Читать книгу Look at Me! - Felix Baron - Страница 6

Time was, when Constance would have been mortified to have walked down a busy street beside an over-made-up girl in a too-short skirt and too-high heels who swung her hips so emphatically.

To her own surprise, shame was the last thing she felt. So how did she feel? There was a trace of pride in being seen with someone who drew so many approving stares. Then there was jealousy. Constance might as well have been invisible, or, at best, a moon to Shirley’s sun.

But she was prettier than Shirley. She knew that, even if the thought was immodest. She was prettier but she wasn’t – sexier. That was it. And that was by her own choice, or by her mother’s.

Damn you, Mom. Look at what you’ve deprived me of, all these years. Well, it ends, now! A sense of relief washed through Constance. She felt reborn, emerging as a liberated woman, free for the first time in her life.

Shirley said, ‘If you’ve got it, flaunt it. I just caught our reflection in a window and that’s the thought that popped into my mind.’

‘What?’

‘It’s my philosophy.’

‘Oh!’

‘Don’t hide your light under a bushel, right?’

‘Right.’ Wow! Shirley could justify her brazenness with quotations from the Bible. With that justification, Constance tried swinging her hips a little. It took a moment to get the rhythm right but, once she got it going, it almost felt natural. Almost.

‘Here we are,’ Shirley announced. She led the way in.

The boutique was called Spikes. Constance swallowed hard. The shoes on display were … impossible. But beautiful, in a dozen different perverse ways. There were sculptures in leather, scraps of fabric on soaring heels, straps that made Constance feel restricted just from looking at them, puffs of pink fluff and slivers of snakeskin. People actually wore these?

A tall thin man in lavender pants and a matching shirt waltzed up to Shirley and arced to kiss her cheek without making body-contact. ‘Shirley-girly, my pet! How nice to see you again.’

He turned his head to give Constance’s feet a pitying glance that made her want to hide them. To Shirley, he continued, ‘For work or for play, today, my lovely?’

‘For play.’

He giggled. ‘Well, shoes are foreplay, in my opinion. What fun! New man?’

‘No. That’s why.’

‘Good strategy. Four inches again?’

‘And a half.’

‘Well, that’s progress at least. I’ll get you up to six inches one of these days, you mark my words.’

‘I’m sure that you will, but I don’t want to tower over all the men.’

‘There are many men that love to be towered over, Shirl. I’m tall but it hasn’t hindered me.’

‘They’re not my type, Percy.’

‘Different strokes.’

‘For sure,’ Shirley said. ‘Shoes for clubbing, please, Percy. I’ve got two new outfits, one in liquid gold, the other in a silver mesh.’

The strange man disappeared into the stacks.

Constance whispered, ‘What did you mean, “liquid gold”?’

‘It’s a fabric, very thin, very clingy, that looks like metal has been melted and poured all over you. It shows off your nips, and you can even see your bellybutton through it.’

‘Oh!’ Constance thought about that for a while, and about what it’d look like on Shirley, and on herself. Was she ready for something like that? Maybe not – not yet, anyway. Still, the thought of being seen in something so revealing made her feel a glow, down there. And if Jeff ever saw her in anything like that, he’d go crazy with desire, for sure.

Shirley put a finger on Constance’s knee. ‘Heels are very powerful. A woman can be old and fat and ugly but if her heels are high enough, men will still look at her that way.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘I kid you not.’

The shoes that Percy brought for Shirley to try had heels as thin and cruel as nails. The soles were like paper. The uppers were interlocking teardrops, one gold, one silver, and with gold and silver cord ankle straps.

‘Are those strong enough to walk in?’ Constance asked.

Percy’s eyebrow lifted. ‘If you’re looking for “sturdy”, you should try army boots,’ he sneered.

Shirley tapped Constance’s wrist. ‘Apart from a little dancing, I won’t be on my feet much in these. That’s the whole point.’

Constance thought for a moment, then blushed.

Percy squatted at Shirley’s feet. He lifted her left foot almost reverently, slipped her shoe off and eased a sandal on. One hand supported her arch; the other adjusted the ankle strap. Each movement was a subtle caress. When he’d repeated his actions with her other foot, he lifted them both to plant a pair of gentle kisses on the taut bows of her insteps.

Constance looked away and then back. It felt as if she was spying on lovers in an intimate moment. But she’d thought he was one of those ‘gays’. It was very confusing.

Shirley told Percy, ‘These are perfect. Your taste is exquisite, as usual. Now see what you can find for my friend, will you?’

Constance gasped, ‘What?’

‘You’re transforming yourself, aren’t you? A butterfly emerging from her chrysalis? Let’s move the process along, shall we?’

‘I didn’t say anything about …’

‘You didn’t have to. One day you’re a frump, the next day you look kind of pretty, and you aren’t wearing a bra. Draw a line from one to the other, and what do we have?’

Constance folded a protective arm across her chest. ‘What?’

‘Eventually, a very cute little sexpot, that’s what.’

‘I don’t know …’

‘I do.’ Shirley turned to Percy. ‘Conservative, for this time, dearest. Black, I think, and three inches?’

‘Does she have her learner’s permit?’

‘Percy!’

‘Sorry.’ He scuttled back into the stacks. He returned with a shoebox. ‘Plain black pumps. What could be more conservative?’

Shirley told him, ‘Help the girl try them on, then.’

‘Love to, but …’ His disdainful look at Constance’s scuffed loafers spoke volumes.

She kicked them off.

‘Thanks, Shirley’s friend. It’s not that those dreadful things are actually contagious, but …’

‘You wouldn’t want to soil your hands on them,’ Constance finished for him.

He squatted. From down there, he might be able to look up her skirt. Constance clamped her knees together but he didn’t so much as glance upwards. His eyes were on her feet.

‘What cute little piggies,’ he said. ‘Poor things.’ He looked up into Constance’s eyes. ‘They deserve better of you, you know,’ he accused.

‘Sorry.’

‘There, there,’ he told her toes. ‘Percy will dress you up nicely. I’ll be right back.’ He took tissue paper from the shoebox and used it to pick Constance’s loafers up and carry them away. There was the sound of something being dropped into a waste bin before he returned.

Shirley whispered, ‘I know he’s a bit eccentric, but he does know his shoes.’

Constance replied, ‘I guess I have the choice of either buying a new pair or going back to the office in my stocking feet.’ She grinned to show that she wasn’t really upset. In fact, she was quite enjoying the strange man. She’d never before bought clothes from anyone who actually cared what she bought.

Percy returned and put the pumps onto Constance’s feet with as much tender care as if he’d been wrapping Fabergé eggs. As his fingertips slid across the sensitive skin under her arches, she felt an answering subtle twitch of the tendons that run beside the hollows high on the insides of her thighs. The vamps were cut just low enough to expose half-inches of toe cleavage.

‘Walk, please,’ he announced.

Would she stumble and disgrace herself?

Shirley advised, ‘Get your centre of gravity above the balls of your feet. When you walk, your toes go down first. Remember, one foot in front of the other.’

‘You can do it,’ Percy encouraged.

It was like having a cheering squad boosting her. Constance set her feet firmly, shifted forward and concentrated on the sensations her legs’ muscles were feeling. It felt good – an elegant tension that rippled up her limbs.

And she was erect.

Constance took a short step, then another. Emboldened, she made the next one longer and stumbled but caught herself.

‘You’re doing fine,’ Shirley told her.

‘And now you are become a veritable swan!’ Percy exclaimed. ‘Look at what those shoes have done to your legs in the mirror. Pull your skirt up a tiny bit, there’s a good girl.’

Blushing with pleasure, Constance pinched the fabric just above her knees and lifted her skirt’s hem a few inches. In the mirror, her ankles had become more slender, her calves fuller. There were dimples in her knees and her thighs looked shapelier than she’d imagined them to be – not that she’d ever given much thought to what her thighs looked like.

‘Oh!’ she said. In a rush, she added, ‘Perhaps I’ll take two pairs like these.’

‘No,’ Percy told her. ‘That’d be a waste. Come back in another week and we’ll try you in three and a half or even four inches. You’ll take to wearing real heels in no time, I promise. You’re a natural.’

‘But she’ll take three pairs of stay-up stockings,’ Shirley said. ‘Would you believe that she wears’ – her voice dropped to a whisper – ‘pantyhose.’

‘Of course I noticed. I just didn’t want to embarrass her by mentioning it.’

As Percy wrapped, Shirley gave Connie a quick lecture on how to sit to take advantage of her new look – ankles crossed neatly to the side, so demure, so enticing.

On the way back to the office, Constance got just as much passing masculine attention as Shirley did. It felt a bit like the time she’d got into her dad’s hard cider, thinking it was just spicy apple juice.

She stopped by the ladies’ room and popped another button at her throat. Jeff was way overdue to visit. Before they’d broken up, he’d paused at her desk at least once every other day. She couldn’t wait to see how he reacted to the new Constance but she imagined he’d be stunned, then contrite, then desperate to get her alone to make love. When he did, she’d leave the lights on. Ha! What he’d see would devastate him, and in a good way.

And she’d see him. She’d see Jeff’s naked body. How did she feel about that?

Jeff hadn’t passed by her cubicle that day, not once. Still, he had eight floors of PCs to look after. Perhaps he was very busy. Perhaps he’d simply given up on her. She had to face that possibility. What if Jeff took up with Shirley?

Constance had a quick flash of her ex entwined with her new best friend, two lithe and lovely young bodies, undulating urgently.

No.

She hit Control 5 on her keyboard and brought the Andrew’s Aircraft queue up. The screen was a bit misty but then she blinked and it cleared.