Sole Obsession

The first thing I notice about a woman is never her face. It's not her tits, either, or the curve of her ass in a good pair of jeans. It's her feet.

I know how that sounds. Believe me, I've heard every joke, every sideways glance, every "so you're a toe guy, huh?" from friends who think they're original. I've learned to laugh it off, to shrug and change the subject. But the truth is simpler and stranger than they'd ever guess. It's not about the sex, not really. It's about the story a woman's feet tell before she opens her mouth.

Calluses on the heels mean she works hard, stands all day, doesn't complain. High arches suggest a certain pride, a way of carrying herself that starts at the ground and moves up. Painted toenails in a color that doesn't match her outfit? She's impulsive, maybe a little chaotic, probably fun. A woman who wears sneakers with everything is practical to a fault. One who lives in heels has something to prove.

I'm not proud of the way I notice these things. But I've been doing it since I was fourteen, sitting in the back of my ninth-grade English class, staring at Mrs. Delgado's sandals while she diagrammed sentences on the whiteboard. She had these long, elegant toes, the kind that looked like they belonged on a statue. I'd never seen anything like them. I couldn't stop looking. And that was that.

Twenty years later, I'm still looking.

The bar is called The Rusty Nail, which is a terrible name for a place that serves eighteen-dollar cocktails, but this is Portland, so nobody blinks. It's Thursday night, which means it's slow, which means I can sit at the end of the bar with my whiskey and watch the door without anyone asking why I'm not talking to anyone.

I'm not a creep. I want to make that clear. I don't follow women home. I don't take pictures. I don't do anything except look, and looking is free, and looking is what I'm good at.

The door opens. A woman walks in.

She's tall, maybe five-nine, with dark hair pulled back in a messy knot and a trench coat that's seen better decades. She's carrying a leather bag that looks heavy, the kind you'd use for work, and she's walking like she's been on her feet for twelve hours and is trying very hard not to show it.

I notice her feet before I notice anything else.

She's wearing black ballet flats, the kind that are basically just leather socks, and they're worn thin at the toes. No socks. Her ankles are bare, and there's a small tattoo on the left one, something scripted, too small to read from here. Her toes are long and straight, and I can see the shape of them through the leather, the way they press against the material with each step. Her heels are slightly lifted, like the flats are a size too small, or like she's been wearing them so long they've molded to her feet in a way that's almost intimate.

She sits down two stools away from me. Orders a gin and tonic. Doesn't look at me.

I try to look at her face. I really do. She's got a strong jaw and tired eyes and a mouth that looks like it hasn't smiled in a while. She's beautiful in the way that women who don't try to be beautiful often are, the kind of face you'd see in a documentary about artists or activists, not in a magazine.

But my eyes keep drifting down.

It's not a fetish, I tell myself. It's an appreciation. Like how some people notice hands or shoulders or the way a person laughs. I just happen to notice feet. It's not a problem. It's not a thing.

Except it is a thing, and I know it's a thing, because I've been sitting here for ten minutes and I haven't heard a word the bartender said to me, and I'm already imagining what her feet would look like out of those flats, what the arches would look like, whether her toes would curl when she came.

Jesus. See? This is the problem.

I take a long drink of whiskey and force myself to look at the bottles behind the bar. Focus. Count the labels. Jameson. Bulleit. Maker's. Something Japanese I can't pronounce. The bartender's name is Marcus, and he's been working here for three years, and he's seen me do this before, the stare-and-look-away, the way I get when a woman walks in and my brain short-circuits.

"You good, man?" he asks, not unkindly.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm good."

The woman two stools down pulls out her phone. She's typing something, fast, her thumbs moving like she's angry at the screen. Then she stops, sets the phone face-down on the bar, and rubs her left foot against her right ankle. It's a small gesture, the kind you do without thinking when your feet hurt. But I see it. I always see it.

She catches me looking.

Not at her face. At her feet. She catches me looking at her feet.

Her eyes narrow. Not angry, exactly. Curious. Like she's trying to figure out what kind of weirdo sits in a bar on a Thursday night and stares at a stranger's shoes.

I should look away. I should say something charming, or apologetic, or just pretend I was looking at the floor. Instead, I do the worst possible thing.

"Your feet hurt," I say.

It's not a question.

She blinks. Looks down at her own feet, then back at me. "Excuse me?"

"You've been on them all day. I can tell. The way you're sitting, the way you rub your ankle. You should put them up when you get home. Ice. Maybe a warm soak first, then ice."

The words are out before I can stop them. I sound like a podiatrist. I sound like a serial killer. I sound like a man who has spent twenty years paying attention to something he shouldn't.

She stares at me for a long moment. Then she does something I don't expect.

She laughs.

It's not a polite laugh. It's a real one, low and surprised, like it got pulled out of her against her will. "You're not wrong," she says. "I'm a nurse. Twelve-hour shift. These shoes are basically torture devices at this point."

"A nurse," I repeat. "That explains it."

"Explains what?"

"The way you stand. The way you carry yourself. You're used to being on your feet. You're used to being needed."

She tilts her head. "And you got all that from my shoes?"

"I got all that from your feet."

The words hang in the air between us. I should backpedal. I should make a joke. Instead, I just hold her gaze and wait.

She picks up her gin and tonic and moves to the stool next to mine.

"I'm Elena," she says.

"Jack."

"Jack." She takes a sip of her drink. "So, Jack. You want to tell me why you're so interested in my feet?"

And there it is. The question I've been avoiding my whole life, asked by a stranger in a bar on a Thursday night, while my whiskey gets warm and the world shrinks down to the space between two stools.

I could lie. I could say I'm a podiatrist, or a shoe salesman, or just a guy who notices things. I could laugh it off and change the subject and go home alone, like I always do.

Instead, I tell the truth.

"I don't know," I say. "But I've been noticing feet since I was fourteen, and I've never told anyone that before."

Elena doesn't flinch. She doesn't laugh. She just looks at me, really looks at me, and then she does something that changes everything.

She slips off her left flat and sets her bare foot on the rung of my stool.

"Tell me more," she says.