The start of this piece is slow journey. It unfolds. Go with its flow, as you would on a hot, sultry summer day. The erotic rewards are towards the end. This is work of fiction created purely from my imagination. Any resemblance of the characters to people alive or dead is totally coincidental.
*****
Madeline looks out of the open kitchen window. It is still too early in the day for the languid summer heat to take away the pleasure of opening up the house to the outside. The scent of the bright red roses drifts in on the soft humid air.
Alone. Monday. The kids' routine weekend visit passed with fun and humor. They were now at work. The training manual was complete and delivered. No comments were expected back for at least two weeks with everyone away on vacation. Madeline smiles at her joy for the computer revolution that allows her to work from home, at her own rhythm.
She also smiles at the happy confluence of her hubby Alfred's, absence at a Leadership Development Course, stemming from his recent promotion. Not that she can figure out how it will really benefit an aging accountant who works mainly on his own. Corporate policies are often baffling.
"The whole week", she thought, and rolls the freedom and delicious solitude around in her mind. It had been so long since she was last alone and free. Time for reflection. Time for discovery and adventure. Time for making plans.
Yet her thoughts momentarily turn back to the past. Her upbringing in the big city. The move to this provincial centre. The husband who died. The transitional gap for grieving. The Good Man who is now her husband and companion; a safe haven to take her into her old age. Religious and modest, making no demands. Always seeking a consensus. The kids now settled into jobs "with prospects", as her authoritarian mother used to say. Life was good. And sometimes dull.
She remembered the small incident about ten years earlier when she had a one-afternoon "stand" in a shoe shop. There was the wild and silly orgy at the Spa where she finally came out of her grieving, and long before she met staid Alfred, with his once a month, whether they needed it or not.
Madeline's random retrospective thoughts make her horny. She shakes herself and decides quickly she would go into town to have a leisurely coffee at highly touted new coffee bar. She dresses in fashionable light slacks and summer sleeveless blouse with one of her fancier lacy bras, since her bra tended to show through the thin material of the outer garment. She finishes her ensemble with the wide brimmed straw hat with the outrageous red, mock flower sewn onto the hatband.
Shoes were a problem since her favourite pumps had developed a hole in the sole. So she chooses some nondescript white summer sailing shoes with tan canvas tops to them. She sails out the door and arrives at the bus stop just in time to catch the 9:30 bus. Madeline quietly curses that they no longer had two cars, and Alfred had taken their wagon to the airport long term parking because he was too cheap to take the Limousine. But Madeline always copes with every situation.
The coffee bar proves to be a disappointment and the phalanx of older women, who, along with herself, had the same idea, were not the people she wishes to be around. Later, the slow, meandering window-shopping takes Madeline away from the centre of town to nearly the end of shopping area. A parallel road two blocks over also has shops, so Madeline cuts into a narrow side street, not much more than an alley, to traverse to the second street that can take her back into the centre.
The cool of the shade makes Madeline realize that the sun is getting fierce. After a few moments to become accustomed to the chill of the shadowed streetscape, she realizes there are a series of older stores that immediately remind her of the neighbourhood she grew up in. Memories of her childhood in the large city flood back to her. As quickly as these memory flashes took hold, they ebb away. She suddenly feels right at home in this older part of town.
The pharmacy inside is much like any other pharmacy. Madeline buys some suntan lotion for her arms, after checking it had no scent. Moving on she lingers at the windows of the series of antique stores that had taken root in this quiet alley. One store catches her attention, so she wanders in, and ends up purchasing a silver spoon.
As Madeline approaches the far end of the alley her attention is caught by a double shop front with the front door deeply centred between the two display windows. One window had a wonderful collection of old wooden shoe lasts of various sizes and shapes. In the other window she spots a beautiful low heeled pump in a opalescent green-blue, flanked by the most magnificent pair of thigh high patent leather boots. Looking up she spots the hand painted sign, "William Edward T. Quinn." With a smaller sub-announcement, "Fine Leather Works."
Madeline is immediately drawn to the door to sample the fine leather works. As she enters, the tall door creaks a little, and an old fashioned spiral spring with a bell on it announces her arrival.
Madeline is immediately struck by the soft smell of tanned leather. The richness of the odor makes her shudder and relax at the same time, A sense of luxury is created.
She immediately finds herself on a wide soft blue carpet runner that stretches down the centre to mirrors at the back of the store. Facing onto, and either side, of the carpet are three blue leather chairs with arms. Both of the flank walls display the shoes on neat wooden shelves resembling an old library. The look is modern, though, with the lighting carefully placed to show the merchandise off to best advantage. The floor in front of the display cases has been left bare to show the old wide, pine planks. The floor squeaks under foot.
At the back of he store there are two tall mirrors set at forty five degree angles away from each other, jutting out like the prow of a boat. The mirror is flanked by doorways. The right hand door is open and is clearly the stock room, and the other door is firmly closed with a clear "Staff Only" label on it. Madeline assumes that the staff doorway leads to the workshop.
Madeline suddenly becomes aware of being watched. Over her right shoulder she spots a totally bald headed man who was reading in a chair in a slight recess behind the window display of lasts. He smiles at her, and then nods in a friendly, almost knowing manner.
"Look around", he says, waving his hand towards the displays.
"Women's shoes on the left." Madeline, a little flustered from the surprise at the sudden appearance of the man, does as she is bid. And immediately her eyes alight on the shoes she saw in the window.
"May I try these on, please?"
The man raises his heavy set frame and moves lightly towards Madeline.
"What size?"
"Oh, six and a half, double A width."
"Do you mind if I measure them?"
"No, of course not."
The man brings the measuring frame, indicates where Madeline should sit, but before she can sit he proffers a hand.
"William Quinn, but call me Bill."
"Madeline Treasure. Yes, as in island."
She smiles breezily to forestall the usual burden of her married name. Madeline removes her hat and places it on the chair beside her. Bill sits on a stool in front of Madeline, lifts her left leg onto the angled stool face and removes her canvas topped pump. He gives the foot a gentle squeeze that echoes deep in Madeline's memory before moving to the right. The impulse stays only a moment. Bill measures the right foot, and gives it another cursory squeeze.
"Do you know your left foot is almost half a size larger than your right? I have the six and a half in stock but not the seven. I can stretch the left one overnight but it takes about a day and a half to stretch it properly. It has to be done slowly. It would take me a week to get sevens. We buy these shoes in. We do not make this one."
Madeline thought for a moment. "Let me try them on. If I like them on me, I can come back for them tomorrow." Madeline fell in love with the shoes on her feet. The left foot was tight as was usually the case. She walked up and down the carpet and had no hesitation is telling Bill she would take them and come back the following day. As she paid for the shoes with her Visa, Bill remarked,
"Could you make it late in the day, just before we close, at say six o'clock?"
Bill then added, "May I suggest you wear a skirt."
Pointing to the shoes, "These will look so much better with a skirt. Wear thigh high stockings. You know the type with the grip tops. And one final thing put on matching blue panties."
Madeline's eyes bulged wide at the last observation, and she blushed. She was flustered, gathering her Visa receipt, flew out towards the door, and remembering, retraced her steps to grab her hat, before bolting out. Going into the sunlight and taking one last glance at the display window she had an almost photographic image of the thigh-high boots impressed on her retina and then her mind.
Bill felt warm inside. Full circle he thought to himself. He remembered the unconscious favor she had done for him ten years earlier. He recognized her immediately in spite of the hat.
He recalled how the management had installed surveillance cameras in the store he managed and his love making with her had been recorded. He could still feel how he reacted when he was fired unceremoniously.
He recalled the struggle and the decision to get his own store. Bill felt the anxiety of making it work, the mortgage payments and the growing clientele. His present success and his partners were all due to that one afternoon of love with this wonderful woman, Madeline Treasure. She surely was a treasure. He was determined to explore what they had for a brief moment.
Yet a moment of annoyance crossed his mind as he thought how she had not given any hint of recognizing him. But he quickly pushed this poisonous thought away, telling himself that after contracting alopecia with its attendant hair loss and the weight gain, it was not surprising she did not know him. He looked forward to the following evening.
Madeline's hasty retreat does not stop until she was half way back to the centre of town. She stops and looks at her reflection in a shop window to adjust the angle of her hat. The comment about what she would wear had hit her like an erotic demand.
She was at the same time both appalled and aroused by the suggestion. Rather than deal with it in her normal manner, Madeline chose not to confront the conflicting emotions but let them slide to the back of her mind, yet the notion of blue panties rattled around like a sense of déjà vu.
A fine lunch at the newly renovated downtown Hotel, and renting of three videos, all quite forgettable, sees Madeline through to bedtime.
From the moment Madeline wakes the next day to mid afternoon time flies by as she copes with the crisis of her sick Persian cat, Mustifer. It was not until she arrives back at about teatime did she even think about collecting the shoes. She thinks of phoning and collecting them the next morning, but she was unable to find the number in the phone book, and rather than call 411, she has sufficiently collected herself to reconsider. She knew if she settled down there would be plenty of time to catch the 5:30 bus.
To get rid of the stickiness the rushing around had caused, Madeline showered and as she dressed she once more thought about the imperative she was under. Madeline looks at one dress and then another, before settling on a simple white shift with a scooped neck and no sleeves. The hem fell to just above her knees. She knew she had some blue thongs but consciously decides to wear white panties and bra, to match her white thigh high stockings... a concession to the request.
The shoes she wore the previous day matches the ensemble. Madeline glances at the clock and rushes to the door only to see the bus turning the corner and disappearing into the distance.
"Why can't the darn thing be late when you want it to be!" she mutters to herself. Madeline then grabs the phone book and phones for a cab.
