Shoe Done It

by Grace Carroll

  “Not tonight,” I said brightly, as if every other night was booked. She knew better. She knew I’d tell her if I was going somewhere, and she’d get a kick out of dressing me up for whatever the occasion.

  “You know there’s the Annual Bay to Breakers Bachelor Auction coming up,” she said. “I bought tickets today from Patti for you and me and Vienna. All the money goes to support the San Francisco Art Museum. It’s a black-tie gala at the Palace Hotel. Every eligible bachelor in town will be on stage. We’ll all get dressed up and go ogle the beefsteak,” she said with a youthful gleam in her eye though she always said she was too old to lust after men.

  I wasn’t too old to lust, but I was too poor to have fun bidding on men I didn’t know. It would be no fun losing out on the good ones because I’d be outbid by women with more money than I had. But it was kind of Dolce to get me a ticket and help me dress up for it.

  I thanked her, said good night and walked outside. Now what? I couldn’t stand the thought of facing an empty flat, even though it had a deck and a sliver of a view of the Bay Bridge. After a day of unpacking boxes at work, I wasn’t in the mood to unpack my own belongings. I also didn’t feel like facing an empty refrigerator in my empty flat. The police district where Jack Wall worked was only a bus ride away. Or I could hop a different bus and drop into the gym where Nick taught classes. But what would be my excuse this time? I’d already observed his class, signed up for lessons, which I never took, and stopped in for a smoothie at the snack bar. It was his turn to call me.

  There was that voice inside my head that kept repeating, “Don’t pursue men. If they want to see you, they know where to find you.” So I took the bus straight home and called Azerbijohnnie’s, a gourmet pizzeria recommended by one of our customers.

  The woman who took my phone order had a distinct foreign accent, one that was vaguely familiar. When I gave my name she said, “How are you, Miss Rita? I haven’t seen you since the funeral of that woman who was murdered.”

  “Meera?” I said, recognizing the voice of Nick’s Romanian aunt, who I hadn’t seen since she crashed a “celebration of life” party at a tavern across from the cemetery. Shy, she was not. “What are you doing there?”

  “Filling out for a Romanian friend,” she said in her distinctive Eastern European accent. “Who had to return to our country on family business. I didn’t want him to lose his job here. I help out and I get free pizza. And some vodka he promised to bring when he returns.”

  I was surprised that mattered to Meera, a self-proclaimed vampire. Romanian vodka was not a delicacy according to my Romanian professor at college. He called it rotgut. As for pizza, I thought Meera only ate traditional Romanian specialties like sarmale, salata boeuf, and papanasi. “What about your job leading tours?” I’d taken her vampire tour of San Francisco with Nick a few months back, which was interesting as long as you didn’t take seriously Meera’s claims that she was a hundred-twenty-seven-year-old vampire herself.

  “Friday and Saturdays only. You must come again. I have some new sites and information to share with you. Bring a friend. Half-price because I like you,” she said. I noticed she said nothing at all about her nephew Nick. Did that mean he, like Dr. Rhodes, had another girlfriend? Someone who was in his adult gymnastics class who was more flexible than I was? If he did, I didn’t want to hear about it, and I was glad I hadn’t pursued him. But a minute later I heard myself say, “How is your nephew Nick?”

  “Not so fine. He had an accident on the high beam and tore his ligament.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. Though I was glad to hear he had an excuse for ignoring me.

  “He was doing a demonstration when he had a miscalculation, and now he has to stay off the leg, so I bring him food after work. I am sure he would like to see you at his flat on Green Street, number seventeen-forty-two,” she said pointedly.

  Actually, I owed her nephew because he showed up with food for me when I fell off a ladder a few months ago. “I’ll go see him,” I promised. And I would, but not tonight. I was in no mood to cheer anyone up but myself.

  “What about your pizza?” she asked.

  “I’ll have the daily special,” I said looking at my take-out menu. “Rainbow chard, red onions, feta cheese . . .”

  “Why not try the Romanian special instead?” she asked.

  “My personal favorite, which I am making myself when not taking telephone orders. It comes with cabbage, tomato sauce, and grilled carp.”

  “I’ll stick with the pizza of the day,” I said firmly. Grilled carp might be delicious, but on pizza?

  She sounded disappointed, but she confirmed my order, and I said, “La revedere,” and hung up.

  The pizza arrived an hour later—it was delicious with a glass of Two-Buck Chuck merlot, which I sipped and congratulated myself on being sensible and frugal. Tomorrow would be better. Tomorrow I would sign up for cooking classes somewhere. If Meera could make pizza, why couldn’t I learn to cook too? Maybe the California Culinary Academy, or a smaller, more intimate place like Tante Marie’s Cooking School, where I’d learn basic French techniques. I would unpack my dishes, buy a set of pots and give little dinner parties instead of sitting around waiting for men to call and invite me out. Yes, tomorrow had to be better.

  But it wasn’t.