Pumps

Pumps

Pumps

He picked a table in the wrong room.  I’d driven my own car and looked for him first in the old rooms.  I loved the old rooms in Mother’s, the ones with the low lights, small cubbies and slanted floors.  He picked the bright new room, like a gymnasium or a school cafeteria.  It was a disappointment, but I’d survive it.

It was our second date.  We met at a bar a few nights before.  Each of us had come with someone else.  We left with each other.  He was a good kisser, and wanted more, but I made him wait.  “I don’t do that,” I explained, “on a first date.”

I studied him.  He was a little fleshy in the jowls.  Otherwise handsome, with bright blue eyes and shocks of blond hair.  He wore jeans, a cowboy shirt and cowboy boots.

He studied me.  I was a little overweight, but not bad.  Not then.  I was running, dieting, taking care of myself.  And I was tanned, not from salons or laying on the beach, but from a long hike through the mountains, solo.  I was proud of myself.  I felt strong and capable.

He looked at my feet.  I wore jeans and my battered hiking boots, a trophy from 125 miles in the Adirondack Wilderness.  “Next time, you’ll have to get rid of those boots,” he said, “and wear some nice pumps.”

I hadn’t finished eating; I’d barely gotten started.  I got up and walked out.  I had a pair of old pumps in my trunk for emergencies.  I hadn’t worn them in years.  I took them out and put them on the hood of his pick-up truck and drove away.

From a photo-prompt given in the Cowbirders' Poetry and Flash Fiction Group #7 (my second response to that prompt.) The photo, by my husband Keith, manipulated by me, was taken at the Heidelberg project in Detroit. I have lots of shoe pix also, but my computer isn't working well. While I labeled this as fiction, it is based on a true story. A guy I was out on a second date with at Mother's in Liverpool told me I had to wear pumps on our next date. I made absolutely certain there was no next date.