Dangling Feet at the Big un-Bang: Volume 1, Chapter 7
Desiree in her scrubs was a cool blue in the subdivision’s sundown shadows. As far as her customers went, she’d imagined hunks and slobs, gentlemen and lowlifes, husbands and bachelors, clerks and lawyers, the young and old, the lonely and awkward, buying pictures of her feet. She’d never mused over anyone who looked like this on the other end of the internet. Some kind of cinematic eccentric who dressed himself not in front of a mirror but as if he’d stepped through it, this grinning pumpkin-haired man who crossed such sundown shadows holding a soft, lemonade yellow shoebox.
“I had to be sure you received this gift personally. It’s too valuable to be left just anywhere.”
“Why were you in my house?”
“Someone left the door open. I called, I knocked; believe me when I tell you that I wiped my shoes.”
“I don’t leave the door open.”
“I swear on truth itself.”
Desiree looked from the shoebox to his orange eyes.
“What is it now?” he said. “Why look at me like that? Did I overdo the eyebrows?” They twirled high and gray before his burnt orange mane.
“If you’re supposed to be dressed up like some character, I’ve never seen it, I’ve never played it, and I don’t know anything about it,” said Desiree. “I’ve never been attracted to adult men who dress up in big kids’ costumes either. I’d tell you to grow up, but I’d prefer instead if you just went back behind your computer screen.”
The pumpkin-haired man petted his shoebox.
“It’s no costume; I did this all myself. Sometimes I think I just lack the confidence to be modest. But finally, I see you, Diotima, and I see confidence. Stable, consistent, flash-less, utilitarian eyebrows. There to warm up the emeralds in your eyes like earrings under earmuffs. Humbly set in your beautifully naked face. Such skin. You look like a statue moving all on its own, only made out of lotion! Sculpted not from clay but moisturizer. Touching your cheek would be like dipping my fingers in a jar of cream. So, this is the fabulous, beautiful, charming Diotima! This is the face above the feet! This,” and he patted the soft lemonade shoebox, “is a tribute to you.”
“It’s not a tribute for me then.” She held up a hand. “That’s close enough.”
“Desiree! Diotima! This is a tribute to all of you. To your slender hands, your spidery fingers. So graceful they remind me of piano keys. I feel like if I tapped the back of your knuckle, it would make a sound. It’s for your long beautiful brown hair, pulled back and tightening the grip of your widow’s peak, slick from a day’s hard greasy work. Psoriasis under your scalp like snow, as if you, Diotima, are wandering about in your own personal fairy tale. With your pointed pinks lips, you must pierce whoever you kiss. Stacking their lips to yours on a skewer. Your delicate nose chafing against theirs. Cheeks blushing red over your moles. Down to those two large adorable front teeth. I see all your proportioning went to your toes. If you could exchange one set of digits for the others, you’d have a toe-thee smile ready to light up billboards. Your pinky toes would make for incisors that would have men falling over one another for you to drain their blood.”
He teased lifting the lid.
“I’ll open it for you.”
Desiree responded in a stern voice generally reserved for belligerent patients and handsy men.
“Do you know what a rectal catheter is?”
The man stalled lifting the lid.
“I’m not up-to-date on your medical technology.”
“It’s a tube that goes up your ass. It has this little balloon on it. It gets all the shit out of you.”
“I see.”
“So, if you’re supposed to be some kind of clown-man, I routinely shove balloons up peoples’ asses. Now, what kind of pervert are you? How did you find me?”
“The most tasteful kind. The kind who doesn’t masturbate to a work of art. Which can’t be said of critics, consumers, academics, or even artists themselves.” He lifted the lid slightly and darkness peered out from the shoebox. “No, you’ll never find me at a gallery, holding a cocktail, staring wonder-drunk at a painting, searching for just the right smart-sounding thing to say to get the painting to come home with me.”
“Still full of shit.”
He tilted the box for her to see.
“I only came to give you these.”
The pumpkin-haired man extended the box to Desiree. He held his arms at full length, and the box far from his body, seemingly to assure Desiree there were no tricks or traps involved. She reached for the other end, arms fully extended too, and she grabbed the box and when she did, the pumpkin-haired man let go, and put his hands first in the air and then behind his back.
“I designed and made them myself.”
Laid in the box were a pair of high heels, and Desiree’s utilitarian eyebrows lifted in their shape of stunned surprise. It was a black and white open toed shoe, with a black wreath of feathered plumage for straps, one at the toes and another below the ankle. A small chain ran up the middle of the shoe through the wreaths. It was an inflexibly stiff chain sloping upward in the bend of Desiree’s foot, culminating in a hoop intended to clasp above the ankle. The small chain was neither shiny nor glittering, but almost feather delicate in how it looked, a swirl of white and black more like the barbed grit of pearls. The heel itself, a few inches in height, was made of three large links from a heavy chain, stacked on itself, and made of the same similarly delicate-looking material. It felt strong and solid when Desiree lifted it, scrutinized it. Instead of a soft cushion lining the insole was this black glass? a see-through obsidian? in the shape of a star’s silhouette, outside of which the shoe went bone-white. But it couldn’t be glass as she turned the shoe in her hand. It wasn’t see-through. It was seen-into. Within the black were what looked like so many red, green, blue, yellow, orange, purple, and white gems, seemingly expanding beyond the shoe itself, glowing as if hidden underwater at dark, unknown depths.
“Those are more befitting your beauty,” said the pumpkin-haired man. “More than your red pumps, or those green sandals, or the black bow ones, or the ones that look like wicker.”
As far as Desiree’s shoes went, he’d listed off four fan favorites.
“I don’t do dress up like this—whatever this . . . is,” and she indicated the man’s hair and wardrobe. “Bride of the joker stuff or whatever you have in mind. Not my thing.”
“I’m not asking to see you wear them. Can’t an artist be inspired? To create for something other than a vain commission? If you think your feet draw attention now, wear those and you’ll never want. You’ll do you a world of sweet good, Diotima, the lovely face above the feet.”
“Like I already told you, I don’t know what that means, or who that is, or what it’s supposed to be, but it’s not my name.”
The sun dropped another shade across the pumpkin-haired man’s darkening face.
“I’m sorry, foot artist. Do you prefer, This Little Piggy Screamed?”
Desiree formed a tighter grip on the shoe, either prepared to test the seeming delicacy of the heel, or to see if her knuckles really did make music when they struck.
But a raspy voice, worn weaker from yelling, called after “Daisy!” and soon Noreen was hobbling toward the pair, asking Desiree if she and this man had found her dog.
Which, in Desiree’s present naivete of the pumpkin-haired man, caused a mistimed wave of relief that she was rescued from this bizarre and unsettling interaction.
Next week on Dangling Feet at the Big un-Bang, the confrontation in the neighborhood grows. Is this the man responsible for the missing Daisy? Is he the stalker Desiree believes him to be? Are the police already on their way? Find out September 21st.
Author: Zachary Ryan
Zachary Ryan is just a guy who is excited to entertain you for a few short minutes.
