Stranger Things Happen

SHOE AND MARRIAGE

The glass slipper.

He never found the girl, but he still goes out, looking for her. His wife – the woman he married – she has the most beautiful smile. But her feet are too big.

This girl looks at him, but she doesn't smile. She's wearing too much makeup. Blue eyeliner put on like house paint, lipstick, mascara, sexy glitter dusted all over her face and bare shoulders. If he touched her, it would come off on his fingers, fine and gritty and sad. He doesn't touch her. The other women in the house, they've probably told her things. Maybe she recognizes him. These women are paid to be discreet, but once, afterwards, a woman asked him for his autograph. He tried to think of something appropriate to write. She didn't have a piece of paper, so instead he wrote on the back of a takeout menu. He wrote, I am a happy man. I love my wife very much. He underlined happy.

They stand awkwardly in this girl's tiny room. The room is too small and the bed is too big. They stand as far from the bed as possible, crowded up against the wall. On the wall are posters of celebrities, pictures that this girl has cut out from newspapers and fashion magazines. The people in these pictures are glossy like horses. They look expensive. He sees his wife with her beautiful smile, looking down at them from the wall. If he were to look carefully he would probably find himself on the wall as well, looking comfortable and already too much at home here. He doesn't look at the wall. He looks at this girl's feet.

He was never a very good dancer. What he loved were the women in their long wide skirts. When they danced, the heavy taffeta and silk hitched up and belled out and then you saw their petticoats. More silk, more taffeta – as if underneath that's all they were, silk and taffeta. Their shoes left thin gritty smears along the marble floor.

He never saw what kind of shoes they were wearing. Only hers. Perhaps they were all wearing slippers made of glass. Perhaps glass slippers were fashionable at the time. Her feet must have been so small. And she was a tall girl, too. She leaned against his arms, and he hovered over her for a minute. He could smell her hair. It was stacked up on top of her head, all pinned up in some sort of wavy knot, just there beneath his nose. It tickled his nose. It smelled warm. He was so happy. He must have had the silliest smile on his face. Her dress went all the way down to the floor. There were diamonds on the hem, which was silk. The dress made a silky slithery scratchy noise against the floor, like tiny tails and claws. It sounded like mice.

So these are the two things he still wonders about. What's under those skirts? Those other people dancing – were they as happy as he was?

In the garden, the clock struck twelve and she went – when she went, where did she go? He never found that girl. He finds other girls.

(These girls) this girl (they don't wear) she isn't wearing enough clothes. Tangerine-colored see-through shirt; short skirt ripped all the way up the thigh; flesh – fat breasts squashed together in a black brassiere, goose-pimpled arms, long stalky legs balanced on these two tiny feet – he finds the body extremely distracting. "First of all," he says to her, "let's have a look in your closet."

In these closets there is always the right sort of dress. This dress is not the sort of dress one expects to find in a closet in this sort of house. It is prom dress-y – flouncy, lacy, long and demure. It's pink. This girl, he thinks, ran away from home on her tiny feet, with a backpack on her back, with these things in it: posters of her favorite rock stars, her prom dress. And the stuffed tiger with real glass eyes that he sees now, on top of the red velveteen bedspread. "What's your name?"

The girl folds her arms across her breasts defensively. She has realized that they are not the point after all. Her arms are freckled and also, he sees, bruised, as if someone has been holding her but not carefully enough. "Emily," she says. "Emily Apple."

"Emily," he says, "why don't you put on this dress?"

When he was a little boy it was always one of two things. He was petted and pampered and made much of, or he was ignored and left to his own devices. When he was alone what he liked best was to sit under things. He liked to hide in plain sight, to be in the middle of all the people. He sat under the piano in the music room. At banquets he slid down his enormous chair and sat under the table with his father's dogs. They licked at his face and arms with long thoughtful tongues. He hid in the fireplaces in the great hall, behind the wrought iron screens. In the summer there were sparrows up in the chimneys, also lizards, spiderwebs, broken sooty bits of shell, feathers and bones caught in the grates. The ladies-in-waiting stood dozing in the thin dusty sunlight of his mother's rooms, and he crept under their heavy skirts and sat at their spangled feet, quiet as a mouse.

He helps Emily Apple slide the beautiful pink dress over her head. He buttons the row of buttons up her narrow back. He lifts her hair up, heaps it up and sticks pins all through the sticky teased mass. She sits perfectly still on the bed, the glass eyes of the tiger looking out at her from the folds of her skirt. He brings water in a basin and washes her face. He powders her face. He finds a locket in a heap of bangles and safety pins. Inside is a photograph of a young girl, maybe Emily Apple, or maybe not. The little girl stares at him. What kind of a girl do you think I am?He fastens the locket around Emily Apple's long neck. Her face is very naked, very beautiful. Her freckles stand out like spatters of soot on a white sheet. She looks as if she is going to a funeral or to a wedding. They find a pair of gloves and pull them up over her freckled arms. Her fingers stick out where mice have eaten the tips of the gloves, but the dress comes all the way down to the floor. They both feel more comfortable now.

Sometimes it surprises him, all these runaway girls – all these women – with their sad faces and their tiny feet. How long has this house been here? When he was looking for that girl, he went to a lot of houses. He knocked on the front doors. He announced who he was. These were eligible girls from good homes. They had maids. He asked the maids if they would try on the shoes, too. At night he dreamed about women's feet. But this house, he never came here.

He has been married for nine years. Perhaps this is the sort of house that only married men can find.

That girl, where did she go? He's still looking for her. He doesn't expect to find her, but he finds other girls. He loves his wife, but her feet are too big. It wasn't what he expected – his life, it isn't at all what he expected. His wife isn't the one that he was looking for. She was a surprise – he burst out laughing, the glass slipper hanging off her toes. She laughed and soot fell out of her hair. He loves her and she loves him, but that girl, he only danced with her one time before the clock struck midnight, and then she left her shoe behind. He was supposed to find it. He was supposed to find her. He never found her, but these girls – this girl, Emily Apple – the other girls in their tiny rooms: the woman downstairs knew exactly the sort of girl he was looking for. In one of these closets, he thinks, maybe there is (perhaps there is) a glass slipper, the match for the one in his pocket.

Some nights when he comes home, he's carrying the orphaned shoe in his coat pocket. It fits just fine. That's how small, how impossibly small it is. His wife smiles at him. She never asks where he's been. She sits in the kitchen beside the fire, with her feet tucked up under her, and he lays his head down in her lap. If only her feet weren't so big. When he was first looking for that girl, he got to lift up a lot of skirts. Only just so high. Really, not high enough. He knelt down and he tried the shoe on every single foot. But it never fit right and he always went away again with the shoe in his pocket.

His wife wasn't one of the eligible girls. She was a kitchen maid. When he saw her, she had her head stuck up the kitchen chimney. She was beating the broom up the chimney, shaking out the soot. Head to foot, she was covered in soot, black as a beetle. When she sneezed, the soot rose up in a cloud. She tried to curtsey when she saw him, and soot fell off her like a black cloak.

Everyone had crowded into the kitchen behind him: his footmen, the lady of the house, her daughters, the other maids. One of the footmen read the proclamation, and the sooty girl sneezed again. The eligible young ladies looked sulky and the maids looked haughty, as if they knew what was going to happen. They didn't like it one bit, but they weren't one bit surprised. The kitchen girl dusted off a kitchen stool and she sat her sooty self down on it, sooty arms akimbo. The long prehensile toes of her bare black feet gripped the stone floor as he knelt down beside her. Her foot was warm and gritty in his hand and her long toes wriggled as if he was tickling her. He hung the glass slipper off her toes. Soot came off on his fingers. There was soot in the long folds of her skirt. He stayed there for a minute, kneeling in the warm ashes at her feet.

"What size shoe do you wear?" he said. Her feet were so big.

"What kind of girl do you think I am?" she said. She sounded as if she were scolding him. When he looked up her face was so beautiful.

This girl sits perfectly still on the bed. There is just room enough for him to kneel down beside the bed. He lifts up her skirt, just high enough. He cups her tiny foot in his hand. How could anyone's foot be so small? It fits into the palm of his hand like a kitten or an egg. He wishes he were that small, like a shoe. He wishes he were a small, perfect shoe, that he could be matched to her foot and hidden under her skirt forever. He takes out the slipper and he slides it onto her foot. They both look down at her foot, beautiful in the glass slipper, and the girl sighs. "It fits just fine," she says. When he doesn't say anything, she says, "What do we do now?"

"What kind of girl do you think I am?" that sooty girl (his wife) said.

He says to the girl on the bed, "Take the shoe off. So we can put it on again."

2. Miss Kansas on Judgment Day.

We are sitting on our honeymoon bed in the honeymoon suite. We are in a state of honeymoon, in our honey month. These words are so sweet: honey, moon. This bed is so big, we could live on it. We have been happily marooned – honey marooned – on this bed for days. I have a pair of socks on and you've put your underwear on backwards. I mean, it's my underwear, which you've put on backwards. This is perfectly natural. Everything I have is yours now. My underwear is your underwear. We have made vows to this effect. Our underwear looks so cute on you.

I lean towards you. Marriage has affected the laws of gravity. We will now revolve around each other. You will exert gravity on me, and I will exert gravity on you. We are one another's moons. You are holding onto my feet with both hands, as if otherwise you might fall right off the bed. I think I might float up and hit the ceiling, splat, if you let go. Please don't let go.

How did we meet? When did we marry? Where are we, and how did we get here? One day, we think, we will have children. They will ask us these questions. We will make things up. We will tell them about this hotel. Our room overlooks the ocean. We have a balcony, although we have not made it that far, so far.

Where are we and how did we get here? We are so far away from home. This bed might as well be a foreign country. We are both a little bit homesick, although we have not confessed this to each other. We remember cutting the cake. We poured punch for each other, we linked our arms and drank out of each others' glasses. What was in that punch?

We are the only honeymooners in this hotel. Everyone else is a beauty pageant contestant or a beauty pageant contestant's chaperone. We have seen the chaperones in the halls, women armed with cans of hairspray and little eggs containing emergency pantyhose, looking harassed but utterly competent. Through the walls, we have heard the beauty pageant contestants talking in their sleep. We have held water glasses up to the walls in order to hear what they were saying.

As honeymooners, we are good luck tokens. As if our happiness, our good fortune, might rub off, contestants ask us for a light: they brush up against us in the halls, pull strands of hair off our clothing. Whenever we leave our bed, our room – not often – two or three are sure to be lurking just outside our door. But today – tonight – we have the hotel to ourselves.

The television is on, or maybe we are dreaming. Now that we are married, we will have the same dreams. We are watching (dreaming) the beauty pageant.

On television, Miss Florida is walking across the stage. She's blond and we know from eavesdropping in the hotel bar that this will count against her. Brunettes win more often. Three brunettes, Miss Hawaii, Miss Arkansas, Miss Pennsylvania, trail after her. They take big slow steps and roll their hips expertly. The colored stage lights bounce off their shiny sweetheart dresses. In television interviews, we learned that Miss Arkansas is dyslexic, or maybe it was Miss Arizona. We have hopes of Miss Arkansas, who has long straight brown hair that falls all the way down her back.

You say that if we hadn't just gotten married, you would want to marry Miss Arkansas. Even if she can't spell. She can sit on her hair. A lover could climb that hair like a gym rope. It's fairy-tale hair, Rapunzel hair. We saw her practicing for the pageant in the hotel ballroom with two wild pigs, her hair braided into two lassoes. We heard her say in her interview that she hasn't cut her hair since she was twelve years old. We can tell that she's an old-fashioned girl. Please don't let go of my feet.

We have to admit that we are impressed by Miss Pennsylvania 's dress. In her interview, we found out that she makes all of her own clothes. This dress has over forty thousand tiny sequins handstitched onto it. It took a year and a day to stitch on all those sequins, which are supposed to look from a distance like that painting by Seurat. Sunday Afternoon on the Boardwalk. It really is a work of art. Her mother and her father helped Miss Pennsylvania sort the sequins by color. She has three younger brothers, football players, and they all helped, too. We imagine the pinprick sequins glittering in the large hands of her brothers. Her brothers are in the audience tonight, looking extremely proud of their sister, Miss Pennsylvania.

We are proud of Miss Pennsylvania as well, but we are fickle. Miss Kansas comes out onto the stage, and we fall in love with her feet. Don't let go of my feet. We would both marry Miss Kansas. You squeeze my foot so tight when she comes out on stage in her blue checked dress, the blue ribbon in her hair. She's wearing blue ankle socks and ruby red shoes. She practically skips across the stage. She doesn't look to the right, and she doesn't look to the left. She looks as if she is going somewhere. When Miss Kansas leaves the stage we instantly wish that she would come back again.

I wish I had a pair of shoes like that, you say. I say your feet are too big. But if I had a pair like that, I would let you wear them. Now that we are married, our feet will be the same size.

We are proud of Miss Pennsylvania, we love Miss Kansas, and we are afraid of Miss New Jersey. Miss New Jersey 's red hair has been teased straight up into two horns. She has long red fingernails and she is wearing a candy red dress that comes up to her nipples. You can see that she isn't wearing pantyhose. Miss New Jersey hasn't even shaved her legs. What was her chaperone thinking? (We have heard rumors in the hall that Miss New Jersey ate her chaperone. Certainly no one has seen the chaperone in a few days.) When she smiles, you can see all her pointy teeth.

Miss New Jersey 's complexion is greenish. She has small pointy breasts and a big ass and she twitches it from side to side. She has a tail. She twitches her ass, she lashes her tail; we both gasp. Her tail is prehensile. She scratches her big ass with it. It is indecent and we are simultaneously dismayed and aroused. The whole audience is aghast. One judge faints and one of the other judges douses him with a pitcher of ice water. Miss New Jersey purses her lips, blows a raspberry right at the television screen, and exits stage left.

Well, well, we say, shaken. We huddle together on the enormous bed. Please don't let go, please hold onto my feet.

Some of the other contestants: Miss Idaho wants to work with children. Miss Colorado raises sheep. She can shear a sheep in just under a minute. The dress she is wearing is of wool she cut and carded and knit herself. The pattern is her own. This wool dress is so fine, so thin, that it seems to us that Miss Colorado is not actually wearing anything at all. In fact, Miss Colorado is actually a man. We can see Miss Colorado 's penis. But possibly this is just a trick of the light.

Miss Nevada has been abducted by aliens on numerous occasions. The stage spotlights appear to make her extremely nervous, and occasionally she addresses her interviewer as Star Master. Miss Alabama has built her own nuclear device. She has a list of demands. Miss South Carolina wants to pursue a career in Hollywood. Miss North Carolina can kiss her own elbow. We try to kiss our own elbows, but it's a lot harder than it looks on television. Please hold me tight, I think I'm falling.

Miss Virginia and Miss Michigan are Siamese twins. Miss Maryland wants to be in Broadway musicals. Miss Montana is an arsonist. She is in love with fire. Miss Texas is a professional hit woman. She performs exorcisms on the side. She says that she is keeping her eye on Miss New Jersey.

Miss Kansas wants to be a weather girl.

Miss Rhode Island has big hair, all tendrilly looking and slicky-sleek. The top part of her jiggles as she wheels herself on stage in an extremely battered-looking wheelchair. She just has the two arms, but she seems to have too many legs. Also too many teeth. We have seen her practicing water ballet in the hotel swimming pool. (Later, during the talent show, she will perform in a tank made of specially treated glass.) We have to admit Miss Rhode Island has talent but we have trouble saying her name. Too many sibilants. Also, at breakfast her breath smells of raw fish and at night the hoarse mutterings of spells, incantations, the names of the elder gods heard through the wall have caused us to lose sleep.

Miss Rhode Island 's bathing costume is designed to show off her many shapely legs, which she waves and writhes at the judges enticingly. We decide that we will never, never live in Rhode Island. Perhaps we will never leave this hotel: perhaps we will just live here.

We ogle some of the contestants in their bathing suits. We try not to look at others. We have made a sort of tent out of the bedspread and we feel perfectly safe inside our tent-bedspread. As long as you are holding onto me. Don't let go.

There are five judges. One of them, a former Miss America herself, is wearing a tiara, all her hair tucked away under a snood. She is very regal but her mouth is not kind. In her hand is a mirror, which she consults now and then in the scoring, reapplying her lipstick vigorously. Now and then she whispers, I'll get you, my pretty!

One of the other judges is an old drunk. We saw him down on the boardwalk outside the hotel lobby, wearing a sandwich board and preaching to the waves. He was getting his feet wet. His sandwich board says the end of the world is nigh. Beneath this someone has written in lipstick lions and tigers and bears, oh migh!

Two of the judges are holding hands under the table.

The last judge is notoriously publicity-shy, although great and powerful. A semi-transparent green curtain has been erected around his chair. We speculate that he is naked, or asleep, or possibly not there at all.

The talent show begins. There are all the usual sorts of performances, tap-dancing and mime, snake handling. Miss West Virginia speaks in tongues. Somehow we understand what she is saying. She is saying that the world will end soon, that we will have six children and all of them will have good teeth, that we will always be as happy as we are at this very moment as long as we don't let go. Don't let go. Miss Texas then comes out on stage and showily exorcises Miss West Virginia. The audience applauds uncertainly.

Miss Nebraska comes out on stage and does a few card tricks. Then she saws Miss Michigan and Miss Virginia in half.

Miss Montana builds her own pyre out of cinnamon and other household spices. She constructs a diving platform out of toothpicks and sugar cubes, held together with hairspray. She stands upon it for a moment, splendid and unafraid. Then she spreads her wings and jumps. Firemen stand on either side of the stage, ready to put her out. She emerges from the fire, new and pink and shining, even more beautiful than before. The firemen carry her out on their broad capable shoulders. The million-gallon tank is filled before our eyes during a musical interlude. We make out, frisky as teenagers. This way we are feeling, we will always feel this way. We will always be holding each other in just this way. When we look at the television again, Miss Oregon is walking on water. We feel sure that this is done with mirrors.

Miss Rhode Island performs her water ballet, a tribute to Esther Williams, only with more legs. She can hold her breath for a really long time. The first row of the audience has been issued raincoats and umbrellas. Miss Rhode Island douses them like candles. During the climax of her performance there is a brief unexplained rain of frogs. Miss Texas appears on stage again.

I loved you the first time I saw you. Scarecrow, my dear scarecrow, I loved you best of all. Who would have predicted that we would end up here in this hotel? It feels like the beginning of the world. This time, we tell each other, things are going to go exactly as planned. We have avoided the apple in the complimentary fruit basket. When the snake curled around the showerhead spoke to me, I called room service and Miss Ohio, the snake handler, came and took it away. When you are holding me, I don't feel homesick at all.

Miss Alaska raises the dead. This will later prove to have serious repercussions, but the judges have made a decision and Miss Texas is not allowed on the stage again. It is felt that she has been too pushy, too eager to make a spectacle of herself. She has lost points with the judges and with the audience.

You ask me to put on my wedding dress. You make me a crown out of the champagne foil and that little paper thing that goes around the toilet seat. We sit on the edge of the huge bed, my feet in your lap, your feet dangling dangerously. If only we had a pair of magic slippers. You have your tuxedo jacket on, and my underwear. Your underwear. We should have packed more underwear. What if we never get home again? You have one arm wrapped around my neck so tight I can hardly breathe. I can smell myself on your fingers.

Where will we go from here? How will we find our way home again? We should have carried stones in our pockets. Perhaps we will live here forever, in the honey month, on the honeymoon bed. We will live like kings and queens and eat room service every night and grow old together.

On television, stagehands have replaced the water tank with a trampoline. We wouldn't mind having a trampoline like that. Miss Kansas appears, her hair in two pigtails, her red shoes making our hearts ache. She isn't wearing a stitch of clothing otherwise. She doesn't need to wear anything else. She places her two hands on the frame of the trampoline and swings herself straight up so that she is standing upside down on the frame, her two braids pointing down, her shoes pointing straight up. She clicks her heels together smartly and flips onto the trampoline. As she soars through the air, plump breasts and buttocks bouncing, her arms wheeling in the air, she is starting to sing. Her strong homely voice pushes her through the air, her strong legs kicking at the tough skin of the trampoline as if she never intends to land.

We know we recognize this song.

We bounce on the edge of the bed experimentally. Tears run down our faces. The judges are weeping openly. That song sounds so familiar. Did they play it at our wedding? Miss Kansas rolls through the air, tucks her knees under her arms and drops like a stone, she springs up again and doesn't come back down, the air buoying her up the same way that you are holding me – naked as a jaybird, she hangs balanced in the air, the terrible, noisy, bonecracking air: we hold on tight to each other. The wind is rising. If you were to let go – don't let go -

3. The dictator's wife.

The dictator's wife lives in the shoe museum. During visiting hours she lies in bed downstairs with the rest of the exhibits. When you come in, you can't see her but you can hear her. She is talking about her husband. "He loved to eat strawberries. I don't care to eat strawberries. They taste like dead people to me. I'd rather drink soup made from a stone. We ate off the most beautiful plates every night. I don't know who they belonged to. I just kept track of the shoes."

The museum is a maze of cases. Visitors wander through narrow aisles, elbows tucked in to bodies, so they don't brush against the glass displays. They drift towards the center of the exhibit room, towards the voice of the old lady, until they come upon a bed. Glass boxes stacked up in tall rows hedge in the bed on all sides. In the boxes are pairs of shoes. In the bed is the dictator's wife, covers pulled up to her chin. Visitors stop and stare at the dictator's wife.

She stares back, old and fragile and crumbly. It is disconcerting, to be stared at by this old woman. In proper museums, you go to stare at the exhibits. They do not stare back at you. The dictator's wife is wrinkly like one of those dogs. She's wearing a black wig that's too small for her head. Her false teeth are in a souvenir glass beside the bed. She puts her teeth in.

The dictator's wife will stare at visitors' shoes until the visitors look down too, wondering if a shoelace has come untied.

Another old lady – but not quite as old – lets visitors in. On Tuesdays she dusts cases with an old silk dress. "Admission free today," she said. "Stay as long as you like."

"My shoes," the dictator's wife says to a visitor who has stopped to stare at her. She says this the way some people say, My children. She's got an accent, or maybe her teeth don't fit so well. "People don't think about shoes as much as they should. What happens to your shoes when you die? When you're dead, what do you need with shoes? Where are you planning to go?"

The dictator's wife says, "Every time my husband had someone killed, I went to that person's family and asked for a pair of their shoes. Sometimes there wasn't anyone to ask. My husband was a very suspicious man."

Now and then her right hand disappears up under her wig as if she's looking for something up there. "A family sits down to breakfast. The wife might say something about the weather. Someone might happen to walk by and hear the wife say something about the weather. Then soldiers would come along, and the soldiers would take them, husband, wife, children, away. They would be given shovels. They would dig an enormous hole, there would be other people digging other holes. Then the soldiers would line them up, fathers, mothers, children, and shoot them.

"In this country you think talking about the weather is safe but it isn't. Neither is breakfast. I gave soldiers bribes. They brought me the shoes of the people they shot. Eventually there were so many pits full of dead people in our country that you couldn't lay out a vegetable garden without digging someone up. It was a small country but dead people take up a lot of space. I had special closets made for all the shoes.

"Sometimes I dream about those dead people. They never say anything. They just stand there barefoot and look at me."

Under the covers, the dictator's wife looks like an arrangement of cups and bones, knives and sticks. The visitor can't tell if she's wearing shoes or not. Visitors don't like to think of the dictator's wife's shoes, shiny and black as coffins, hiding under the sheets. The visitor might not want to think of the dictator's wife's cold bare feet either. And that bed – who knows what's under it? Dead people, lined up in pairs like bedroom slippers.

The dictator's wife says, "When I married him I was fifteen."

The dictator's wife says:

I was considered to be the most beautiful girl in the country (remember, it was not a big country). My pictures were in all the papers. My parents wanted me to marry an older man who had a large estate. This man had bad teeth but his eyes were kind. I thought he would make a good husband, so I said yes. My dress was so beautiful. Nuns made the lace. The train was twelve feet long and I had two dozen girls from good families to hold it in the air behind me as we walked up the aisle. The dressmaker said that I looked like a movie star or a saint.

On my wedding day, the dictator saw me riding in my father's car. He followed me to the church and he offered me a choice.

The dictator said that he had fallen in love with me. He said that I could marry him instead or else he would have my fiancЋ shot.

The dictator had not been in power for very long. There had been rumors. No one believed them. My fiancЋ said that the dictator should go outside with him and they would talk like men, or else they could fight. But the dictator nodded to one of his soldiers and they dragged my fiancЋ outside and they shot him.

Then the dictator said that I could marry him or he would shoot my father. My father was an influential man. I think he believed that the dictator wouldn't dare shoot him. But they took him outside and they shot him just outside the church door, although I was begging them not to.

Then my mother said that he would have to shoot her as well because she didn't plan on living any longer. She was shaking. The dictator looked very disappointed. She was not being reasonable. She looked at me as they led her out, but she didn't say anything. One shoe fell off. They didn't stop to let her pick it up.

I had twin brothers, a year older than me. When the soldiers took my mother, my brothers ran after them. The soldiers shot them as they ran through the door. I thought that next the dictator would have me taken outside, but my sister Effie began to sob. All the bridesmaids were crying as well. Effie said that she didn't want to die and that she didn't want me to die either. She was very young. So I said I would marry the dictator.

The soldiers escorted us outside. At the door, the dictator bent over. He picked up my mother's shoe and gave it to me, as if it were a love token. A souvenir.

The next day Effie and I buried my parents and my brothers and my fiance. We washed their bodies and we dressed them. We put them in good sturdy coffins and buried them, but we buried them barefoot. I took my parents' shoes and my fiancЋ's shoes to the dictator's house for my trousseau, but I gave Effie to an aunt to look after.

Underneath the messy wig, the face of the dictator's wife looks like the face of an evil old man and – just for a minute – the visitor may think that it isn't the dictator's wife at all, lying there in the old woman's bed, but the dictator himself, disguised in an old dirty wig.

"I was too beautiful," the dictator's wife says. "I killed a lot of men. The dictator killed anyone – men, women – who stared at me too long. He killed women because he heard someone say that they were more beautiful than his wife. He killed my hairdresser because I told my hairdresser to cut off all my hair. I didn't want people to stare at me. I thought if I had no hair, no one would stare at me because I was beautiful."

The dictator's wife says, "My hair never grew back. I wore dead women's hair, made into wigs by dead wigmakers. I had closets full of dead people's shoes. I went and sat in my closets sometimes. I tried on shoes."

She says, "I used to think all the time about killing him. But it was difficult. There were children who sat at the table with us and tasted his food. Every night before I went to bed, his soldiers searched me. He slept in a bulletproof vest. He had a charm made for him by witches. I was young. I was afraid of him.

"I never slept alone with him – I thought for a long time that that was how a marriage was, a man and his wife in a room with a bodyguard to watch what they did. When the dictator fell asleep, the bodyguard stayed awake. He stood beside the bed to watch me. It used to make me feel safe. I didn't really want to be in a room alone with the dictator.

"I don't know why he killed people. He had bad dreams. A fortune-teller used to come to the dictator's house to explain his dreams to him. They would be alone for hours. Then I would go in, to tell her my dreams. He would stand just outside the room listening to my dreams. I could smell him standing there.

"I never dreamed about the dictator. I had the most wonderful dreams. I was married. My husband was kind and handsome. We lived in a little house. We fought about little things. What we would name our children. Whose turn it was to make dinner. Whether I was as beautiful as a movie star.

"Once we had an argument and I threw the kettle at him. I missed. I burned my hand. After that, whenever I was dreaming, I had a scar on my hand. A burn. In dreams my husband used to kiss it."

The dictator's wife says, "The fortune-teller never said anything when I told her my dreams. But she got skinnier and skinnier. I think it was a bad diet, the dictator's dreams and his wife's dreams, like eating stones.

"I dreamed I got fat from having children. Every night my dream was like the most wonderful story that I was telling to myself. I would fall asleep in the same bed as the dictator. The guard would be looking down at us, and all night I would dream about my house and my husband and my children.

"Here's the weird thing," the dictator's wife says. "In my dream, all our children were shoes. I only ever gave birth to shoes."

The visitor may agree that this is strange. In dreams the visitor's children are always younger than they really are. You can pick them up in one hand, all of them, like pebbles. In the rain, or in bathwater, they become transparent, only their outlines faintly visible.

"My life was weird," the dictator's wife says. "Why wouldn't my dreams be? But I loved those children. They were good children. They cried sometimes at night, just like real babies. Sometimes they cried so hard I woke up. I would wake up and not know where I was, until I looked up and saw the dictator's bodyguard looking back down at me. Then I could go back to sleep."

She says, "One night, the dictator had a dream. I don't know what. He tossed and turned all night. When he woke up, he had the fortune-teller brought to him. It was early in the morning. The sun wasn't up yet. I went and hid in my closets. He told the fortune-teller something. I don't know what. Then his soldiers came and got her and I could hear them dragging her away, down the stairs, out into the garden. They shot her, and in a little while I went out to the garden and pulled off her shoes. I was happy for her."

"I never asked him why he killed her or why he killed anybody. When we were married, I never asked him a question. I was like the fortune-teller. I never said anything unless he asked me a question. I never looked at his face. I used to stare at his shoes instead. I think he thought I was staring at his shoes because they weren't clean, or shiny enough. He would have them polished until I could see my face in them. He wore a size eight and a half. I tried his shoes on once but they pinched the sides of my feet. I have peasant's feet. His shoes were narrow as coffins."

Tears slide down the dictator's wife's face and she licks at them. She says, "I had a daughter. Did I tell you that? The night before she was born, the dictator had another dream. He woke up with a shout and grabbed my arm. He told me his dream. He said that he had dreamed that our child would grow up and that she would kill him."

She doesn't say anything for a while. Visitors may grow uncomfortable, look away at the rows of shoes in glass boxes. The bed and the dictator's wife are reflected in each pane of glass. The dictator's wife says, "When my daughter was born, they put her in a box. They threw the box in the harbor and the box sank. I never gave her a name. She never wore any shoes. She was bald just like me."

The dictator's wife is silent again. In the silence, the glass boxes seem to buzz faintly. There is a smell as if someone is standing nearby. All the people under the bed are listening. Far away, the other old woman is humming as she dusts the cases. At this point, the visitor asks, hesitantly, "So how did she grow up and kill the dictator?"

The dictator's wife says, "She was dead so she couldn't. One day the dictator was picking strawberries in his garden. He stepped on a piece of metal. It went right though his shoe. The dictator's foot got infected. He went to his bed, and he died there six days later."

The dictator's wife's voice gets scratchy and small. She yawns. "Nobody knew what to do. Some people thought I should be executed. Other people thought that I was a heroine. They wanted to elect me to office. I didn't want to be dead yet and I didn't want to stay there, so I packed up the shoes. I packed up every single shoe. I went to my aunt and she packed up Effie's things. Effie had gotten so tall! She was walking around outside without a hat on, as if sunlight wouldn't hurt her. We didn't recognize each other. We got on a ship and went as far away as we could. That was here. I had ninety-four steamer trunks and there wasn't anything in them but shoes."

The dictator's wife stops talking. She stares greedily at the visitor, as if the visitor is delicious. She looks as if she would like to eat the visitor up. She looks as if she would like to eat the visitor up in one bite, spit out the visitor's shoes like peach stones. The visitor can hear Effie coming down the aisle, but the dictator's wife doesn't say another word. She just lies there on the bed with her teeth out again, in the glass beside the bed.

Effie motions for the visitor to follow her. Each case has a name printed on a tiny card. You can't see over the top of the stacked cases, but you can see through them. Light has collected in the boxes and the glass is warm.

Effie says, "Here. These shoes belonged to a famous opera singer."

The opera singer's shoes have tall green heels. They have ivory buttons up the side. The visitor looks down at Effie's feet. She is wearing wooden sandals – Dr. Scholl's – with thick red leather buckles. Her toenails are red. They match the red buckles. When she sees the visitor looking, she bends over. She turns a small key in the side of the shoe. Red wheels pop out of the bottom of the Dr. Scholls. She turns the key in the other shoe, and then she straightens up. Now she's quite tall.

She rubs a glass case with the dusty dress one more time, and then raps it sharply. It rings like a bell. "Museum's closed now," she says to the visitor. "There's a three o'clock matinee with a happy ending. I want to see it." She skates off down the narrow glass aisle, balanced precariously on her splendid shoes.

4. Happy ending.

The man and the woman are holding hands. They are getting married soon. If you looked under the table, you'd see that they aren't wearing any shoes. Their shoes are up on the table instead. The fortune-teller says, "It's just luck that you found each other, you know. Most people aren't so lucky." She is staring at the shoes – a pair of old black boots, a pair of canvas tennis shoes – as if she has never seen such a splendid, such an amazing pair of shoes. No one has ever presented her with such a pair of shoes. That's what the look on her face says.

"You're going to get a lot of nice wedding presents," she says. "I don't want to spoil any surprises, but you'll get two coffee makers. You should probably keep them both. You might break one."

"What else?" says the man.

"You want to know if you'll have kids, right? Yeah, you'll have kids, a couple of them. Smart kids. Smart grandkids too. Redheads. Do you garden?"

The man and woman look at each other. They shrug.

"Well, I see a garden," the fortune-teller says. "Yes, a garden, definitely. You'll grow roses. Roses and tomatoes. Moses supposes his toeses are roses. But Moses supposes erroneously. Do you know that song? Squashes. Is that right?"

"Cole Porter. Squash," the man says. "Squash is the plural of squash."

"Okay," the fortune-teller says. "Squash, plural not singular, and tomatoes and roses. That's when you get older. What else do you want to know?"

"We get old together?" the woman says.

"Well, looks like," the fortune-teller says, "um, it looks good to me. Yeah. You get old together. White hair and everything. You grow things in the garden, your grandkids come over, you have friends, they come over too. It's a party every night." She turns the boot over and studies the heel. "Huh."

"What?" the woman says.

"How you met. That's sweet. Look here." The fortune-teller points to the worn-down tread. "It was a blind date. See what I mean about luck?"

"You can see that in her shoe?" the man says.

"Yeah," the fortune-teller says. "Plain as anything. Just like the garden and the grandkids. Blind date, first kiss, hunh! The next date, she invited you over for dinner. She washed the sheets first. Do you want me to go on?"

"Where will we live?" the woman says. "Do we fight about money? Does he still snore when he gets old? His sense of humor – does he still tell the same dumb jokes?"

"Look," the fortune-teller says, "You'll have a good life. You don't want all the details, do you? Go home, make wedding plans, get married. You should probably get married inside. I think it might rain. I'm not good at weather. You'll be happy, I promise. I'm good at the happy stuff. It's what I see best. You want to know about snoring, or breast cancer, or mortgages, go see the woman next door who reads tea leaves."

She says, "You'll get old together. You'll be comfortable together. I promise. Trust me. I can see you, then, the two of you, you'll be sitting in your garden. There's dirt under your fingernails. You're drinking lemonade. I can't tell if it's homemade or not, but it's perfect. Not too sweet. You're remembering I told you this. Remember I told you this. How lucky you were, to find each other! You'll be comfortable together, like an old pair of shoes."