brown eyed shoe

You wouldn't believe the length a size thirteen dress shoe with an extra inch of rubber sole combined at stern and bow and a size twelve Doc boot add together and leave little room when placed under a twin bed. Split up four other pairs of shoes and you have the under-bed space I work with for footwear. Accessible from both sides of the bed, the rows of three line up an inch or two behind the rail because my toes tread deliberately in my room and use the space up to my ankle and shin. So the shoes are pulled out, you see? Leaving a narrow hallway underneath for a seventh pair of shoes. Single file down the the carpet, my new bought brown shoes have their one place to go. If something would ever happen to me and they came flipping over mattresses looking for the loot, they'd peer past the woods slats and see those shoes, folded pants my hangers are too weak to hold and flat and square anythings against the back wall. They'd think, "Neat guy. He stacks his pajama pants on top of his chappy-like pants and piles his jeans separately."

An instant-found use for the packaged cushion insert soles. White, with breathing holes, requiring no trimming at the perfect size 12, there are actually two pairs per package. As in, four separate slips all kissing each other in the package. OR there is one pair of extra thick soles. At a buck a pop, I double up and insert slips white up and white down.

The shoes I bought are a brown. They cost $6. That's $3 a shoe. The story of a gently used pair of size 12 (US) Florsheim shoes is there. It has to be. Some man took care of these. Not a junior whose feet kept growing. I was looking for shoes. I think I am always looking for $10-$15 shoes. That's a pretty tight squeeze with no room for spender blisters, I know. I find them when I can and pay more when I have to.

Like a babies' accurate age, I am learning by sight to say, "Too small; foot won't fit." From the top see-through-to-the-other-side-to-see-a-woman-reading-the-twice-quantity-of-shoes shelf, pulled down, toe angled and looking for a number, it was the only pair I would have wanted to wear. I had time in the afternoon. I switched two boots for two shoes and gave them an honest try circling the furniture. Feel good. A little different feeling in the right shoe like he'd been on crutches for three months. "They are $6. I have bought Florsheim before."

I bought pants that were not ironed before someone bagged them, two steals on badly needed belts, Kenneth Branagh's four hour Hamlet and Steve Martin's 130 page Shopgirl. I'm not really the kind to imagine how two characters would meet. 

The court side announcer asks, "Is it the shoes?" I'm telling you it is. When your foot fits into someone else's once shoe - a man who possibly dragged his left leg a little or clipped it sweeping it inside his car door or sticking it out and getting stepped on.

It's the soles that make them mine. The white against the brown reappearing as I spin a shoe in my hands. They were tight last night, but I wore them until I slept and they're looser. Over the last months I have been using small things I own that have been hidden - Gold Bond, a bed sheet and spare keys. Newly put to use is a shoe horn. N-ever used before. Necessary now.