by Gina Messina
Charlie had to slow down and take a deep cleansing breath because she actually started to feel a touch giddy. Almost bubbly! Tipsy even! The same way she feels when she drinks a tall flute of expensive pink champagne that tickles the tip of her nose. It was like a rush of effervescent exhilaration. She just couldn’t stop thinking. Her brain was doing flip-flops! No, she meant flips! It was doing flips, because flip-flops are shoes! Right? She had some of them too! Really nice ones, with crystal dragonflies on the top!
It was just such an intoxicating rush! Almost as if her whole body had been carbonated.
It was the same rush she felt when the small beads of caviar exploded on her tongue and David fed her the wine and pressed her warm body against the cold frosty window with the briny yeasty smell in the air and her nipples hardening and her thighs glistening and when she snorted cocaine from that little silver spoon in the dirty toilet in that club in Palm Springs with the too loud house music all thumping and her beating heart racing and her skin tingling and her pussy throbbing and that guy who she’d had really hot sex with in the bathroom stall who was wearing Elvis’s blue suede shoes which weren’t really Elvis’s shoes but they looked just like them but sadly turned out to be really bad Gucci knock-offs instead and she was just so confused it was like she was in a zone like that diet the zone that everyone was talking about and she’d really been meaning to start it but just hadn’t had the time because what did she do all day with herself except shop so she’d definitely start it tomorrow that’s what she would do and she’d get so fucking skinny that Sean would want her back but she’d say no with a big resounding NO and its Charlie not Charlotte you fucking imbecile and she was all jumbled up inside but she felt so completely liberated and light and free and not fat like she was and she was just so wildly deliriously happy! She was so happy; it was almost embarrassing!
“Fuck the shoes!” Charlie gasped.
Can I really do this? Can I really give away fifteen years of stuff that has so clearly defined me? she quietly deliberated to herself. Maybe I don’t need really good shoes to take me to the places I’ve only imagined! Maybe I just need shoes, any shoes! Maybe ugly pleather Payless clogs that make my feet sweat will suit me just fine!
“You’re going to be okay,” Dr. Harrison triumphantly announced with such conviction, it made Charlie feel pleasantly warm and fuzzy all over. “And I will be here to help you, every step of the way.”
How metaphorical of her, Charlie thought as she smiled at nothing and her doctor winked. They had just shared something that was so deliciously special it shouldn’t have been allowed between a patient and their psychiatrist.
“Who fucking knew it could be this God damn easy?” she victoriously shouted with her fist pumping triumphantly into the air.
Dr. Harrison let out a deep raucous laugh, which was so very unlike her- so out of character. Charlie had never heard her laugh like that before. Snicker maybe, or even chortle, but never full belly laughs like the ones she’d just witnessed. It was so unprecedented, it made her briefly question her doctor’s sanity.
“I know. I can’t fucking believe it either!” Dr. Harrison uncharacteristically but very passionately proclaimed. Charlie admired the way that she swore with such convincing intensity.
“We should celebrate! We should go shopping!” Charlie jubilantly announced while raising her chin and basking in the glory of the moment. “It will be a fresh start! A fresh start with a brand new shoe smell! The smell of a new shoe when you lift off the lid and take that first deep intoxicating whiff,” she said, sniffing the air like a mentally disturbed person who had just been released from Bellevue after too many years in solitary confinement. She immediately felt fifteen pounds lighter.
“Oh my God! I can’t wait to start my new life! It’s going to be a goddamn, brand spanking, new shoe beginning!” she cried out in glee at the top of her lungs.