer to call on us. Nowhere now, a typewriter ribbon. Quaintly the record album’s scratch and spin. Our groceries, scanned. Pump our own gas. Take off our shoes before boarding our plane. Those towers: Gone. And Pluto’s no longer a planet: Forget it. I could go on and on, but you’re still dead and nothing’s any different.

At one point I was climbing off the bus and I bumped into a woman in a crisp black blazer and pointy, witchy shoes. She had a bulky cell phone pressed against her ear and a black bag with gold Prada lettering hooked around her wrist. I was a long ways off from worshiping at the Céline, Chloé, or Goyard thrones, but I certainly recognized Prada. “Sorry,” I said, and took a step away from her. She nodded at me briskly but never stopped speaking into her phone, “The samples need to be there by Friday.” As her heels snapped away on the pavement, I thought, There is no way that woman can ever get hurt. She had more important things to worry about than whether or not she would have to eat lunch alone. The samples had to arrive by Friday. And as I thought about all the other things that must make up her busy, important life, the cocktail parties and the sessions with the personal trainer and the shopping for crisp, Egyptian cotton sheets, there it started, my concrete and skyscraper wanderlust. I saw how there was a protection in success, and success was defined by threatening the minion on the other end of a cell phone, expensive pumps terrorizing the city, people stepping out of your way simply because you looked like you had more important places to be than they did. Somewhere along the way, a man got tangled up in this definition too. I just had to get to that, I decided, and no one could hurt me again.

But the doors open, and I’m slightly grateful for it, too. Because how do people even function like this? Like, how is it that people can even pump gas or pay bills or tie their shoes when they’re in love? Or might be in love. Or are in love. Or are in between the two.

Little of that makes for love, but it does pump desire. The woman who churned a man's blood as she leaned all alone on a fence by a country road might not expect even to catch his eye in the City. But if she is clipping quickly down the big-city street in heels, swinging her purse, or sitting on a stoop with a cool beer in her hand, dangling her shoe from the toes of her foot, the man, reacting to her posture, to soft skin on stone, the weight of the building stressing the delicate, dangling shoe, is captured. And he'd think it was the woman he wanted, and not some combination of curved stone, and a swinging, high-heeled shoe moving in and out of sunlight. He would know right away the deception, the trick of shapes and light and movement, but it wouldn't matter at all because the deception was part of it too. Anyway, he could feel his lungs going in and out. There is no air in the City but there is breath, and every morning it races through him like laughing gas brightening his eyes, his talk, and his expectations. In no time at all he forgets little pebbly creeks and apple trees so old they lay their branches along the ground and you have to reach down or stoop to pick the fruit. He forgets a sun that used to slide up like the yolk of a good country egg, thick and red-orange at the bottom of the sky, and he doesn't miss it, doesn't look up to see what happened to it or to stars made irrelevant by the light of thrilling, wasteful street lamps. That kind of fascination, permanent and out of control, seizes children, young girls, men of every description, mothers, brides, and barfly women, and if they have their way and get to the City, they feel more like themselves, more like the people they always believed they were.

And still his two-toned shoes pumped the pedals, and the bike’s tires sang, and the dead were ground under where they lay.

Say this one time with me: "Would you like that in a pump or a loafer?"... Good. Now memorize it, because starting tomorrow, the only job that you're going to be able to get is selling SHOES!

There are only two kinds of women in the world, those who love shoes and those who had the misfortune to be born without the ability to experience total bliss on finding a pair of perfectly designed pumps in the right size at half price.

Listen babe, I'm thinking, if you want to stay the weekend, bring some more stuff over. You know, just in case you want to stay longer or something." I smile. "Careful there, love. You're going to regret it when I bring in a hundred pairs of shoes and take over your closet." "You don't have a hundred pairs of shoes." I laugh, mockingly evil. "Bwahaha, after this app hits number one and I get gamer coding bankroll, I might go shoe shopping!" Derrick laughs. "Add in a couple more pairs of fuck-me pumps, and I'm happy. You can wear them while I make you scream my name in ecstasy.

Listen babe, I'm thinking, if you want to stay the weekend, bring some more stuff over. You know, just in case you want to stay longer or something." I smile. "Careful there, love. You're going to regret it when I bring in a hundred pairs of shoes and take over your closet." "You don't have a hundred pairs of shoes." I laugh, mockingly evil. "Bwahaha, after this app hits number one and I get gamer coding bankroll, I might go shoe shopping!" Derrick laughs. "Add in a couple more pairs of fuck-me pumps, and I'm happy. You can wear them while I make you scream my name in ecstasy.

As the year goes on, certain deputies—and others, high in public life—will appear unshaven, without coat or cravat; or they will jettison these marks of the polite man, when the temperature rises. They affect the style of men who begin their mornings with a splash under a backyard pump, and who stop off at their street-corner bar for a nip of spirits on their way to ten hours’ manual labor. Citizen Robespierre, however, is a breathing rebuke to these men; he retains his buckled shoes, his striped coat of olive green. Can it be the same coat that he wore in the first year of the Revolution? He is not profligate with coats. While Citizen Danton tears off the starched linen that fretted his thick neck, Citizen Saint-Just’s cravat grows ever higher, stiffer, more wonderful to behold. He affects a single earring, but he resembles less a corsair than a slightly deranged merchant banker.

People want to make this out to be a great American failing, but try this experiment: Take one hundred kids from that age group from any country, separate them on islands, give them the cocktail of constant affirmation and stimulation these kids were getting pumped through their brains, and one hundred times out of one hundred you have bloodshed. I guarantee it. Put yourself in the shoes of any of these kids, with their peers yelling “kill or be killed” in their ear, coaxing them, begging them to swing that sword or shoot that arrow or … or stab that other kid tied up and …

When I finally leave the market, the streets are dark, and I pass a few blocks where not a single electric light appears – only dark open storefronts and coms (fast-food eateries), broom closet-sized restaurants serving fish, meat, and rice for under a dollar, flickering candles barely revealing the silhouettes of seated figures. The tide of cyclists, motorbikes, and scooters has increased to an uninterrupted flow, a river that, given the slightest opportunity, diverts through automobile traffic, stopping it cold, spreads into tributaries that spill out over sidewalks, across lots, through filling stations. They pour through narrow openings in front of cars: young men, their girlfriends hanging on the back; families of four: mom, dad, baby, and grandma, all on a fragile, wobbly, underpowered motorbike; three people, the day’s shopping piled on a rear fender; women carrying bouquets of flapping chickens, gathered by their feet while youngest son drives and baby rests on the handlebars; motorbikes carrying furniture, spare tires, wooden crates, lumber, cinder blocks, boxes of shoes. Nothing is too large to pile onto or strap to a bike. Lone men in ragged clothes stand or sit by the roadsides, selling petrol from small soda bottles, servicing punctures with little patch kits and old bicycle pumps.

yoga on the mountainside and then fall asleep in the meadow. Read a newspaper on the porch, and feel the cold pump water wash away the ink on your grubby hands afterward. Listen to one of Andy’s old records while you eat lunch and notice how you start chewing in rhythm. Go to town and ask for a map of the local stores and restaurants. Read a book even if it’s not what you would prefer, just to see what another genre is like. Take off your shoes and get your feet muddy down by where the frogs live. Wander around the neighborhood looking for someone to talk to. Write things down, with a nice pen, on scrap paper, and stuff the bits of ideas in your pockets so you’ll meet them again at the end of the day.

I say, it sounds like some dangerous psychotic killer wrote this, and this buttoned-down schizophrenic could probably go over the edge at any moment in the working day and stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-180 carbine gas-operated semiautomatic. My boss just looks at me. The guy, I say, is probably at home every night with a little rattail file, filing a cross into the tip of every one of his rounds. This way, when he shows up to work one morning and pumps a round into his nagging, ineffectual, petty, whining, butt-sucking, candy-ass boss, that one round will split along the filed grooves and spread open the way a dumdum bullet flowers inside you to blow a bushel load of your stinking guts out through your spine. Picture your gut chakra opening in a slow-motion explosion of sausage-casing small intestine. My boss takes the paper out from under my nose. Go ahead, I say, read some more. No really, I say, it sounds fascinating. The work of a totally diseased mind. And I smile. The little butthole-looking edges of the hole in my cheek are the same blue-black as a dog’s gums. The skin stretched tight across the swelling around my eyes feels varnished. My boss just looks at me. Let me help you, I say. I say, the fourth rule of fight club is one fight at a time. My boss looks at the rules and then looks at me. I say, the fifth rule is no shoes, no shirts in the fight. My boss looks at the rules and looks at me. Maybe, I say, this totally diseased fuck would use an Eagle Apache carbine because an Apache takes a thirty-shot mag and only weighs nine pounds. The Armalite only takes a five-round magazine. With thirty shots, our totally fucked hero could go the length of mahogany row and take out every vice-president with a cartridge left over for each director. Tyler’s words coming out of my mouth. I used to be such a nice person. I just look at my boss. My boss has blue, blue, pale cornflower blue eyes. The J and R 68 semiautomatic carbine also takes a thirty-shot mag, and it only weighs seven pounds. My boss just looks at me. It’s scary, I say. This is probably somebody he’s known for years. Probably this guy knows all about him, where he lives, and where his wife works and his kids go to school. This is exhausting, and all of a sudden very, very boring. And why does Tyler need ten copies of the fight club rules? What I don’t have to say is I know about the leather interiors that cause birth defects. I know about the counterfeit brake linings that looked good enough to pass the purchasing agent, but fail after two thousand miles. I know about the air-conditioning rheostat that gets so hot it sets fire to the maps in your glove compartment. I know how many people burn alive because of fuel-injector flashback. I’ve seen people’s legs cut off at the knee when turbochargers start exploding and send their vanes through the firewall and into the passenger compartment. I’ve been out in the field and seen the burned-up cars and seen the reports where CAUSE OF FAILURE is recorded as "unknown.” No, I say, the paper’s not mine. I take the paper between two fingers and jerk it out of his hand. The edge must slice his thumb because his hand flies to his mouth, and he’s sucking hard, eyes wide open. I crumble the paper into a ball and toss it into the trash can next to my desk. Maybe, I say, you shouldn’t be bringing me every little piece of trash you pick up.

What can I tell them? Sealed in their metallic shells like molluscs on wheels, how can I pry the people free? The auto as tin can, the park ranger as opener. Look here, I want to say, for godsake folks get out of them there machines, take off those fucking sunglasses and unpeel both eyeballs, look around; throw away those goddamned idiotic cameras! For chrissake folks what is this life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare? eh? Take off your shoes for a while, unzip your fly, piss hearty, dig your toes in the hot sand, feel that raw and rugged earth, split a couple of big toenails, draw blood! Why not? Jesus Christ, lady, roll that window down! You can't see the desert if you can't smell it. Dusty? Of course it's dusty—this is Utah! But it's good dust, good red Utahn dust, rich in iron, rich in irony. Turn that motor off. Get out of that peice of iron and stretch your varicose veins, take off your brassiere and get some hot sun on your old wrinkled dugs! You sir, squinting at the map with your radiator boiling over and your fuel pump vapor-locked, crawl out of that shiny hunk of GM junk and take a walk—yes, leave the old lady and those squawling brats behind for a while, turn your back on them and take a long quiet walk straight into the canyons, get lost for a while, come back when you damn well feel like it, it'll do you and her and them a world of good. Give the kids a break too, let them out of the car, let them go scrambling over rocks hunting for rattlesnakes and scorpions and anthills—yes sir, let them out, turn them loose; how dare you imprison little children in your goddamned upholstered horseless hearse? Yes sir, yes madam, I entreat you, get out of those motorized wheelchairs, get off your foam rubber backsides, stand up straight like men! like women! like human beings! and walk—walk—WALK upon your sweet and blessed land!

What does one wear to a ranch early in the morning? I wondered. I was stumped. I had enough good sense, thank God, to know my spiked black boots--the same boots I’d worn on basically every date with Marlboro Man thus far--were out of the question. I wouldn’t want them to get dirty, and besides that, people might look at me funny. I had a good selection of jeans, yes, but would I go for the dark, straight-leg Anne Kleins? Or the faded, boot-cut Gaps with contrast stitching? And what on earth would I wear on top? This could get dicey. I had a couple of nice, wholesome sweater sets, but the weather was turning warmer and the style didn’t exactly scream “ranch” to me. Then there was the long, flax-colored linen tunic from Banana Republic--one I loved to pair with a chunky turquoise necklace and sandals. But that was more Texas Evening Barbecue than Oklahoma Early-Morning Cattle Gathering. Then there were the myriad wild prints with sparkles and stones and other obnoxious adornments. But the last thing I wanted to do was spook the cattle and cause a stampede. I’d seen it happen in City Slickers when Billy Crystal fired up his cordless coffee grinder, and the results weren’t the least bit pretty. I considered cancelling. I had absolutely nothing to wear. Every pair of shoes I owned was black, except for a bright yellow pair of pumps I’d bought on a whim in Westwood one California day. Those wouldn’t exactly work, either. And I didn’t own a single shirt that wouldn’t loudly broadcast *CLUELESS CITY GIRL!* *CLUELESS CITY GIRL!* *CLUELESS CITY GIRL!* I wanted to crawl under my covers and hide.

I put my hand on his forearm, I don't know why I do this, and it's not exactly natural, although it's not unnatural, except that I really want to touch his skin. It's smooth and tan just a little bit and feels like summer, like something familiar and warm and good, like my skin did on the first days aboard 'Fishful Thinking' before it salted and burned and peeled. 'We broke up three years after that.' I sit back in my chair and give a sly smile. Relationships are complex and sometimes you can't really explain them to an outside party. 'I can't believe I just told you that' 'YES! YOU! ARE! LIVING! YOUR! FULL! LIFE!' A third time. I am not imagining it. 'There you are.' This time my heart does skip a beat. I look down at his arm, and we are still touching, and he has made no attempt to retract his arm or retreat. All my surroundings, the red formica table top, the pink yogurt, the blue sky, the green vegetables in the market, they all come alive in vibrant technicolor as the sun peers from behind a cloud. I am living my full life. 'Honesty in all things,' Byron adds, lifting his cup of yogurt for a toast of sorts. I pull my hand away from him and the instant my hand is back by his side, I miss the warmth of his arm, the warmth of him. Honesty in all things. I should put my hand back, that's where it wants to be, that's Lily's lesson to me. Be present in the moment, give spontaneous affection. I'm suddenly aware I haven't spoken in a bit. 'Did you know that an octopus has three hearts?' As soon as it comes out of my mouth, I realize I sound like that kid from 'Jerry McGuire.' 'Did you know the human head weighs eight pounds?' I hope my question comes off almost a fraction as endearing. 'No,' Byron says with a glint in his eye that reads as curiosity, at least I hope that it does, but even if it doesn't I'm too into the inertia of the trivia to stop it. 'It's true, one heart called the systemic heart that functions much like the left side of the human heart, distributing blood throughout the heart, then two smaller branchial heart with gills that act like the right side of our hearts to pump the blood back.' 'What made you think of that?' I smile. It may be entirely inappropriate first date conversation, but at least it doesn't bore me in the telling. I look up at the winsome August sky, marred only by the contrails of a passing jet, and a vaguely dachshund shaped cloud above the horizon. I don't believe in fate. I don't believe in love at first site. I don't believe in angels. I don't believe in heaven and that our loved ones are looking down on us, but the sun is so warm and the breeze is so cool and the company is so perfect and the whole afternoon so intoxicating, ti's hard not to hear Lily's voice dancing in the gentle wind, 'one! month! is Long! Enough TO! BE! SAD!' ... 'I recently lost someone close to me....I don't know, I feel her here today with us, you, me, her, three hearts, like an octopus,' I shrug. If I were him, I would run. What a ridiculously creepy thing to say. I would run and I would not stop until I was home in my bed with a gallon of ice cream deleting my profile from every dating site I belonged to. Maybe it's because it's not rehearsed, maybe it's because it's as weird a thing to say as it is genuine, maybe it's because this is finally the man for me. Byron stands and offers me his hand, 'Let's take a walk and you can tell me about her.' The gentle untying of a shoe lace. It takes me a minute to decide if I can do this, and I decide that I can, and I throw our yogurt dishes away, and I put my hand in his, and it's soft and warm, and instead of awkward fumbling, our hands clasp together like magnets and metal, like we've been hand-in-hand all along, and we are touching again. ...

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.

Teddy Shoes, where you could buy patent-leather pumps with a kitten heel in men’s thirteen.

The last thing I need is the sheriff on my case. That's who I thought you were, as a matter of fact. They got women sheriffs these days, did you know that? Sherifettes." "So I've heard." "What about you?" she asked. "How'd you become a detective. That's a weird way to make a living, isn't it?" She was becoming real chatty now that I was on my way out and I wondered if I might pump her for more information. She seemed eager to prolong the contact, like someone who's been cooped up too long with a pack of preschool kids. "I sort of backed into detective work," I said, "but it beats selling shoes.

After sliding into a pair of pantyhose, I slip my feet into a pair of black Jimmy Choo stiletto pumps. It’s only after I’ve got them on my feet that I notice Nate is watching me, his brown tie hanging loose around his neck. “Eve,” he says. I already know what he’s going to say, and I’m hoping he won’t say it. “Hmm?” “Are those new shoes?” “These?” I don’t lift my eyes. “No. These are years old. In fact, I think I wore them on the first day of school last year.” “Oh. Okay…

It started about four months ago. It was innocent enough at first. I was at Simon’s to buy a pair of shoes. Somehow, I keep thinking the right pair of shoes will fix everything. Like if I walked into our house in the perfect pair of pumps, suddenly Nate would find me attractive again.

These are some mighty men about to hit the stage," an unseen announcer screamed through the PA system. "With an average height of six-foot-four, a massive weight of three hundred thirty pounds - all of it rock-solid muscle - they are nationally ranked power lifters, some of whom bench-press over six hundred pounds! And they're not here to brag on their muscles, but to brag on Jesus." The eight members of the Power Team ran up to the stage on thunderous feet, wearing red, black, and blue warm-up suits, weight belts, and boxing shoes. To a man, they were as big as a semitrailer truck. They pumped their fists in the air and stood before us bouncing lightly on the balls of their feet, ready to kick some religious butt. "Fasten your seat belts. If God is for you, who can be against you?" "Woo! Woo! Woo!" the audience screamed, instantly ready to rock and roll. We were less than an hour into the first night of a six-night revival, and already it seemed that Sin was going down in a terminal headlock, and Grand Junction would never be the same.... I had heard about the Power Team not from Christian friends, but from a succession of potheads - quintessential late-night cable TV channel surfers. To the stoned, there is nothing more entertaining than the sudden, near hallucinatory vision of this troupe of power-lifting missionaries led by former Oral Roberts University football star John Jacobs.... [My nephew] bought a comic book in which John Jacobs and the Power Team defeat a lisping South American drug lord. From that and an orientation video, we learned that the Team conducts seventy crusades each year, saves close to a million souls here and abroad - notably in Russia - and consists of "world-class athletes who inspire people to follow Christ - and to move away from drugs, alcohol, and suicide." (At the same time, we were pressured not to let our long-distance dollars go to support "nudity, profanity, or the Gay Games." We could avoid this by signing up with Lifeline, a Christian long-distance provider.)" People Who Sweat: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Pursuits, pp. 126-8.

I take one step and my heel catches on a cobble. I barely manage to stop myself before I face plant. Oh God. These shoes! What if it’s the shoes? That’s exactly what happened before. Maybe I could buy a new pair of shoes and wear them, and maybe that would fix everything. I turn around and look up and down the walk. It’s not like I’ll find a Prada shop. But they obviously make shoes somewhere, right? I stalk past several stores, peering in the windows. Someone makes shoes. They have to. “Rebecca?” Emily’s voice calls after me as I pass another shop. The shoes will fix everything. I’ll put on some of those weird slipper-style things and once I walk out of the shop, I’ll be back in London. The Prada heels are just cursed or something. I pass another store. This one has little teacups in the window. This is ridiculous. Don’t girls like shoes here? Oh. Wait. Even if I find a shoe store, how am I supposed to pay for the shoes? Maybe I don’t need the shoes, per se. Maybe I just need to take these stupid ones off. I unbuckle the straps over my foot, pick up the heel, and fling one shoe down the walkway. Liberated, I pull the other heel off and fling it down with its mate. Now what? Should I fall over? On purpose? That’s how it worked before. I had to knock my head on the sidewalk. I eye the big cobbles beneath my bare toes. They look so hard. What if I have a real concussion? Last year, Mike Lange, star quarterback, had to sit out two games because he had a concussion. We lost both games because of it, but supposedly if he got another one within a couple weeks of the first, his brain could swell and he’d get brain damage. Which doesn’t really sound that fun. Emily clears her throat. I chew on my lip and look down the walkway at my shoes. What am I, crazy? I just flung four-hundred-dollar pumps down the street.

What am I, crazy? I just flung four-hundred-dollar pumps down the street. “Shall we return to Harksbury? Your journey must have tired you more than you expected. You need proper rest, yes?” She’s looking at me like I’ve gone a little loco, her cute button nose wrinkled up and her wide hazel eyes narrowed to tiny little slits. How am I going to return to Harksbury after telling them all off? Maybe knocking my head wouldn’t be that bad. Stay calm. That’s what everyone says about emergencies. You have to stay calm and everything will resolve itself. “Yes. Let me, uh, let me go grab my shoes.” I hobble, barefoot, down the walk and retrieve my pumps, jam my feet back into them, and then follow her back to the carriage. The servants are silent, but I know they’re staring at me when my back is turned. I have to pull it together. I can’t just lose it like that, throwing my shoes like I’m in a shot-put competition. If I think clearly, maybe I’ll come up with a real plan. But until then, my name is Rebecca. I am a prim and proper Regency girl. I wear dresses and I curtsy. I belong here.

My feet hurt. I needed some new shoes. Or maybe it was high time I got in shape. I was six-three in my socks, heavy enough with muscle, but my gut was starting to show the influence of a few too many beers. I could join a gym. Pump some iron, run on a treadmill while staring at a TV talk show twenty inches in front of my face. Do time on the elliptical next to some flabby gasper in spandex. Or maybe I just needed better shoes.

As soon as I see myself in that dress, but with bare feet, I ask the salesgirl to bring me some classic black pumps. Louboutins, just because the soles are as red as blood. Bloody shoes. And now I’m singing Cardi B again in my head. I’ve only ever liked rock or metal in the past, but she’s making me feel like a bad bitch today, so how can I say no?

pompe /pɔ̃p/ I. nf 1. (appareil) pump • ~ à bicyclette | bicycle pump 2. ○(chaussure) shoe 3. (apparat) pomp • en grande ~ | with great pomp 4. ○ (exercice) press-up (GB), push-up • faire des ~s | to do push-ups 5. ◑[soldiers' slang] • (classe) soldat de première ~ | lance corporal • soldat de seconde ~ | private II. nfpl vanities • les ~s de Satan | Satan's pomps III. Idiomes 1. avoir un coup de pompe | to be knackered (familier) (GB) ou pooped (familier) 2. à toute pompe○ | at top speed, as quickly as possible 3. marcher or être à côté de ses pompes○ | not to be with it, to be away with the fairies (familier)

freeze freeze freeze makes me a little self-conscious too. The words come out a little tentative. Almost like a request. But I had with me the greatest conversation-stopper ever made: a pump-action shotgun. At the cost of one unfired shell, I could make the kind of sound that would freeze any three men to any three spots in the world. The most intimidating noise ever heard. Crunch crunch. My ejected shell hit the leaves at my feet and the three guys froze solid. I said, “Now the rifles hit the deck.” Normal voice, normal pitch, normal tone. The sandy-haired guy dropped his rifle first. He was pretty damn quick about it. Then went the older guy, and last of the three came the wiry one. “Stand still now,” I said. “Don’t give me a reason.” Normal voice, normal pitch, normal tone. They stood reasonably still. Their arms came up a little, out from their sides, slowly, and they ended up a small distance from their bodies, where they held them. They spread their fingers. No doubt they spread their toes inside their boots and sneakers and shoes. Anything to appear unarmed and undangerous. I said, “And now you take three big paces backward.” They complied, all three guys, all three taking exaggerated stumbling steps, and all three ending up more than a body’s length from their rifles. I said, “And now you turn around.” Chapter 52 I had never seen any of them before. After the slow spin the older guy had ended up facing me on my left. He was completely unknown to me. He was just a guy, not very significant, a little pouchy and worn. The guy in the middle was the sandy-haired one. He was like the older man would have been, had he grown up twenty years later and

Merle took off to hide his front end under a dining room chair, ass in the air like always, as I scooped up the shoe he’d been gnawing on like a damn rawhide bone. “Just a shoe?” I asked in a deadly-quiet voice. “Just a shoe? This is a goddamned Manolo Blahnik! It cost four hundred and seventeen dollars!” I stared down at the ravaged shoe in my hand and felt a whimper bubble up from my chest. I swear to God, I was this close to crying as I looked down at my poor, ruined baby. “Holy shit! You paid four hundred and seventeen dollars for a pair of friggin’ shoes?” Trevor asked in astonishment. “Are you insane!” “Nooo, I said this shoe cost four hundred and seventeen dollars. As a pair, they cost eight thirty-five!” I shouted like the math made the situation more understandable. “Fuck me, cher. It’s a shoe. You walk around with it on your foot; you don’t live in the damn thing! You’re telling me that ugly-ass thing cost more than I paid in rent for a month at my apartment?” I sucked in an audible gasp. How dare he call my precious ugly. “Take it back,” I whispered. “What?” Trevor looked at me like I was a crazy person. “Take it back. This shoe is not ugly. It’s stunning,” I said, holding it to my chest and giving it a loving stroke. He let out a sarcastic grunt and eyeballed the pump like it was garbage. “Not so stunning covered in dog slobber,” he laughed. And I was a second away from stabbing him with the chewed-up stiletto heel. Those shoes deserved to be praised. They deserved to be worn to the most expensive restaurants and balls and red carpet premiers! And they deserved to be buried with dignity in the backyard under my pretty oak tree. And I didn’t think I was being ridiculous at all!

The sound of my heels clicking against the floorboards bolsters my spirits. Grandma Belle used to say that a woman wearing her best red heels and favorite red lipstick can accomplish anything. There is some truth to her words. When Grandma Belle donned her red pumps and a glossy coat of Dior Rouge, she fairly glowed with an inner confidence that reduced men to obedient puppies. While I do not possess the classic beauty of Grandma Belle, nor do I think Macon Saint will ever act anything close to an obedient puppy, I do admit to feeling a bit more powerful in my red suede Jimmy Choos and Ruby Woo lipstick.