PARTISAN REVIEW
There were similar episodes, fortunately more fleeting. What
stayed with me longer than Mary's because it was mine, was the high–
heeled shoes. Walking one bright Saturday morning to work along the
same stretch that Mary had walked, I noticed a dusty blue, middle–
aged sedan parked just ahead. A pair of bare, not especially remark–
able legs was crossed in the open doorway, as though the body to
them were lying on the front seat, relaxing. I presumed they were a
woman's legs, belonging to the wife of some man who had business
in the lumberyard just opposite, because they were wearing black
high-heeled shoes.
As
I passed, I glanced at the waiting woman.
My presumption had been rash. It wasn't a woman, but a man,
unclothed (except for
the high-heeled shoes, the high-heeled shoes),
and I saw that I was, with frantic gestures, being enjoined to linger
awhile. Nothing in my life before had quite prepared for this: some
Freud, a smattering of Ellis, lots of Stekel, and fat Krafft.-Ebing, in
red covers, were on my bookshelves, granted; conversation had ex–
plored curiously, and the imagination conjured bizarre scenes at the
drop of a casual word. But reading is reading, talking is talking,
thinking is thinking, and living is different. Improvising hastily on
behavior for the occasion, I chose to pretend as though my heart
were repeating Pippa's song, and continued walking, possibly a little
faster and a little straighter than I had been, up to the P-ear stop.
When I got to the printshop, the boss said, "You look rather put
upon this morning." I mustered up a feeble smile and nodded, but
I couldn't bring myself to speak of the high-heeled shoes. Tlus was
nothing so uncomplicated as pure rape, I knew, and the need of the
moment was to go away by myself, far from everybody, and think
about things for awhile. But there were galleys and page proofs wait–
ing to be read, and I set to with ·a sort of dedicated vengeance, for I
had recently been reprimanded for getting sloppy again. When the
hectic morning of poring over small print was over and my elbows
black, letting my thoughts go cautiously but wholly back to the time
between leaving the house and boarding the P-ear, I found there
was not much to think about. I had seen what I had seen. I had,
admit it now, been thrown for a sickening loop. That was all. But
the incongruity of a naked man in black high-heeled shoes was some–
thing the mind could not entirely dismiss, and there were times after–
wards when he, never seen again, contributed to a larger perplexity
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