Madness and Women
Stories
Poetry
shoes
the only ones who’d agree to do this on such short notice and keep it to themselves were two hookers named denise and roberta.
he and his friend ethan were shoe store managers in the same mall.
they needed the girls to help transfer shoes from his store to ethan’s store.
they had to do it right away in the middle of the night when no one saw what they were doing.
ethan’s district office called a few hours before and his store was being audited the next morning.
ethan predicted his store inventory balance would come out short.
way short.
ethan sold too many pairs of his shoe inventory on the side to pay for his drugs and bar tabs.
he kept the empty boxes in the back of his store.
_____
the plan was simple.
their stores shared the same delivery hallway.
the girls would transfer the shoes from his store to ethan’s store on rolling carts down that hallway.
ethan would place the transfers into the empty boxes.
ethan would place those additional shoes onto his store’s shelves for the auditors to scan.
the auditors didn’t know if those shoes matched the barcodes.
_____
the girls arrived around eleven pm.
the audit was scheduled to begin at six the next morning.
they walked in like they owned the place and denise said they came prepared.
they pulled out halloween masks at the same time and slipped them on.
roberta asked when do they get their guns.
she requested a gun like clint eastwood used in his detective action movie called dirty harry.
roberta wanted “firepower like that in case she had to blow someone’s head off.”
ethan set them straight.
“ok listen girls you two don’t wear masks and you don’t get guns.”
they removed their masks and looked disappointed.
for a second he thought this was going be a deal breaker but they stayed.
ethan kept everyone on their toes with an eight ball and some industrial-strength diet pills.
_____
everything went well.
at one point denise clomped down the hallway wearing a pair of men’s size seventeen dress loafers.
she pushed a cart with roberta sitting on a pile of shoes.
they wore their masks and roberta shot her dirty harry handgun at the shoe crooks she passed on the sides of the hallway.
_____
in the morning ethan’s audit balanced.
after the auditors left the girls returned the shoes.
that night they had a party to celebrate.
he and ethan catered with potato chips and sour cream dip.
the girls got silly on champagne and sang and danced to some oldies.
denise kept the loafers.
he thought she looked hot as she sang and danced around naked in those shoes.