Shoes

Posted on January 14, 2003 in Encounters Short Trips

We drove back into the land of anorexia (LA) to pick up our passports from the Federal Building. They used us to form a line that ran along the outer wall in the shade. I used my idleness to observe people: lawyers who wore elephantine grey suits; federal agents who flashed their badges at the guards while we shivered in the shade; sloppy civil servants who stooped as they shuffled back from the cafeteria; attractive women on reduced fat diets and augmented with silicon implants; a combat-booted Coast Guardman; and one large African American woman who had a body like a bell and two plump legs that hung from her black skirt like plump clappers.

The line drew my attention, naturally, because it was there. First, I amused myself by studying the faces and asking “Of these, which do you think is most likely to have gone to school with you. My survey of the old with wirey hair implants and the young with their cell phones turned up only a balding blonde who looked to be about my age.

Bodies which leaned against the wall drew my eyes down past the crotch — which no decent man ever gets caught gazing at — to their feet. I observed several pairs of regulation black leathers, flat-bottomed women’s shoes, and one pair of white Nikes which looked as if the wearer had walked through dust and mud over the Santa Monica Mountains to visit here on his way to the airport, ten miles to the south.

He wore faded blue jeans. I think his hair was a fading ash blonde. No more observations were possible because I remembered that I needed to reschedule a teeth cleaning and, as soon as I reached my dentist, the line began to move. I completed the call, clicked in a new time, and placed my combination cell phone and PDA case on the scanner belt.

“Thrilling stuff,” I deadpanned to the guard. He stood behind a counter. I couldn’t see his feet.