Never Wear Heels on a Date by Emily J. Edwards
from TIGHTROPE: a PUNK NOIR Magazine series
I see her clearly: my middle school gym teacher sitting down a gangly group of teenaged girls, all knobbly knees and braces, overwhelmingly innocent and overwhelmingly thirteen. She was bidding us farewell, sending a new group of virgins into the mouths of the beast that was public high school.
“Just remember girls,” she said. “Never wear heels on a date.”
She said it with the gravity of a middle-aged woman in beat-up Nikes with the unflappable belief in the talismanic power of appropriate footwear. I had assumed at the time—confirmed among the whispered audacities of children—that it was a sage caution about optics. Never wear heels on a date, she said. We took it to mean: He may think you a whore.
What she meant was: if you wear heels, you cannot run.
Fifteen years later and I sat at the far end of the restaurant, in an inky black corner, re-considering my current pair of shoes. He had asked for a secluded table, and the manager was all too willing to comply. White tablecloths hid my legs—most of the length of them bare beneath my mini skirt, and a pair of strappy, red-soled patent leather sandals with a 100 millimeter heel. I wish I knew what that was in inches. They were painful and they were sexy and I wish they had stayed in their box on the top shelf of my closet.
But they were on my feet and whatever he’d slipped into my drink when I went to the restroom between salad and entree was in my bloodstream. It took me two sips to feel it and before my salmon was even cleared I knew I couldn’t ignore it any longer.
“You don’t look well.” He’d told me his real name when we first matched—he didn’t use it on his public profile—but maybe it wasn’t his real name anyway. I’d sent my friend my location, but now my little clutch purse was in his hands. “Let’s get you out of here, maybe that wasn’t the freshest fish.”
He handed a credit card to the manager and lifted me out of my chair. I’d never felt arms so strong before. Lifted me clear out of my seat like a baby from a crib. My feet were under me and I felt like my head was detached from my body, just floating above myself as I walked like an automaton towards the door.
Sixty feet from the back booth to the sidewalk. Another twenty to the curb. A straight shot. If I could manage to stay upright, if I could manage not to fall, then maybe I could save myself.
Every pair of eyes were on me and the crowd watched with rapt, silent attention. I held my breath. With every footfall, I felt like the floor was going to melt away beneath my feet.
I made it three paces before a chair moved back, a half-drunk man in a white button down shirt who needed to use the restroom. The breeze of him throwing his napkin on the table was enough wind to make me wobble. He stood up, and the man holding my body in his arms made me spin. I felt the room breathe in, and never let the air back out. I was performing in a vacuum, now, every desperate step so delicately placed, not daring to disturb even the atoms in the room.
I could feel every muscle in my body flex as I clenched to stay upright, attempted not to waver. Sinews in my toes, through my calves, to the tense trunk of my abdomen. Stay upright, stay upright. I fought the instinct in my arms to push the man who held me. Any sway and I would fall—and he would be able to sweep me away, like so much trash.
A stumble, a shuffle, a juggle of my weight as we came to the door and I felt the crowd gasp. But no, the manager came, rushed to be our balance, the strong man’s assistant. A breath of cool air and we had made it past the halfway point. As much as my body screamed for me to break away, to turn back and run to the safety of the restaurant, I had no ability to push against the body urging me down the line.
The parking attendant in the garish tie was told of our arrival—my date’s cavernous black SUV stood at the curb, the passenger door waiting as my ultimate end point.
The man was dangling my date’s keys in his hand, as he stood to the left of the open car door. One, two, three strides closer. My eyes focused on the sidewalk in front of my looming prison, and I felt a small shift beneath my foot. It felt like my head was a helium balloon, floating towards the sky. I could not run back to the restaurant. The man urged me forward. There was only one direction to flee.
I could just feel the closeness of the man with the car keys when I felt the strongman’s grip loosen. My stiletto, my heel, my vice, my weakness—I let go of the power to stay upright. I let myself fall, leaning my body into its tipping point, hoping there would be a net to catch me as I fell. No, not here. Only the cold, hard ground.
The attendant was at my side, faster than gravity, faster than the strong man. He attempted to lift me but his wiry arms were nothing compared to the potency of my date’s. I looked into the attendant’s eyes, unable to focus, unable to speak. The strong man grabbed his keys and pulled away from the curb. My purse was in the gutter, next to my body.
A single well-placed, misplaced step.
Emily J. Edwards is the author of the acclaimed Girl Friday Mystery series. The New York Times said of the initial installment, Viviana Valentine Gets Her Man, “[A] sprightly debut . . . Edwards writes with flair.” The longtime host of the comedy-podcast-about-books F***bois of Literature, Edwards currently co-hosts the classic cinema podcast Ticklish Business. She lives in Los Angeles with her film-composer husband and several quadrupeds. She is a graduate of Emerson College.
That was intense! Well done!
Love that last sentence.