Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes

There was only one computer in our apartment and it wasn’t mine.

I gently turned the knob on the door to Hillary’s bedroom, tiptoed over toward her computer, tried not to trip over anything in the dark—“Ouch!”—and shushed myself, silently cursed my own clumsiness and immediately thanked my stars I hadn’t woken her, sat down in her desk chair, turned on the monitor and Googled the obvious.

The PDF file for all things Jimmy Choo was on the screen before me—the Asha, the Asha, I really wanted the Asha!—when…

“Delilah, just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

But I was too caught up in the pretty images on the screen before me to feel as appropriately guilty, snagged and embarrassed as I might otherwise have felt.

“Oh, never mind that.” I pooh-poohed her. “Look. Look!”

“I don’t want to look,” Hillary said, totally peeved and sporting quite a case of bed head, I must say. “I want my sleep.” She grabbed the mouse and moved it toward the shut-down menu. “And I want you to—”

“No!” I stopped her hand. Then, feeling totally contrite, I wheedled, “Please look.”

“Oh, all right.”

At first, she just looked annoyed, but as I ceded control of the mouse and she started to click on the images of the shoes and boots and sandals, enlarging some of the images as I had done earlier…

“Well—” she was still resisting the pull “—I’m not crazy about some of the red ones.”

“Oh, me, neither,” I said quickly, trying to sound agreeable. And it really wasn’t much of a stretch since, despite red being one of my favorite colors, the red pairs didn’t grab me as much as the others.

I saw her eyes stray back toward the comfort of her rumpled sheets. Thinking I couldn’t let her get away, since I really did need a cohort here, if for nothing else than to keep me from being so lonely in the midst of my own obsessions, I grabbed the mouse back and quickly clicked on a different image.

“Look at this,” I said eagerly.

It was the Asha.

“Oh, my!” Hillary said, her eyes going all glittery, as my own had no doubt done a short time ago.

“And this,” I said, clicking again.

It was the Ghost, which was maybe even more spectacular than the Asha, if such a thing were possible.

“Oh, my!” Hillary said again.

“And this.” I clicked one last time.

It was the Parson Flat.

“I would buy that shoe!” she trumpeted.

I knew the Parson Flat would get her.

“How much…?” she started to ask.

In another second, she’d be racing for her Dooney & Bourke bag to fish out her Amex.

“But that’s the whole problem!” I all but whined.

“What?” Hillary said. “Are they too much money?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I keep clicking around, but I don’t see any prices here.”

“Oh, dear,” Hillary said. “That’s never good.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you ever eaten in a restaurant where they don’t list the prices on the menu?”

“Um, no. Who do you think I am, you?”

“Trust me, it’s never cheap when they don’t list the prices.”

We both stared at the screen.

I tried on a nonchalant shrug.

“So?” I said. “How expensive can a little bit of leather and maybe some glitter be?”

“Who knows?” Hillary said. “But I’m guessing very.”

“There’s only one way to find out,” I said.

“Hmm?” She was still transfixed by the Parson Flats.

“Road trip!”

“Oh, no,” she said, successfully tearing her gaze away. “This is your insanity, not mine.”

“Please.” I was back in wheedle mode. “Wouldn’t you like to at least see if you could afford them?”

Before she could answer, I clicked to the part of the catalog where boutique locations were listed. I didn’t think I’d ever persuade her to go to London or Dublin or Milan or Moscow or Kuwait City or Hong Kong, Korea, Bangkok or even São Paulo to shop for shoes, although I suppose Paris might have been nice. Hillary always said she wanted to see Paris. But at least I could try…

“There are two stores right in Manhattan,” I said. “One in the Olympic Tower on Fifth Avenue, the other on Madison. We could each use a day off from work. Come on, just one day. Nobody says we have to buy anything…”

“If I say yes, can I go back to sleep?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

Five minutes later…

“And turn off that computer!”

“Sorry.”