Page 110 of Someone Else's Shoes
Nisha looks suddenly unsettled. She waits as Aleks extracts each red high heel from his bag and he hands them to her carefully. She places them in a neat pair on the coffee-table in front of her.
‘They’re really pretty,’ says Grace, and Jasmine squeezes her shoulder.
‘Mad, isn’t it?’ says Andrea. ‘All that for one pair of shoes.’
It takes Sam a moment to register the way Nisha is staring at them.
‘Do you know what’s weird?’ Nisha says. ‘I don’t even care.’
‘Don’t care about what?’ Jasmine turns down the music.
‘The shoes. Look at them.’
They look at the shoes. And then, with less certainty, at Nisha.
‘They’re a game to him. A way to keep me running around. I think I actually hate them. They are the perfect summation of our marriage. All show. Me running around after him like a fool, dressed like a fucking show pony. Him pulling the strings. You know my son thinks they’re not even real Louboutins?’
‘But you’ve got them now,’ says Andrea, reassuringly. ‘And that means he has to give you what you’ve asked for. He has to give you a settlement.’
‘No,’ says Nisha. ‘There’s something off here. I don’t get why he would be so obsessed with one pair of shoes.’
‘It doesn’t matter why he wants them,’ says Aleks. ‘A deal’s a deal. You’ve done your bit.’
Nisha holds one of the shoes, suddenly angry, then puts it down again. ‘I mean, what the fuck is this? I was married to him for almost two decades, bore his son, gave my life over to his, gave him everything he wanted. I lost the best friend I ever had because he said I shouldn’t be friends with someone like her – and I let him persuade me. I let him tell me who I should be friends with. And after all this he humiliates me by making me run around after a pair of myown shoes?’
Sam stares at the glossy shoes, at Nisha’s contorted face. The atmosphere in the room has changed suddenly, the joy of the past hours evaporating. Jasmine and Andrea exchange glances. Nobody seems to know what to say.
‘They don’t even fit her, you know, if that’s why he wants them. She has clown feet. Actual clown feet. I hate them,’ Nisha says. ‘Almost as much as I hate him.’
‘Babe. Sit down,’ says Jasmine, reaching an arm out. ‘You’re spinning out. It’s okay.’
Nisha looks down at Aleks, who is still sitting. His face is full of sympathy, of understanding.
‘The shoes mean nothing,’ he says soothingly. ‘They are nothing. Just a means to an end. Think about your future. What they will win you. This is all that matters.’
‘Get her another drink, Aleks,’ Andrea says.
‘I don’t want another drink.’ Nisha stares at the shoes, sitting on the coffee-table. And then almost on impulse she picks one up, turns it over carefully in her hands. She looks at them, her face dark.
‘Babe. Seriously …’ Jasmine begins.
‘He said I had to bring him the shoes, right? That was the deal. But he didn’t say they had to be inone piece.’ Before anyone can stop her – amid the shouted protests toStop! Stop!– she is wrenching at the shoe, pulling at it, bracing it over her knee until with acrackthe heel comes off in her hand. And out of it spills a glittering shower of diamonds.
The room falls completely silent.
‘What the fuck?’ says Jasmine. Nisha stares at the hollow heel in shock. And then at the floor.
Aleks is the first on his knees. He carefully scoops up a small handful of the tiny gemstones and deposits them one by one on the coffee-table, where they sit, glinting under the overhead light, dotted with carpet fluff and tortilla crumbs. Nisha makes to speak but no sound comes out.
‘Okay,’ says Jasmine, tilting her head to one side. ‘Well, I guess he really did want the shoes.’
A group of kids are wheelie-ing their bikes up and down the walkways outside Jasmine’s apartment, catcalling to each other and dropping firecrackers on the paving. One has a small moped, and occasionally Nisha hears the roar of its engine and thethunk thunk thunkof its rider taking it down a small flight of concrete steps, the squeals of occasional girl passengers. Normally this would have left her wild with rage. But tonight she barely registers it. She lies in the narrow bunk bed, her mind humming as she thinks about the ramifications of what was in the shoes, the discussions they had in the last sober hour before everyone left.
Everything has become horribly clear to her now: the way Carl would insist she wear them as they travelled between countries, even though they were frankly uncomfortable for flying; his rage when he discovered they were no longer in her possession. He had used her like a mule. How many times had she unwittingly transported gems for him? They had prised off the other heel and there were more diamonds in the left shoe. None of them knew their value, but sheguessed it was in the region of hundreds of thousands of dollars, perhaps more. The diamonds are a good size, beautifully cut; the largest is the width of her thumbnail. They had no magnifying-glass in the tiny apartment but she would bet on superior clarity.
‘Oh, my God, babe. There’s your settlement.’ Jasmine had placed her hands on her knees, leaning forward to gaze at them. ‘There. Is. Your. Settlement.’
Andrea had murmured to herself, ‘It’s like a story. Now you can tell him to get stuffed.’
