The Bright Red Shoes

by Gretchen L. Bourquin

They walked past my apartment building for the first time three months ago. The man atop them had polished them "see your reflection" shiny. Good men's shoes. Only they were red. Bright maraschino cherry red dress shoes.

When I first saw the man in the red shoes he wore blue jeans, a San Diego Chargers sweatshirt, and a baseball cap. Nothing unusual other than the shoes. I assumed he was poor. Maybe he'd gotten the shoes from the Goodwill. Maybe he couldn't afford another pair.

Debra Ann lived across the hall and her living room window faced the street. I was visiting with her when the shoes first walked past the building. We looked out her window in a "look but don't look" fashion. I thought the shoes were odd. Debra Ann thought they were dangerous.

"Ordinary, law-abiding people do not wear shoes like that, Marlene," Debra Ann declared. I briefly wondered why "ordinary" and "law-abiding" always belonged together—like cream and sugar, milk and cookies, or Sonny and Cher. Didn't people eat cookies without milk? Don't some prefer cream with no sugar? Didn't Sonny and Cher enjoy fruitful careers after they stopped performing as a duo?

I was at Debra Ann's again the next day when the shoes passed our building at the same time: 6:14 p.m. This time the man was wearing a charcoal gray pinstripe zoot suit—like something out of the 'twenties.

"He's a drug dealer," Debra Ann said with amazing authority despite her lack of evidence.

"He's headed for the Speakeasy," I added. She sensed my sarcasm and shook her head.

"You're too trusting, Marlene," she told me. "You haven't had any experiences. When you do you'll learn to recognize the riffraff when you see it."

She said the word "experiences" in a way that expanded the definition beyond the standard "things that happen to you." They had to be big things. Profound things. "Sky-Falling-On-Chicken-Little" things. I had grown up in a town without experience, where no one would have dared to wear shiny red shoes. No one would have known what they mean.

Debra Ann and I continued to watch for the red shoes out her window each day. I'd given up the thought that the man sporting them was poor. The outfits he wore with the shoes became so lavish and numerous I did not see how anyone could wear them and claim poverty. Perhaps Debra Ann was right. Maybe he was a drug dealer. Maybe he was insane. I finally agreed we should mention him to our neighborhood watch, and declare him a suspicious character. Some of the neighbors understood exactly what Debra Ann and I were concerned about. Others naively assumed he was harmless—nothing but a little over-expressive with a skewed sense of fashion.

The idea of danger and the bright red shoes simmered in the minds of the neighbors. They started gathering at Debra Ann's apartment each day. Swarming in minimobs. The women brought casseroles and baked goods. The men brought beer. It got loud. The neighbors would have complained had they not been at Debra Ann's already. They stayed until one, two in the morning.

"Look what he has done," Debra Ann proclaimed. "He's completely possessed my apartment. I have no privacy. Look at my carpet! Spilt beer, lasagna sauce stains—dirt tracked everywhere!"

I agreed with Debra Ann. My absence of experience voided any right I might have to my own opinion. I was far too sheltered to qualify myself to point out that the bright red shoes were practically the only ones not tracking dirt into her carpet, kicking over open beer cans, stepping on exposed plates of tuna hotdish, and dragging squashed spinach noodles across the floor. None of that would matter. No amount of eyes peering through Debra Ann's Venetian blinds, looking at him as if he were a giant potato shaped like Queen Elizabeth, would stop him from walking past our building each day.

Although the man in the red shoes sported a varied array of ensembles each day, from sweat pants to business suits, khakis to kilts, poodle skirts to prom dresses, some of the neighbors bored of watching the red shoes walk safely past our building. They began arriving early to put nails in the street, or oddly shaped branches, or broken glass. The police stopped by about six o'clock one evening.

"We're receiving complaints about the litter in the street," the officer said.

"We're just trying to stop the man in the red shoes," someone said.

"He's been stalking me," Debra Ann told the officer. "Wherever I go."

This was not true. Debra Ann and I had talked about how odd it was that we never saw the red shoes anywhere else in the neighborhood. Only outside our building, where they'd disappear around the corner and seemingly vanish from existence.

"Oh really," the officer inquired. "Has he approached you? Has he threatened you?"

"Well, no," Debra Ann mumbled. "But there's no telling when he will. God only knows what he's capable of."

"He should be walking by in a few minutes," I said. "It's always at 6:14."

The officer decided he could stay and see if the red shoes showed up, see what kind of character he was dealing with. He told Debra Ann if he approached her, or threatened her, or hurt her in any way she could file an Order of Protection, but until then his hands were tied.

"You have a lot of community support, I see," he told her. "That's important." The officer stayed at Debra Ann's until nearly six-thirty, but the red shoes never appeared.

"He probably noticed your patrol car," Debra Ann told him. She asked if he could come the next day looking a little less conspicuous, maybe incognito. The officer told her he could not change his orders for a noncrime. He handed her his card. "Let me know if you have any real trouble," he said.

The next day a few less neighbors came to see the bright red shoes walk past our building. Six-fourteen came—no shoes. Six-thirty. Seven. Nothing. Fewer and fewer neighbors came each day until once again I was the only visitor.

The officer stopped by one night, and for a minute I was worried that something might have happened to the man in the bright red shoes. As invasive as it was to have this odd stranger pass by my building day after day, still it had become something familiar, and I had developed a peculiar sense of affection for him.

"Did you bring him in?" I asked. "Is he all right?"

"We haven't seen him, ladies," he told us. "I just came by because I'd been thinking—you were really concerned about this man being around all the time. I might have given you the impression that I wasn't taking you seriously. I wanted to assure you that's not the case. We can't do anything officially unless he breaks the law, but I've spoken to several of my buddies in the department, and we're keeping our eyes open."

"We certainly appreciate that, Officer," Debra Ann told him. "I haven't had any trouble since the last time you came."

"Sometimes it's surprising what kind of effect the mere presence of the law can have on people. I'm glad it all worked out."

We thanked the officer again before he excused himself to get back to work. I went home too, and went to sleep that night content with everything gone back to normal.

The next morning Debra Ann and I opened our front doors almost at the same time, and there, next to each of our morning papers, was a pair of brand new, freshly polished, bright red shoes.

Copyright © Gretchen L. Bourquin 2005