Someone Else's Shoes(53)

“I’m not being obstructive, Carl. And you’re not being generous. Yet. For all I know you could be about to offer me a suitcase full of fucking lentils. Anyway. I don’t have the shoes.”

“What do you mean you don’t have them?”

“They were in my bag. And someone took them.”

“?‘Took’ them? You mean stole them?”

“I don’t think so. They picked up the wrong bag. The day you served me with papers.”

“What? Who? Why haven’t you got them back?”

“You know what, Carl? In the grand scheme of things, given you left me with no money, no clothes and nowhere to even spend the night, losing a pair of my fucking heels really didn’t feel like my biggest problem just then.”

He has always been weirdly possessive about things he bought her, as if they were somehow still his own. She remembers a Gucci handbag she left in a restaurant in the early days of their marriage. He hadn’t spoken to her for four days.

“Well, when are you going to get them?”

“Believe it or not, I’ve been trying to work out how to survive with no money and no roof over my head. You wanted to show me how powerful you can be, well done. You did it. You stripped me of everything in an instant. I got the message loud and clear: that you’re the one with all the cards. I’m sorry if I mislaid some of your stuff in the process.”

He seems appalled. At his own behavior maybe?

She waits a moment before she speaks. “What did you think was going to happen to me, Carl?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. I thought you’d go stay with one of your friends.”

“I don’t have any friends in this country.”

“I thought someone would fly you home. Why would you want to stay here?”

“I didn’t have a passport, did I? Because it was in the penthouse with all my other belongings.”

“Oh,” he says distractedly. “Oh, yes.”

It felt kind of stupid. Like the two of them had been locked in a game that, now it was over, seemed weird, and pointless, a prank that had gotten out of hand.

“Look,” she says. “You send me the money for a lawyer, we’ll sort out our settlement, and you can have any pair of shoes I own. Just let me have my stuff and move on, okay? No fuss. No publicity. I just want what I’m owed.”

But his face suddenly closes over.

“You get nothing without the shoes,” he says. “Not a dollar.”

“What?”

“You don’t just lose my stuff! Okay? You don’t lose what I have paid for! Like it’s just . . . nothing!”

“What are you talking about? They were stolen! How the hell could I have—”

When he talks now his eyes are cold, his jaw set. “Get me back those shoes and then we’ll talk.”

“Carl? What the . . .” She yells: “What about my money? The lawyer? Carl! I need my clothes, my things—Carl!”

But he has turned and is already walking across the foyer. Ari materializes out of nowhere and they are shoulder to shoulder with their backs to her, already deep in conversation.





eighteen


Sam sits in the waiting room and watches from behind a three-year-old copy of Woman’s Weekly as the nurse tries for the fifteenth time to explain to the man in the wheelchair that his family, including four bickering women and a gaggle of chaotic children, cannot come into the room with him. She hates this place. Hates the sanitized waiting areas infused with a mixture of fear and defeat. Hates the hushed conversations, the way time slips and stalls. Mostly she hates that she has to be there at all. In an effort to distract herself she has played three games of Words With Friends on her phone with a woman she doesn’t know in Ohio, tried to call the gym twice to return the shoes (nobody picks up) and answered fourteen work emails, eight of which are from Simon.

“I’m very sorry, but it’s the rules. A lot of our patients are immuno-compromised and we cannot risk infection.”

Sam gazes at the snotty noses of the children and thinks, They are basically just little germ factories in trainers.

But the older of the women, her hair scraped back into a ponytail, isn’t having it. “My dad doesn’t want to be in there on his own. He wants his family.”

“I want to go in with my family.”

“I understand that, sir. But it won’t be for long.”

“He wants his family with him. You should respect his wishes.”

A child starts rocking the water dispenser beside Sam vigorously. When it looks precarious, and then as if it might fall, she puts out a hand to steady it. The child stops and watches her, dead-eyed. One of the women is staring at her in an unfriendly manner, as if she has committed some grand imposition by failing to allow him to pull it over.

The nurse is still talking, her voice tinged with exhaustion. “Madam, I don’t have any choice here. The hospital has to protect all its patients, and the rules say no one, not friends or family members, is allowed in during the procedure. Perhaps you could wait in the canteen and we will let you know when he’s ready.”

“He won’t go in by himself.”

“I won’t go in by myself.” The old man folds his arms across his chest.