Many moon pies ago Randal of L’ennui mélodieux and I entered into an arrangement. Here was the deal, I would write a sports piece if Randal would write about shoes. I kept my end of the bargain here, here and here. Randal was not as quick to put his shoes where his mouth was. I gently reminded him whenever an opportunity arose that he owed me a shoe or two.
Yesterday, as I wrote a post about what I wanted from Santa, Randal wrote a post entitled, “How will I ever weasel out of this one?” in which he gave me more than I could have ever asked from Santa and more than is possible to achieve in a single shoe post. Randal describes his post: ‘Though this isn’t The Shoe Post®, as I’ve yet to replace my nearly falling apart sneakers, this is far more creative in its own twisted way than that post could ever hope to be. Pardonnes-moi, ton amie, mais ton histoire, postscript. “
Randal has gone and written a story inspired by this weasel’s love of Holden Caufield in the Catcher in the Rye that made this weasel cry. This gorgeous literary offering is now and will forever more be in the file of “things I most treasure.” I am absolutely sure you will love it as much as I do. Thank you Randal for letting me post it here. Et merci beaucoup mon ami por votre histoire tres belle.
This rye is dry
She sipped le café the way a nurse, through years and years of training for weaving through mountainous student loan debt thrown at her by irate patients and the occasional, arrogant doctor, would nurse hers. Yet she wasn’t a sipper but a dreamer roaming fields of rye and playing catch with Josh Gibson and Johnny Bench and Roy Campanella and Phoebe — no, no, no, that’s all wrong. Hold on a moment. Hold on. Holden.
Everywhere her eyes, framed by hair the color of a crackling match, glanced, she saw him. Why he should deign to be in this slate-grey, nondescript, yet overpriced, brasserie at 24, boulevard des Italiens, especially when he was once upon a time, and has remained so, a work of fiction, her heart refused to answer.
Everything was grey. The tables, the light fixtures, the marble counter and the glasses of varying width and height seated upon it, the beer tap, the wallpaper of wine bottles, the wood paneling, the patrons. Oh sure, your eyes would have told you that you saw waves of brown tinted with blue and red and green, perhaps a dash of gold, black leather or a sliver of silver, but they would be lying, obfuscating. Grey was all her eyes, framed by hair the color of a child’s red Crayola, saw.
“Monsieur, monsieur, je n’ai pas demandé le pain de seigle.” The waiter turned to look at her, but his grey eyes and his grey smile spoke as if she had uttered something in Tocharian A. She was sure that she had spoken proper, if with an American accent, French. After disappearing and reappearing from the back within mere moments as if he were a figment of the camera’s imagination — she hadn’t noticed any doors — le garçon had brought her another plate of dry, rye bread. Grey, dry, rye bread.
Valencia, with its veil of shining smog, was a lifetime away. She pushed the grey, dry, rye bread away towards a Paris, its mirror image, its evil twin, lying in wait, hiding in the dark flagstones and darker pavement. She cupped her chin in her hand and sighed, her elbow nearly slipping on the slick, Orange Glo-ed surface. She knew that scent, every Yankee did, and stifled a laugh at the notion of such a faux fancy place, ha ha ha HA ha, stooping to use a low-class product, blissfully unaware of those that were, after all, aware.
The walls of wine bottles were lit by the flat rays of a dying sun shooting off the passing parade of chaussures éteintes traipsing their elegantly bourgeois way towards l’Opéra Garnier; she wondered what was playing. Such a patent leather sheen, if there had indeed been a sheen instead of slabs of rain-saturated clouds masquerading as shoes, could be dangerous to caribous and barbies, she thought. A brainstorm of nonsequiturism rooted in nothing but grey particulars was rudely interrupted by the stark sequitur of a single red shoe and a ray, not of weak light, but of passionate fire blasting off that rich patch of scarlet to shatter the windows, sending shards 360° in brazen defiance of the laws of physics, except for those really colossal explosions you see in the best action movies and random episodes of CSI.
The flame disappearing within the superheat and a sparkle of blowback feeding upon itself, streaks of charcoal air drew themselves over her eyes, the wan electric lights outside immediately painted the soft glow of a gaslit century long gone save in the history books and those of bad fiction. Waxing heartbroken over her unfulfilled dreams would have to wait as the shrapnel continued on its path, deadly to any mortal foolish enough to be on that road and not another, quality of soul and of sole be damned. A solid heel might come in handy when sprinting away from — just dive already!
Only the unnursed but sipped cup catching the rocketing shards saved her ducking brain from being split into the halves swimming in formaldehyde situated on a black bed of that waxy goo segmented worms were cruelly pinned down to during high school biology by a maniacal instructor always decked out in ugly black hornrims and a hideous tie. This way and that the patrons scattered, les garçons, les femmes, les chiens, les belettes.
“Phonies, all of ‘em. Are you alright?”
Still shaken and unsure if she had heard a voice or merely the reverberations of that hellish conflagration, she was aware enough to realize she was prone. And uninjured. Fiercely closing her eyes in order to wash the fine detritus from them with manufactured tears, she opened them just as quickly to see a being with one red shoe.
Looking up at a hand seemingly suspended in midair, she directed her gaze further into the hot, swirling dust to see not a ghost, but a flesh and blood man.
“Here, let me help you. I’m Holden.”
