The Spiked Heel

They went back into the churning morass of bodies on the floor, and this time they became a part of the exhibition. Where she had strained to keep her body away from his before, she did not resist now. Where he had tried to keep a loose arm around her waist earlier, he found his arm tightening now. They were naked again, but this time they had tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and the evil was good, and they used their bodies together, and they enjoyed each other’s nakedness. He was excited this time, and he knew she could feel his excitement through the thinnness of her dress, and he felt her straining against him, and he pulled her closer and closer, tighter and tighter, and then all at once the shame hit both of them again, but this time it was a shame bred of guilt. The glow of the alcohol had suddenly evaporated, and with it the sham gay world they had consciously created. They pulled away from each other simultaneously, avoid each other’s eyes, not wanting to touch each other again. Their intimacy had been falsely generated. They had behaved like lovers when they were not yet even friends, and the knowledge was a little shocking — and a little disgusting.

They left Skippy’s, and they drove down Central Avenue and then down Jerome Avenue and onto the Concourse. They did not speak much. They listened to the music on the radio, and they listened to the snickering slap of the windshield wipers and the gentle whisper of the tires against wet asphalt. They both knew the night had been a failure, and so they did not speak of it.

Amazingly, they bore no enmity toward each other. They parted as friends who had been through something of an ordeal together.

He told her he would see her on Monday, at the factory. She smiled and thanked him for a wonderful evening, and he lied back and said no, thank you.

He unlocked her door for her, and she took his hand and squeezed it warmly for an instant, in perhaps the first honest display of emotion either of them had felt all evening long.

He did not kiss her good night.

She disappeared into the blackness of the waiting room, and then she closed the door gently.

He walked out into the rain.

7

Dave Stiegman tapped the letter in his hand and then threw it across the desk to Ed Posnansky.

“What the hell is this guy talking about?” he asked. It was a mild day for March, and from the sixteenth-floor suite of the Chrysler Building he could see New York lying at his feet.

Posnansky extended his short thin frame and reached for the letter. He adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses and then began reading. Stiegman watched him, waiting for his reaction. In the street below, he could hear the moving stream of traffic and people. He suddenly wanted to go down there in the street, watching skirts blowing, seeing pretty legs. America has very pretty legs, he thought. Stiegman was a married man who had begun to feel the itch. The itch was very strong in Stiegman. He put the feeling aside and tried to concentrate on shoes.

“He’s crazy,” Posnansky said, tossing the letter back to the desk.

“He may be crazy,” Stiegman answered, “but he says we shipped him a pair of house slippers, and he says he still has them in the box to prove it.”

“Now why in hell would we ship him a pair of house slippers?” Posnansky asked. “We don’t even make house slippers.”

“He says they were old house slippers,” Stiegman said.

“He’s nuts. Every week, one of our vast consuming public sends us a crank letter like this one. We had one last week from some old bag in Iowa who said the white skin on her cobra shoe was turning blue. Now, how the hell could it turn blue? These people must think we’re all idiots here.”

Stiegman shrugged and consulted the letter again. This was not a crank letter from one of the “vast consuming public.” This was a complaint from a big account, and Titanic sure as hell wouldn’t appreciate a foul-up of this sort if it came to their attention.

“He says he ordered thirty pair, fifteen of which were our Flare pattern, which is going very well with him.”

“I read the letter,” Posnansky said. “He’s nuts.”

“He says he was going through the belly sizes,” Stiegman went on, unperturbed, “when he found a pair of house slippers in place of the 7A he’d ordered.”

“You know what he can do with his house slippers, don’t you?” Posnansky said.

“Oh, come on, Ed, give me a little attention, will you? If the son of a bitch got house slippers, he’s got a legitimate beef.”

“How could he get house slippers from us?” Posnansky asked. “He probably gets his slippers from another outfit, and he’s trying to stick us for a pair of shoes. Can’t you see he’s a chiseler?”

“This is our biggest account in Philly,” Stiegman said quietly.

“Big outfits can be crooks, too.”