I don’t know what kind of expression I had on my face, but the salesperson immediately took pity on me.
“They run small,” she said. She was sure she had a size nine. They’d probably fit perfectly.
The woman who was trying on the eight and a halves was a classic Madison World lady. She appeared to be in her early forties but could have been older.
Her hair was Madison World blonde, a color not too platinum or too gold, in a tone that is cheerful without being showy. The texture is bouncy, of a length that can’t be described as long or short. In other words, Madison World blonde is a pleasantly interchangeable hairstyle that looks good on many women and often causes them to look exactly alike, to the point where these women are often mistaken for other Madison World blondes, even by their own husbands.
No matter. Madison World blonde is an aspirational, achievable, and sisterly color. It allows women who have never met to instantly bond and become friends, secure in the knowledge that they probably have some other Madison World lady in common.
If I was going to fit in in Madison World, it was going to have to be some version of this. Which meant if the blonde was getting the shoes, I needed to have them as well.
The salesperson came back out. She only had a nine and a half left.
They would definitely be too large she said.
“I’m going to try them anyway,” I said, countering with the universal line of female persuasion: “You never know.”
She handed them over doubtfully.
I unwrapped the shoes and placed them on the carpet. I slipped my feet in. I rose up from my seat. Up and up and up. The shoes, which had somehow looked much lighter and more delicate in the window, were actually huge clomping affairs that would require Pilates-style leg muscles to maneuver across the landscape of uneven pavement, steps, grating, and other obstacles that had to be negotiated when walking in heels.
I took a step forward. Then another one. The shoes looked great and, at that moment, everyone in the store knew it.
“But they’re too big,” the saleslady said.
This was a little bit true. There was an eighth of an inch gap between my heel and the back of the shoe.
“I can call our other stores. See if anyone has a size nine.”
“No,” I said. “They’re fine. I can walk in them.”
* * *
The triumph of having secured the right shoe triggered something in my brain, and then I couldn’t stop shopping. When the fancy overpriced drugstore on the corner was going out of business with everything 50 percent off, I went on a mini spending spree. All of a sudden, I needed a whole bunch of things I hadn’t thought about for ages. Like leather gloves. Makeup brushes. Six bottles of normally forty-dollar shampoo.
The penultimate splurge was a pair of hot-pink neoprene booties. I convinced myself it was okay to buy the booties because they were made of the same material as those swimming shoes, which also meant they were comfortable and a lot cheaper than leather.
They weren’t entirely practical though. The color screamed: “Look at me.” Out in the real world, when your clothes scream “look at me” you’re supposed to be a six-foot model or at least an attractive young person. But I didn’t live in the real world. I lived in Madison World, home to a variety of fashionistas. In addition to the Madison World lady and actual models was another type: an older woman in garb that would be considered bizarre and inappropriate anywhere else.
Up and down the avenue were women in neon colors and shiny gold accents. They wore head-to-toe black leather, lime-green tracksuits paired with platform sneakers, sequins and satin-striped pants that reminded me of the circus. And the hair. Dyed blonde mixed with sharp hues of bright pink and green and blue like peacock plumage. In true Madison World style, these birds of a feather stuck together. I’d see them congregating by a lamppost, smoking cigarettes. Or sitting outside Ladurée, in the green-and-white striped chairs eating pastel-colored macarons.
I was pretty sure these women weren’t from Madison World, however. Proper Madison World ladies didn’t laugh loudly with their girlfriends on the corner or scream into their cell phones. They didn’t express excessive emotion in public. And mostly, they didn’t smoke cigarettes, much less smoke on the street.
One day my curiosity got the better of me. When I saw a cluster of them standing in front of a store, I bummed a cigarette and stood close enough to overhear what they were saying.
They were Russians. Or Russian-speaking people. This was interesting. A well-placed source in Madison World had told me that the Russians were mostly responsible for the huge spike in the rich tax. They could afford to pay full price on dresses in the shops, which had driven up the cost.
Meanwhile, the Park Avenue princesses who were married to American billionaires were up in arms. Even they thought twenty thousand dollars was too much to pay for a party dress.
And now the Russians were all over Madison World. And they weren’t just buying clothes.
The Russians Get Me
Meanwhile, with no other identity to choose from, I’d become that tired old urban cliché: the schlepper.
It had been years since I’d been a schlepper, but I remembered it well and not fondly. You carried it all with you—your work, your shoes, your life—in handbags the size of burlap sacks and worn department-store shopping bags and plastic grocery sacks. You became slightly stooped from the weight as you sherpa’d your way around dirty slush, toxic-looking deposits, strollers, bike messengers, up and down escalators and subway stairs worn dangerously smooth. You lugged your stuff from work to bars to clubs and to the bathroom in those clubs and eventually back to your tiny bedsit. Your back ached and your feet hurt, but you just kept on schlepping, hoping for the day when something magical would happen and you wouldn’t have to schlep no more.
My schlepping route often took me straight through Madison World, past what appeared to be a group of Russian youths who hung out on the stoop in front of a store. They were attractive and had that careless air of kids who know they’re cooler than you are. Sometimes they played music, but mostly they laughed and harassed passersby. I’d once seen them chase an unsuspecting woman to the corner, telling her they could help with her “sad eyes.”