lucky shoes, lucky in love?

Ana gingerly opened the box, again, feeling slightly queasy. This was the second time that she had opened the box, only there was an outer sarcophagus made of corrugated cardboard and packing tape to cut through first. After discarding the styrofoam packing peanuts, she finally found the brown box with the white loopy type on the lid, and opened it. We were like new again, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Her shoes were brought back to life by the sorcerers at Louboutin.

She pulled us out of the box, and slipped us on her pedicured feet. She had a date, with the guy that she referred to as "Kazinsky's friend". Kazinsky's friend's name was actually Brian, but her relationships were so fleeting that she didn't really talk about men by name, but by who her friends might know who may know her date. So, this one had been dubbed Kazinsky's friend, after the incredibly geeky guy who worked in the information technology department at the university, fixing networks and recovering accidentally deleted files.

Brian dropped by her apartment later that night and picked her up in his new F-150, and took her to the city to a fairly swanky Italian restaurant with cloth napkins, oversized white plates, and candlelit tables. Everything was perfect, including us, her beautiful lucky Louboutin shoes. They played footsie under the table, and she felt that they had a connection. After the dinner was over, he asked for the check and suggested that they walk downtown and admire the canal and street performers.

"But my shoes," she said, looking down at us as she spoke apologetically.

"That's fine, I'll just get my truck from the valet and we'll just go back to my apartment. It's nearby, do you want to watch a movie?" he asked. She agreed, and after the movie, they sat on his black leather couch inside a townhouse apartment downtown. Everything was going well, and this was their sixth date. She was a rules girl and had finally felt it was time to take it to the sheets.

Afterward, she laid in his bed, falling asleep. He nudged her, and said, "Hey, I think you should go now."

"But it's 2 am, and I don't have my car here, can't I stay?" she asked, confused and bewildered.

"Yeah, well at this stage in our relationship, I don't think it's a good idea that you sleep over," he said.

"What am I supposed to do?" she asked.

"I'll call a cab," he said, picking up his phone.

"Don't bother," she said and walked to the door. It was 5 steps away, but she was there in three.

"Hey, hey, hey! Why are you leaving like this?" he asked.

"Because you're an asshole," she said, thinking about how absurd it was that he was going to send her on a $50 cab ride alone, at 2 am.

"Look, I'm sorry, I just don't feel it's appropriate at this point in our relationship," he repeated. She whipped out her cell and text messaged a friend who was in the city that night, clubbing. She then walked out the door, and waited for her friend to pick her up. There was a homeless man sleeping on the sidewalk across the street, and she pleaded to God that her friend would pick her up soon, so she could take off her shoes, shower, and go to bed.

if the shoe doesn't fit, don't wear it.

She lifted the lid of my tan box, knowing that she had just made a good investment. But like all good investments, this one had to be handled carefully. This investment had cost her a great deal of money so she gingerly unfolded the tissue paper and took me out of the box.

"God, I hope they fit," she said, thinking about the pain that cheap shoes with five-inch heels had caused in the past. She was a model when she was a teenager, mainly doing plus-sized catalogues, skincare plugs, and commercials for local businesses. But now she had to be a model of good behavior and corporate class, and I was perfect for her.

I sat in the box at the top of her closet for a week after she tried me on. Then she took me out. I mean she really took me out. We went to a fancy dinner at a swanky corporate club in a city that was a hub for the oil industry, and there was champagne and cocktails and glittering conversation, but she was really quite bored with it. This was her father's domain, not hers.

After an hour, she excused herself, got into her own mid-nineties truck parked across the street, and went across town to the other side of the tracks. There she met her friend, a bleached blonde who stuffed her bra frequently and wore low-slung bootleg jeans to showcase her butterfly tramp stamp. Worse, her shoes were the cheap PVC kind sold at the likes of Walmart. Absolutely no class, but we greeted them anyway.

She didn't exactly kick us off, but she was tired of standing in us for an hour, making polite conversation so she placed us by the door and went to the restroom to change clothes. The two girls, conversed in fluent Spanish, and watched "Sin Senos No Hay Paraíso." After watching that, they watched a couple of episodes from the 5th season of another popular show, and then they both retired to bed. The next morning, we didn't go home.

The next week, we smelled of cheap vodka and even cheaper beer as the bleached blonde sleepily pressed buttons on her cell phone as it beeped annoyingly. My heel hurt and my mate's vamp exposed a gaping wound. Eventually, the beautiful former model picked up the phone.

"Hey, how are you? I haven't heard from you in a week! I hope everything is going okay, but listen, I really can't talk right now, I'm studying for a physics test right now so can we talk later?" she asked, without breathing.

"Yeah, whatever, but listen, I have something to tell you. You left your shoes here," the trashy blonde said while picking the cuticle that surrounded her fake nails.

"What shoes?" the busy girl who hadn't unpacked her bag said.

"Well...I wore them to the club last night," the blonde said as some random guy snored on the couch. The sex was great though, she thought.

"What shoes? And why were you wearing my shoes? Don't you wear a 9 1/2? I don't think those could be mine, I wear a 7 1/2," the busy girl asked quizzically. The blonde was evading her questions, and she was getting annoyed.

"The ones with the red sole," the blonde said.

"You broke my Louboutins? What the Hell were you doing wearing my shoes to some club? Do you have any idea how much those shoes cost?"

"Whatever, I'll give you $200 for them," the blonde said defensively. Sounds like a good investment just turned sour.

"No, just send them to me," the busy girl said, and hung up the telephone.