The Spiked Heel

“From this fellow in Payroll. Quite a sense of humor. He writes: ‘I spend most of my time doing the following things. I go to the Men’s Room once every ten minutes. I smoke a cigarette once every fifteen minutes, a total of four cigarettes an hour, or approximately a pack and a half a day. I visit one of the girls in the IBM Room at least three times a morning; sometimes, I make airplanes out of paper and throw them around the room, laughing with glee when they land in the department head’s inkwell. It is also good clean fun to shoot paper clips, so I do that occasionally, when I am not hiding the shoes of our typist who takes them off because they are too tight. (Note: They are not Julien Kahn shoes.) I sometimes fill paper bags with water and drop them out of the windows, and sometimes I set fire to wastepaper baskets. Yesterday I had a lot of fun putting a barracuda in the water cooler. But when I am not occupied with these delightful pastimes, I can be found…’ and then he goes right on to tell what he really does. Very clever, don’t you think?” McQuade said.

“Yes,” Griff answered. “Who wrote that?”

“Oh…” McQuade glanced at the signature on the bottom of the summary. “Well, it’s not important. I thought you’d get a kick out of it; though.”

“Yes,” Griff said, having enjoyed the summary, and wishing now that he had jokingly submitted Marge’s “I Type.” He caught Marge’s eye, and she apparently was thinking the same thing, because she gave him a highly superior look. He turned back to the orders again.

Alabaster/blk pat pump… what did I figure for that binding? Forty, was it, no, fifty… total of… $13.35 and fifty… that’s thirteen eight…

The phone rang. Marge picked it up and said, “Cost.” She paused a moment and then said, “Oh, just a moment, Aaron, he’s right here.” She turned to Griff. “It’s Aaron, Griff, on four.”

Griff pressed the extension button and lifted the phone.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi, stupid,” Aaron asked. “You miss me?”

“Not very. What the hell are you doing, anyway?”

“Costing, costing,” Aaron said. “What’s this I hear about an ogre from Joe-juh invading our cave?”

“Uh, yes, that’s right,” Griff said, glancing apprehensively in McQuade’s direction.

“He there now?” Aaron asked.

“Yes, that’s right,” Griff said.

“You can’t talk?”

“No,” Griff said.

“If you keep answering in monosyllables, he’ll know damn well you’re talking about him,” Aaron said.

“Yes, I guess so,” Griff answered. “In that case, why don’t you get back to what you were doing?”

“Now there’s a fancy bit of subterfuge,” Aaron said, chuckling. “Has he got you doing some work for a change?”

“I’m pricing some orders,” Griff said.

“And I’m costing some samples, which makes us blood brothers, sort of. Brother, wait until you see the fall line! I know you saw the style sheets, but the shoes themselves, man! You’ve never seen such beautiful stuff!”

“No kidding?” Griff asked, leaning closer to the phone.

“It’s wonderful, really wonderful. Griff, if Guild Week isn’t a success this year, the industry can’t blame Julien Kahn. We’ve got some stuff that makes Paris look like Wichita. You remember the style sheet for ‘Naked Flesh’? Jesus, what a shoe!”

“What’s it made of? Old chorus girls?”

“It’s that lizard pump, Griff, but in a natural tan, and the smoothest goddam job you ever want to see. Griff, there’s not a bit of crap on it, not a bit. No bows, no stripping, no trim, just a plain shell pump, but with these lines that make you want to eat the goddam shoe. It’s out of this world, I’m telling you.”

“When do I see it?” Griff asked, visualizing the shoe.

“Come on down. I’ll show it to you now.”

“I’m busy as hell, Aaron.”

“Can’t you break for five minutes? I want your ideas on what we should price this baby at, anyway. It’s like nothing we’ve ever done, Griff, I mean it, and you’ve got to hand it to Chrysler for coming up with a tag like Naked Flesh. If that doesn’t sell a shoe, nothing will.”

“It sounds like an ad for a whore house,” Griff said.

“And it looks like what a whore would wear,” Aaron added, “but a very high-priced whore. Griff, let’s face it. Every woman in the world thinks of herself as a whore.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Griff said, smiling.

“There’s a certain glamour attached to the profession of prostitution,” Aaron expanded. “Every woman recognizes that glamour, so every woman wears low-cut blouses that reveal her breasts, dresses that hug her ass, shoes that accentuate the curve of her leg. Every woman—”

“Now you sound like a morality play,” Griff said.

“And you sound too goddam smart for your own good. Are you coming down to look at this shoe?”

“No.”

“All right, screw you,” Aaron said playfully.

“And thee, dad,” Griff answered.

“And tell the Georgia boy that my grandfather was one of the few Jews in Sherman’s army. See how that sits with him.”

Griff burst out laughing. “I’ll do that,” he promised.

“Yeah, I’ll bet. So long, chicken.”