by Gina Messina
“Well I imagine you must have felt rather compromised from the experience,” she finally heard her doctor say.
“Not at all. What I felt was euphoric and triumphant!” Charlie was getting more and more annoyed at her doctor’s inability to read her. All those sessions and it’s like she has no fucking clue who I am!
The next morning, when she’d found herself woken by the buzzing of her apartment door, she’d been disoriented. “Shit!” she muttered squinting over at the alarm clock and realizing she’d never make it to her noon Art History class on time.
Still groggy with sleep, she raced to the door wrapped only in a bed sheet. But, when she looked out the crack, no one was there. Then she glanced down to find a small shopping bag sitting on the threshold and quickly unlatched the security chain before greedily pulling it inside. When she peeked into the bag and eyed the bright red tissue paper and the beautiful pale ivory script on the Christian Louboutin shoebox, a sense of euphoria immediately overcame her. She lifted the shoes from the box and triumphantly placed one on each of her feet, marveling at how perfectly they fit. That was so scrumptiously easy, she thought to herself as she took her first step.
There had been a handwritten note at the bottom of the bag.
You’re right; these shoes will most definitely take you places you’ve only imagined. Merry Christmas, Fondly, David.
“Late the next morning there was a shopping bag by my door with the Loubies. David must have bought them as soon as the store opened and had them messengered over,” Charlie proclaimed to Dr. Harrison, somewhat victoriously. “There was a lovely note, too,” she added as an afterthought.
“Surely you see the connection?” her doctor excitedly exclaimed as she placed her hand on Charlie’s knee. Charlie sat quietly, pondering that erotic evening with David and a shiver ran through her. She wasn’t sure if it was her doctor’s hand on her knee or thinking about David that caused the sudden sensation as her memory quietly brought her back in time. Back to that shiny black and white Chanel shoebox from her childhood and suddenly, she was overwhelmed with a debilitating sadness.
“Tell me how it made you feel, taking that first step in those shoes you coveted,” Dr. Harrison quietly asked with her warm hand still resting on Charlie’s knee.
“I felt as if I was a virgin again,” she sheepishly responded. “Like David was my first.”
“Did you hear from him afterwards?”
“I got a holiday card almost exactly a year later. There was an adorable pen and ink illustration of a sad little Charlie Brown Christmas tree decorated with tiny shoe ornaments on the front and a short greeting inside.”
In town for a few days. Can we meet for drinks? If so, I’d love for you to wear those sexy shoes, he’d written. But, sadly, he hadn’t written down his number.
Charlie had long ago thrown away the business card he’d given her. She had to leave for a family vacation in Palm Springs a few days later but ironically, when she was at the Airport, she stopped at a kiosk to pick up a copy of that month’s Vogue and saw a photograph of David on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
“When I was on my way to California, I saw an article in the paper about a super hedge fund he’d launched with a group of other bankers. Something about it making hundreds of millions of dollars in the high tech arena,” she told Dr. Harrison.
“And?”
“And what? I was crushed.”
“Crushed is an interesting choice of words, why crushed?”
Charlie lowered her eyes in defeat. “Crushed that I played it all wrong.”
“I believe this is a good place to stop,” Dr. Harrison said, then abruptly stood and guided her by the elbow to the door.
Of course, it’s a good fucking place to stop, Charlie told herself, She probably can’t lock the door fast enough so she can diddle herself off on the leather sofa that’s still warm from where my fat ass has been parked for nearly two hours. Just the repulsive image of her doctor dry humping her own hand immediately sucked all the moisture out of Charlie’s body like a Hoover vacuum cleaner.
“See you next week,” she shot back then quickly gathered her things and headed for the door in desperate search of the nearest water fountain.
CHAPTER FOUR
“The average woman falls in love seven times a year.
Only six are with shoes.”
Kenneth Cole
“Let’s talk about Sean today,” Dr. Harrison requested the following week.
“Sean? That fucker asked me for a divorce last night,” Charlie sniveled, trying to keep the tears from falling down her cheeks which happened to be all red and flaky from a recent chemical peel. She had been making more of an effort to take care of her skin. “He wants to marry Lizbeth! The stick-thin bitch is pregnant,” she melodramatically asserted. Dr. Harrison nodded in understanding and handed Charlie a Kleenex which she gingerly dabbed at an angry scab that had started to form to the left of her nose. “I wasn’t surprised, you know. I saw it coming,” she continued in a know-it-all manner.
“Of course you did,” Dr. Harrison offered.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Charlie shot back accusatorily. At that moment, she hated her doctor with her smug look and self-righteous attitude.
“And what is it that I’m thinking?”
“You think I still love the bastard. That I don’t want him to marry again, but you’re wrong. I could give a flying fuck about that!”
“You can?”
“Yes!” she screamed. “He can marry an inflatable doll for all I care. It’s … just … Lizbeth? What could he possibly see in her? There’s nothing about her worth noting except her size seven feet!” They were the only feature of Lizbeth’s that Charlie envied.
Lizbeth with the perfect size ten brain, 36D bra, twenty-two-inch waist and size seven feet. Charlie knew all her stats by heart-she had them memorized. But forget the tits and ass. It was the size seven feet that she would’ve just died for. Charlie sat there and brooded over the potential shoes she could have essentially stolen at every sample sale in the city. Lizbeth didn’t deserve any of it. The only small bit of satisfaction Charlie took was that her thin ankles would soon be swollen with the onset of a fifty-pound pregnancy and the only shoes she’d be able to wear would be fuzzy slippers and flip-flops.
“I don’t think I can talk about him without being nauseous,” Charlie blurted out. She actually gagged—not the good kind either!—the kind that happens after sucking off a long, stiff cock. She wasn’t sure if it was because of the stale buttered bagel that she’d picked up at the Portuguese deli that morning or because of Sean. “Just the thought of his impending nuptials to that twenty-three-year-old twit is enough to make me go ape shit.”
The image of Sean’s skanky whore, crotch-less and classless, quite literally sickened her. It’s definitely not the bagel, she decided. No, I’m gagging because of him.
Lizbeth. Her name alone was irritating. Who the fuck names their kid Lizbeth? Inwardly, Charlie shuddered. The last thing she wanted to tell Dr. Harrison was anything that had to do with that awful night when she’d walked in on Sean fiercely fucking his girlfriend. On their freshly waxed kitchen floor, for Christ’s sake! And, with that trollop’s skeletal arms handcuffed to their new stainless steel refrigerator, no less.
Charlie had stood in the entrance of the kitchen and stared in disgust while watching Lizbeth and Sean hump away. His hand was pressed on her lower back so he could dive deeper in while their moans echoed off the white pearl tiled backsplash she’d spent months picking out with her interior designer.
“Yes! yes! Right there. Don’t stop. Fuck me harder,” Lizbeth had squealed like a little piglet being chased around a pen, her legs splayed open like a pair of scissors. Sean’s white ass worked furiously, back and forth, his erect cock going in and out of her pierced pussy. Charlie stood transfixed, unable to look away while Sean’s grunts grew louder and his breath became quicker. The sweat trickled down his back
like a waterfall. They were all the tell-tale signs that her husband of nine years was about to unload.
“Oh yes, baby. Fuck. I’m almost there,” Lizbeth screamed as he rammed into her like a jack hammer against concrete, breaking down her pieces and riding her to her core.
As much as Charlie wanted to say something, she waited patiently, timing herself perfectly like a metronome. Then, at the precise moment he was about to let loose, she opened her mouth and coughed loudly.
His eyes flew wide open. If it wasn’t her life that was going up in a cloud of smoke, she would have laughed at the deer in the headlights look on his face.
“Charlotte!” he screamed, with a combination of horror and ecstasy. It gave her great pleasure when he simultaneously called out her name while coming inside Lizbeth.
“Well, this is rather unexpected,” Charlie commented sarcastically. Sean quickly scrambled to his feet with his dick limp and flaccid.
Lizbeth tried to pull her arms free so she could cover her naked body. Her mouth hung open in horror and her lips, pumped full of poison, appeared even more plump than Angelina Jolie’s. Charlie had no doubt that a twenty-minute blow job had been the culprit and not the newest cosmetic injectable that promised sexier, fuller lips.
“Nice to meet you,” Charlie mockingly said, smiling sweetly and winking. Lizbeth frantically scrambled to remove the handcuffs that had her tethered like a hog to the refrigerator door. Although she failed at freeing her wrists, with all the commotion, she did manage to free herself from Sean’s dick.
“Been there. Done that,” Charlie added with a dismissive wave of her hand. She stepped over Lizbeth’s squirming body and wrote bleach on the grocery list she’d started that morning, scribbling a quick note to Izzy, their maid, to please disinfect the kitchen floor first thing Monday morning. It had all been so unsanitary! Charlie felt embarrassed for Sean, remembering the gooey laundry Izzy had to deal with a few years back when Sean had made a habit of jerking off into the hand embroidered linen hand towels. Now she had to deal with the kitchen floor, too.
That mousy cunt! Charlie could tell, just by looking at her, that she’d been fucked a lot. She was all skin and bones with her stringy blonde hair, devoid of nutrients, that not so subtly affirmed, I throw up eight times a day! There was no doubt in her mind that Lizbeth had mastered the fine art of bulimia. Even her untrimmed bush and unshaved pits appeared to be unhealthy. Ever since Sharon Stone had appeared in Basic Instinct and flashed a crotch shot with her armpits all hairy, it seemed that everyone had jumped on the bandwagon the following year and started to go au natural. It was truly bewildering since Sean hated any kind of body hair and always insisted that Charlie get a painful full body waxing every two weeks.
“You told me she wouldn’t be home until Monday morning,” Lizbeth managed to squeak out as Charlie was leaving the kitchen. Even though her moans of ecstasy were loud enough to wake the dead, her speaking voice sounded two sizes too small.
It was then that Sean found his voice, which happened to be two sizes too large, and screamed, “What the fuck are you doing home?”
Charlie opened her mouth then closed it. She’d been prepared to make a comment about marital fidelity but, suddenly didn’t have the energy to say it. It wasn’t worth the effort. Not gracing him with a response, she sauntered out of the kitchen in search of Coco. God, she thought, I hope the dog didn’t see that shit. The image of Lizbeth’s face as Sean pounded away was permanently seared into her brain. It would have taken a full frontal lobotomy to erase it from her memory. She only hoped Coco had been spared the visual. She eventually found the little dog cowering under the dining room table. “I know, Coco. I don’t much care for that bitch either,” she leaned down and whispered.
Dr. Harrison cleared her throat. “You know we’re going to have to deal with Sean sometime. I'm not going to push you now, but soon …” she warned. “You may not see it, but we’re making progress.” The confidence in her voice gave Charlie an ephemeral twinkling of faith. “For right now though, let’s talk about how you two met.”
“We met several weeks after my night with David. I’d just returned from Palm Springs,” she said while gazing out the window and sullenly considering the last holiday she’d spent with her entire family; her family who virtually begged her not to marry Sean then practically disowned her when she did.
Charlie longingly remembered the excitement she’d felt on the plane ride to Los Angeles to meet her two sisters. Their flights had been booked and scheduled to arrive at around the same time, each coming from their respective colleges so they could spend Christmas and New Year’s together. At first she hadn’t been looking forward to that family trip. She couldn’t understand why her parents had rented a house in Palm Springs as they were neither golfers or tennis players.
“So you met Sean in Palm Springs?”
“No, not in Palm Springs,” she fired back, as if her doctor should have already known the answer. In fact, she’d mentioned this several times to her and it would have all been in that damn notebook, too, if only she took the time to take real notes!
“In Philadelphia,” she explained again. “I met him after Palm Springs.” She stopped speaking for a moment and remembered back. “The night I returned from Palm Springs if you insist on splitting hairs.”
For a long time, Charlie reminisced about the two weeks she’d spent in the sweltering heat, dining at marginal restaurants while listening to her sisters complain about their mind numbingly boring lives. Carrie, the oldest, bitched about her latest boyfriend, and her other sister, Stacey, grumbled about her lack of one. God, how Charlie had hated to hear them yammering on and on. The only upsides were the excellent shopping opportunities (of which she planned to make the most of) and the abundance of wealthy single men who flocked to Palm Springs for golf outings and bachelor parties while their girlfriends and wives remained home, oblivious. It was like a breeding ground for the young, horny and rich.
Even though Dr. Harrison had asked about Sean, Charlie couldn’t resist telling her about that family vacation. She figured it was a good place to start since she’d met Sean the night she flew home from Los Angeles.
“Hey Stacey, when did your plane land?” she’d asked her sister (by far the smartest of the girls) when she spotted her in the airport lounge tossing back a rum and coke. “Not even ten o’clock in the morning,” Charlie scoffed, pointing her finger at the face of her watch.
“Oh get off my back. It’s five o’clock in Sydney or Hong Kong or who the hell cares where,” Stacey shot back.
Stacey was what their parents called a career student. Smart as a whip, she never cracked a book and always brought home straight A’s, coasting from high school to college, then grad and law school with unfair ease. Charlie hated her for that. Things never came as easy for her as they did for Stacey. She had to work twice as hard for most everything except for getting men to notice her. Though, getting the right man to notice Charlie still eluded her.
“I’ve been waiting for you for hours,” Stacey slurred, carelessly tossing her long curly hair back in frustration. It was obvious that she’d downed more than a few drinks. “When does Carrie’s plane get in? I’m tired of sitting around in this damn airport,” she further complained. “At this rate we’re never going to get to the desert until well after lunchtime.”
Already the bitching had started but Charlie tried to focus instead on the bright side: two whole weeks of shopping to find the perfect outfit to wear with her new Loubies. Of course, they were nestled securely in her carry-on just in case her checked luggage didn’t make it off the plane. She couldn’t take the chance that they’d wind up in the grimy hands of a minimum wage baggage handler.
“Are you gonna sit down and join me or just stand there judging me?” she remarked bitterly.
Charlie sat down on the stool next to her sister and signaled for the bartender. Half an hour and two martinis’ later, they spotted Carrie heading their way. Carrie, the oldest,
was the more responsible and therefore the most annoying of the three girls. She was also very bossy, constantly ordering them around. They were in the habit of following her lead, though. It was just easier that way. She was a junior at Wharton, had a serious boyfriend and was mature beyond her years. It was like she came out of the womb already wearing a pearl necklace and balancing a checkbook. Carrie thought she knew better than her two younger sisters despite them all only being a year apart in age.
“Already drinking, I see,” Carrie stated, shaking her head in disapproval at the two of them. “Couldn’t wait till we got to the house?”
“And what are you going to do about it?” Stacey challenged her. “Ground us?”
Both Stacey and Charlie snickered then reached for their glass, taking a loud slurp of their drinks to drive the point home.
“Can we leave already? My hair is already wilting in this humidity. I need a shower,” Carrie complained.
“Fine.” Stacey threw down the rest of her drink in one motion. “Such a buzz killer.”
They headed toward the car rental where their parents had booked them a silver convertible coupe. “I’ll drive,” Stacey incoherently garbled, eyeing their ride with approval then stumbled toward the car with her luggage dragging on the pavement behind her.
“No fucking way! You’ve had way too much to drink,” Carrie said in her best motherly voice.
Stacey glared at her, then flipped her hair back with one hand while flipping Carrie off with the other.