Rita Hayworth's Shoes

by Francine LaSala

  12. And How It Flipped Again—and Then Again

  Amy managed to make it to work despite the exhaustion she felt at having slept about an hour and a half as well as the conflict and confusion, the ecstasy and the elation, the morning after had inevitably brought. But life was strange like that, or at least it was now.

  Barely twenty-four hours ago, she was feeling freshly heartbroken and devastated after colliding with David and Liz. And then all those strange feelings for Deck started to emerge. Then he had ended up in her home and, incredibly, in her bed. And she was really happy about it. But she was cautious. Because despite the magic of the night before, a small slice of David was still inexplicably wedged in her head and her heart. It was all so confusing. Not to mention that Deck was still her boss. And now she was going to quit her job on top of everything else?

  Now she was riddled with doubt. What the hell was she thinking sleeping with him? How was she going to play it with him now? How was she supposed to act around him? Should she be cool and aloof and pretend as though nothing had happened? Act as if despite the fact that the very earth shook when they were together, that whatever had happened between them didn’t matter that much? Or should she take another approach, and just take what she wanted, pouncing on him the minute he came in? So many questions.

  When he’d finally left her place around four, he’d given her a tender kiss, and when she asked him to stay, he’d said he had things to take care of, but assured her he would be back. If he had stayed the night, would she have felt more secure today?

  That the light was on in Deck’s office threw her as she was sure she’d have beaten him in. She stalled a while, still undecided about what to do. Then Deck came in through the front door, still dressed for the outdoors and carrying his briefcase and two coffees, further confusing her.

  “Good morning,” he beamed, presenting her with one of the cups. “How are you today?” he asked and gave her a quick, gentle kiss on the cheek.

  She relaxed. “I’m good,” she smiled. “A little sleepy, but…”

  “There’s a lot of that going on around here this morning, isn’t there,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  He started walking to his office, then stopped and nodded for her to join him.

  “Sure,” she said, and followed him in.

  “You’re looking strange,” a woman’s voice said, and Deck froze. “I’d heard about the hair, but I guess it’s something you really have to see.”

  He spun around, shock and fear and that dark something again apparent in his face. “What are you doing here?”

  “I could ask you the same,” she said as Amy entered the office and looked to the guest chair. She now saw that the source of the voice was a gorgeous woman in her early- to mid-thirties.

  “I’m working,” he snapped.

  “For Heimlich. Even though you–”

  “Heimlich’s dead,” he cut her off. “And I thought you were, too.”

  “Thought? Or wished?” The tan and radiant woman had shoulder-length, improbably shiny black hair, green, catlike eyes, and lips so round and voluptuous, Amy surprised herself wondering for a quick second what it would be like to kiss her. “And who’s this?” the woman asked, looking Amy up and down with an amused expression on her face.

  “Marny, Amy. Amy, Marny.” He looked at Amy. “Marny is my ex-wife.” He looked at Marny. “Amy’s just my assistant.” Amy wasn’t sure which of those blows had hit her harder or hurt her more. Just his assistant?

  Marny stood and she was like a vision. Ava Gardner in her heyday. A true goddess. Her hair cascaded like silk over perfectly straight shoulders. A sleeveless Lycra dress clung to her improbable curves like it had been cut and sewn around her. Wrapped around her right arm was an elaborate jasmine flower tattoo that reached from her shoulder to the top of the hand that she extended with impossible grace as she spoke. “I’m his wife, sweetie,” she said, and looked at Deck. “We were never divorced.”

  “You’re still married.” Amy said, very innocently, very confused.

  “That’s not my fault,” he barked.

  “Fair enough,” said Marny, dropping Amy’s hand like it was a bag of worms. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said, though no one bought it.

  Looking as though he’d like to snap her in half, Deck glared at Marny. “What do you want,” he asked through clenched teeth.

  “I think you know what I want,” she said.

  “You know I don’t have any money,” he said.

  “Stop playing stupid, Deck. You know Heimlich didn’t keep secrets from me.”

  “Where’s Lee?” he coughed.

  “Didn’t work out,” she purred. “Couldn’t give me what I wanted. And you know I always get what I want, Deck. So why don’t you just give me what I want?”

  “What does she want?” Amy squeaked, her eyes filled with concern and confusion and naïveté.

  “This is a bad time, I think,” Marny said, now eyeing Amy suspiciously. She looked back at Deck and then at Amy again. “I’ll come back later, when you’re alone. Or maybe I’ll pass by…”

  “No!” Deck and Amy shouted in unison, of course for different reasons.

  Amy was immediately embarrassed. “What I meant was,” she stammered, “What I meant was I can go. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Whatever you have to say in front of me, you can say in front of Amy,” Deck insisted, confusing both women, though for different reasons.

  “Oh,” said Marny. “I see how it is…”

  “No!” Deck and Amy shouted again in unison, and shot each other annoyed looks.

  Now it was Deck’s turn to speak. “What I meant was,” he said, and took a long pause as he looked back and forth between the two women. “What I meant was that, Marny, we have nothing left to talk about. And what you have to say to me is so insignificant as far as I’m concerned, that I don’t care who hears it,” he said, meaning perhaps not what Amy had perceived: That she was insignificant to him.

  “I gotta go,” Amy said, choking back tears. She couldn’t believe that he had betrayed her like this. In front of her. In front of Marny. In this way. As she stumbled backward, she caught the heel of her special shoes on the leg of a chair and broke it right off the shoe. “Oh, shit!” she said, as she knelt to retrieve it. “Oh, shit.”

  “What a shame,” Marny smirked. “Those were so cute.”

  Now panicked, Amy took off the other shoe and tossed them both in the wastebasket before she darted off.

  ##

  “Not again!” At the very moment that Amy’s shoe had split in two, an old shopkeeper in a second-hand store in the eastern part of Queens, New York, clutched her chest and fell off the stool she had been standing on as she searched for an old, dusty clock on a high, forgotten shelf.

  Later the diagnosis would be made that she’d suffered a mild heart attack. But for now, as it had been before, the only explanation was that the poor woman’s heart had broken in half.

  ##

  Amy made a mad dash for Jane’s apartment and didn’t stop until she got there.

  “I need a drink and I need one now,” demanded Amy from the doorway, looking crazed and sad and somewhat homeless in her bare feet.

  Jane motioned her in. “It’s only ten o’clock,” Jane said.

  “Please, just a drink,” Amy insisted.

  Jane looked down at Amy’s feet, bruised and dirty and bleeding. “Of course,” she said. “Come on in, kiddo. It’s noon somewhere.” She watched Amy hobble over to the couch as she headed to the kitchen, opened a bottle of white, and joined Amy on the couch.

  “What happened?” Jane wondered, and Amy gave her the whole sordid tale, from the David and Liz dropping off the books to the poetry to the sex to the betrayal.


  “This is a lot to process all at once like this,” said Jane, sipping her wine.

  “Everything’s happened so quickly,” Amy said, shaking her head. “I can’t believe any of this happened at all. Dammit!”

  Jane squinched her face. “Are you sure he was dismissing you though? I mean, it seems so out of character. It makes no sense.”

  “I guess he got what he was after. I must have told you about all his remarks. Always reading into things?”

  Jane shook her head. “I don’t think he meant anything by that. It was just him thinking he was flirting. I don’t think…”

  “Well, he got what he wanted so that’s that,” she said, and downed her wine.

  Jane didn’t know what to say; luckily, Amy wasn’t finished. “It just seemed so different with him, you know?” Amy burst into tears and Jane took her in her arms as she cried.

  “Maybe there’s more to it,” said Zoë, who just appeared, and who tapped her loose tooth with the tip of her tongue after every other word. “He always seemed like a nice guy to me.”

  “You only met him once.”

  “Sometimes that’s all you need,” said Zoë, as she continued to prod away at her tooth. “I mean, I met Uncle David like a hundred times and I never liked him.”

  “Zoë.”

  “What? Well, no one liked David. It isn’t any big secret.”

  “Nice girls don’t remind their friends of their romantic mistakes, especially in the throes of another one.”

  Amy caught her breath and looked at Jane. “Then you do think Deck was a mistake?”

  “I don’t, actually,” said Jane. “It’s just the situation. You know I only got to talk to him the one time. You know, at the party. But Ollie’s known him for so long. He really thinks the world of him.”

  “What do you know?”

  “Probably more than I should,” and she put up her hand, “but I’m not sharing. She’s a nutjob, trust me.”

  “She was so confident and elegant.”

  “And manipulative and crazed.”

  “And beautiful. Like shockingly beautiful. Like magazine beautiful.”

  “What makes you think she has anything on you?”

  “Seriously?”

  “Put it in perspective. She took off. He loved her and she ditched him.”

  “I saw him look at her. He still loves her.”

  “Do you still love David?” She looked down. “I don’t see where you’re going with this,” she lied.

  “All I’m saying is that it takes time. Always. No matter what the circumstances were. He says he hasn’t seen her since she left. You, at least, get to run into dickbag from time to time.”

  “Mom!”

  “I’m sorry. Douche bag. I mean…whatever. You know what I mean. Look, maybe you could give him the benefit of the doubt?”

  “For what? So I can lose another seven years of my life when I already know I should be walking away now.”

  Zoë climbed into Amy’s lap and gave her a big hug. “From what you told me, it seems like that woman played a lot of games with him, Auntie Amy,” she said. “Maybe he’s just confused…dammit!”

  “Zoë!”

  “Sorry. It’s just this tooth. It’s making me absolutely incensed,” she scowled, as she pushed against it with her tongue. “Argh! I’m never going to shake this thing loose,” she whined. “It’s such a horrible nuisance.”

  ##

  Later that day, wearing a pair of borrowed socks and sneakers from Jane, Amy arrived at her building. And just as she was dreading, there were all the Boys, standing on the stoop, and looking right at her.

  “Nice shoes,” said Angelo, as she approached.

  “Where’s your boyfriend?” sneered Tony.

  “You don’t mince words,” she said.

  “We just like to keep an eye out for you,” said Frankie.

  “Yes, Brendan told me,” she quipped. “Thanks for that.” They shrugged their shoulders. “How could you know that something was going on with me and Deck?”

  They all exchanged glances. “We know he didn’t leave last night,” said Frankie.

  “At least not before we all turned in,” Mario added.

  “And we know you’re not shy about bringing men home,” Tony accused.

  “What we don’t understand is why you look like that,” said Angelo. “If it was such a good night.”

  “And it seemed like it was,” said Frankie, jabbing a scowling Tony with his elbow.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “It’s like you just lost your best friend,” Mario said.

  Amy looked at the guys and burst into tears.

  “I don’t know why you get yourself involved with all these inferior men when Tony could give you just what you need,” said Tony.

  “I think she’s got it bad for the bald guy. Leave her alone,” snapped Mario.

  “I guess.”

  “Head upstairs,” said Angelo. “I think you’ll feel better about things if you go upstairs.”

  “Thanks, guys. I think I really just need to go to bed.”

  Tony stepped forward, a hopeful look on his face.

  “Alone. But thanks,” she waved as she headed inside.

  As she climbed the stairs, she noticed flowers resting on her doorstep. She got closer and picked them up, a giant bouquet of daisies, with a card attached that read:

  I know that was horrible for you. I’m so very sorry. I’m taking care of it. Trust me—and please forgive me. All will be well.

  —D

  And now she was more confused than ever.

  13. How Ollie Paid Amy a Curious Visit and  How Deck Went Crazy and Left in Handcuffs

  “I’m looking it up right now. Hang on…” Jane said, cradling the phone between her chin and chest as she pecked out a Google search on her keyboard.

  “Okay,” she paused. Got it. Looks like daisies mean gentleness, innocence, and loyal love.”

  “Well, that would be nice if he was the kind of guy who knew the meaning of flowers, but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t thinking that much about it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “He thought they were pretty, and that’s about it.”

  “I don’t know if that’s true, because he seems like kind of an introspective guy.”

  “Who would rather be happy than deep,” Amy challenged.

  “Right.”

  “In any case, I don’t think he thinks as much as you think he does,” said Amy.

  “That was a mouthful.”

  “Sorry. Anyway, I don’t know what he thinks. I don’t know what to think anymore. I haven’t even spoken to him yet today. He’s was out all morning and he’s been behind closed doors since he got back,” she said, her attention directed at Deck’s locked door.

  “So, go and knock.”

  “I couldn’t do that.”

  “You had sex. He left you flowers. You can do whatever you want.”

  “I don’t know. The whole thing seems a little weird if you ask me.”

  “His ex is back. I can see how that would put a wedge in things. But if you want him, you have to let him know.”

  There was a rustling as Deck approached his door. “He’s coming out. Gotta go.”

  “Call me later?”

  “Sure.”

  Amy quickly hung up the phone but Deck did not emerge. So she turned her attention to her work, scanning through her papers for the notes she had taken at the last department meeting. She finally produced a torn sheet of lined paper with a coffee stain, a doodle of a dragon, and about three coherent words. “Great,” she said, and turned to her computer to try and dredge up the main points from memory
.

  As she typed, Franks came in. “Ollie, hi,” she said, getting up to give her friend’s boyfriend a friendly hug. “We weren’t expecting you. How are you today?” she asked.

  “Hi, Amy,” he said, returning her gesture with a light, cold hug, as he looked around. “Deck here?”

  “Sure. Just locked up all day. You want me to buzz him?”

  “That’s okay,” he said. “I’m actually here to speak to you.”

  “Oh?” she asked nervously. “Something new come up about Heimlich?”

  “Yes and no,” he said. “Is there somewhere more private we could go?” he asked, just as Hannah was turning the corner.

  “Who’s this?” Hannah asked, looking Franks up and down.

  “Detective Franks,” Ollie said with a wave.

  “Oh, right. We’ve met,” said Hannah.

  “We have?” he asked, seeming to have no memory of her.

  “Forget it,” she said, and just stood there.

  “It’s important,” Franks said, nodding to Amy.

  “Of course. Excuse us, Hannah. Please,” she said, and pushed passed her. She led Franks to the break room and motioned for him to take a seat at the table.

  “Marny’s back, you know,” he said as she was closing the door.

  “I did know that, yes,” she said.

  “What did he tell you about it?” he asked. “About what went down with her?”

  “Honestly, I think I got more of the story from you,” she said. “He’s a little closed off about it, I guess.”

  “And how has he been acting today?

  “Like I said, I really haven’t seen him. Why?”

  “Nothing really,” he said, with a look that told her he wasn’t exactly telling the truth. “Just trying to build a case here.”

  “Huh.”

  Just then, the door swung open and Deck walked in. “Ollie. What are you doing here?” he asked, and extended his hand for a shake. Ollie grabbed it tentatively, with about the same enthusiasm with which he had hugged Amy when he first arrived.