Wing Tips by Avery Chenoweth
For until then life for me in Washington, D.C., had flowed along rather pleasantly. I didn't walk the shadowed valleys but then again I didn't exactly achieve the sunlit summits either in a city where power glittered on inaccessible terraces. I was a humble cottage villager who carried in his ruck sack daydreams of effortless and precocious success; and I was still trying then to make that quantum leap onto the staff of a senator. Shooting for speech writer or communications director. The trade council I worked for, though, the A.S.C.C., was nothing to sneer at. We represented hundreds of millions in sales, here and abroad. And we had a humongous trade show coming up in September when I would play spokesman to the national media. No, the A.S.C.C. wasn't missiles, perhaps, but then again we weren't butter either.
As I crossed Dupont Circle on my way back up Connecticut Avenue, bums shook plastic cups and dry voices ask for my spare change. You see them every day until they vanish into the green shade, and they were far away that day because I was flashing-back to a scene, my last seizure to own a specific kind of shoe.
"Mom--" An autumn morning in the fifth grade. "They're not Beatle boots; they're galoshes!"
"You straighten up, mister, right this second, do you hear me? If you miss that bus you are going to walk to school!"
"Everybody'll laugh! They'll call me a nimrod, they'll call me a square!"
I had reached my office building by now, and stepping into the elevator, allowed the doors to shut the memory out.
The afternoon waned but I got nothing done. Shadows of the venetian blinds drooped over my computer screen and bled down my white shirt, and I was alive to the blaze of summer outside and the cool dark of corkboard inside. There was a press release I should have written that day but didn't. Bowing a rubber band, I fired a paperclip and stung the slats. Creating the council's image was no small task, however. I fired again. The beady red phone light had been blinking for a few moments when Joy paged me. "Hunt Brophy, call on line six, Hunt Brophy--"
"The release?" I said, to Larry. "Fine. Tomorrow. Why?"
He was my boss and the A.S.C.C.'s director, Larry Drapers, an anxious and ineffectual man who fell back on maternal silence to inflict guilt. The line went quiet. But I had been flacking for a year now, so trying to appeal to my conscience was a wrong step. It was professional to feel little guilt over anything that didn't touch you personally, which included my job.
"We have that big press conference in a week," he went on, in the authoritative tone. "I want to see those press packets on Monday. And I am not kidding. Do you hear me? Are you there?"
That was my job as wordsmith, to spin golden threads of syntax into bales of verbal straw: releases, newsletters and brochures. But that was life at a trade council. The Post might be rife with stories about bombings or wars or grand mal seizures of the stock market, but all I ever did was trolley along in that cute shuttle train between senate buildings. Or listen to Larry.
"You got it," I kept telling him, "Snax-Po--historic event, no sweat. I'll do it first thing tomorrow morning, okay? Jesus."
I raised the blinds on the construction site across the street. On the reticulated skeletal frame men in hard hats were ascending and descending stairs in an another unfinished project rising in steel against the sun, a city glassed in dreams. And when the warm hours began their heavy descent in the stillness of my workspace, I lowered my face onto my folded arms, and came up again outside on the mall. We had been playing softball when I leaped for an outfield catch, kept rising, soaring into the sun, and my legs went down, and I had become a colossus bestriding the narrow mall. My softball mitt at the sky. Shoes moving on the carpet startled me, and I awakened quickly, careful to swipe a sleeve across my cheek for the drool. The press conference lay two weeks off; I could knock out the release in the morning.
"Night, Joy," I said. Last ones--the office was empty.
On the way down two women in the elevator were discussing a party, and as I left the building, converging with everyone else shouldering toward the Dupont station, I remembered a party from the previous weekend. Some townhouse way up Mass. Ave. Capitol Hill crowd. Great party--dancing, music, beer, people. Hawaiian shirts, tans. Motown. People on the deck, around the keg in the steel washtub of ice. Then, from out of nowhere, some Yalie with a square jaw tried to do a little social climbing on my face.
"And what do you do, Hunt?" he said.
"Press secretary for an industry council," I said, and began looking around for something or someone.
"Really, which one?" He turned to three women with big hair and a visible enthusiasm for husband-hunting. "We handle a lot of defense issues," he told them. "The Senator is sponsoring legislation to extend S.D.I. funding." He then looked at me.
The four of them were waiting.
"The A.S.C.C.," I said, trying to shrug my way out of this, "we do nutrition stuff mostly--say, you know where the bathroom is?"
"The what?" asked one of the women.
"Oh, yeah." He clicked his fingers while looking at his shoes--two hundred dollar casual loafers.
I couldn't let him blurt it out, so I had to translate. "The American Snackfood and Candy Council," I said.
"That's it!" He looked up, and that smile of sudden memory became one of triumph.
"I never heard of such a thing," the second woman said, and laughed. "Oh, I'm sorry," and put a hand over her astonished mouth.
The third woman said, "Didn't I see something in the Post about a trade show you have coming up. What's it called again?"
"Snax-Po," I said, and they laughed as though I were telling lawyer jokes.
I laughed with them. "Hey, don't knock it," I said, "we send Tang up with the astronauts."
They thought that was a riot, but when they kept it up, I started looking around. Sometimes they get the point and lay off.
"Oh, I love this song," one of the women said.
In the living room "Baby Love" was booming--sweet and urgent and pleading--and they went surging out to dance. Someone opened the referigerator, so I moved against the wall and the door swung into my chest. From behind the door the party looked great--all these heads going by--and all that dancing. Plenty of beautiful women, talking to other guys. The bathroom was upstairs, and at the end of the hall there was a library with a television, and the most amazing things are on cable these days--"Dark Shadows," for one, which I hadn't seen in ages.
Anyway, as I red-lined to Takoma Park that evening after work, I had a flash. Wing tips. I began drumming the solo from "Inna Gadda Da Vida" on my thighs. Wing tips. Of course--they were perfect! I looked down at my old black penny loafers--so adolescent, so prep school. But wing tips were classics--serious shoes worn by serious men. A pair of wing tips would add throw-weight to my appearance and therefore my opinions. So--in your face, Mr. Capitol Hill smartass. And not just you but all the smarmy little shits who suck up to guys like you. I felt so high that I almost missed my station. And on impulse picked up a sixpack at the 7-11, then enjoyed a stroll home under leaves glazed with summer twilight.
"Goddamnit!"
As I shut the door, my sister, Charlotte, was snatching newspapers and magazines off the dining room table. "I can't believe it's not here," she said. "I must have left it on the train. Shit. Fuck. Shit."
"Hey, you want to take it easy with my Esquire?" I slid the six into the fridge and crumpled the paper bag. "You want a Molson's? Oh, guess what--how do you like wing tips? You think they're too Reagan?"
"It's the little black one with the long strap. It's not under your coat, is it?"
"What?" I finger-snapped the bottle cap at the garbage can and missed.
"My purse, Hunt, will you please look?"
"Oh, I thought you meant a book or something. Nope, not here. You know the funny thing is I looked at them last year and said, `God, I'm becoming just like Dad, man. No way.'"
"My wallet was in there, my credit cards, my Safeway check cashing card, my library card, my license, my Visa, my Mastercard--Goddamnit! My whole life was in that bag. I don't exist without it--I can't buy anything, I can't get money--Goddamnit, Hunt, would you please get your stuff off the table? Here-- " She thrust another book into my arms. "And not on the steps either. I'm sorry to be such a bitch but I'm really pissed off."
Renting a house with your sister can slow you down socially, but she was an okay housemate. She had just gotten engaged, though, and I think that was bugging her.
"Just call and cancel everything," I called downstairs.
"I will," she said, as I came back down. "But first I want to drive over to the metro and see if anyone has turned it in."
I clicked on the TV. The network news had ended but "Jeopardy" was on. I sank into the couch, humming the theme song, then took a long swig on the beer.
"Shit, this pisses me off. Don't let the cats out." She banged the door shut behind her.
I lifted little black Rasta into my lap, shouted, "Who was Walt Disney?" and was right for a thousand dollars.
The next morning, Friday, I sat in the sumptuous light of the window, spooning in Cheerios, drinking Coca Cola, watching "Bullwinkle" and then "Good Morning America." It was great to feel my childhood alive within me. My formative years, the ages one through twelve, had been filled with an indissoluble mixture of toys and television. And with the guys in my office I shared a memory of sitcom characters and plots, from "I Love Lucy," to "The Brady Bunch," far more than we shared any sensibility drawn from books. I don't remember even finishing a book until I got to U.Va. I had escaped high school on the erudition of Cliff's Notes. But don't knock them--they had taught me what to say in college.
That morning I drove Charlotte to Dulles so she could shuttle up to Boston for her fifth reunion at Wellesley. She gave me a list of chores, including the obvious one of feeding the cats. "No duh," I said, after she got out of the car.
"Um, Joy," I said, in the office. "If Larry asks, would you tell him that I'm up on the Hill, schmoozing? Thanks."
"Hunt, he's really anxious about that press release for Snax-Po. Are the packets ready? He wants to see them today, if possible."
"They're fine," I said. "I'll do it Monday. No sweat."
And then I went shopping. Sweating and itching in the swampy June heat, I rambled over miles of pavement under the cerulean sky, ran across broad avenues, revolved through glass doors, and rose only to sink again on escalators. I made an endless circle to all of D.C.'s shoe stores for men. I was tough. I scrutinized stitching, linings and patterns, brought shoes right up to my nose. Florsheim I compared to Johnson & Murphy in terms of price and craftsmanship. I was choosy. I strode the carpets, opened my jacket, studied my new image in mirrors. Crossing my legs, I caught a glimpse of myself--is this how they see me? Salesmen gave up. They salaamed me on my first visit with "Hello, Sir, and how are we today?" but on my third, they said, "Hey, Frank, you wanna take this guy? I got a customer here."
My first decision was clear: to fight my mother's influence. Always, always, always she had bought the cheap imitation to save money. Other kids wore skin-tight Levi cords. I moped into class in Levi's factory seconds--purchased at the Lambertville flea market--with leg seams twisting across the baggy knees, looking like Emmet Kelly. On rainy days the studs hung out at the bus stop in blue jean jackets, getting soaked and looking cool. When the bus pulled up, I would fall out of the bushes, wearing my yellow shiny rain coat with the illustrations of Raggedy Andy on the lining, and clumsy buckle galoshes which she insisted were as nice as Beatle Boots. But better because your feet stayed dry. "Don't be silly, Hunt; do your own thing. Who cares what other people think?" But no one knocked her books to the ground, or refused to sit with her in the cafeteria, and she never got into fights with popular little square-jaws.
And yet, the more shoes I saw, the less decisive I became. You may not know this, but there are as many kinds of wing tips as there are industry councils. "Jesus Christ," I muttered. A few decisions though were easy: color, walnut not oxblood; texture, smooth not pebble. But then there was the problem of size. Take the 11ds. Was there something aristocratic in the superfluous length of the toe? How could I decide? And did that mean the 10 1/2Ds were proletarian?
"I'm sorry," said one salesman in a cheap orange toupe, as he came swishing in with a box. "Sold the last pair of 10 1/2Ds in cordovan not five minutes ago. But I do have black."
A voice whispered from memory, "black is so tacky, black is so tacky..." My mother--still buying my clothes! Distraught, I gazed at my thighs. "Let me see the 11Ds in cordovan, please."
I strutted, mashed my thumb down, desperate to locate my big toe.
"They're a little long," the salesman said. He twisted his pinky into his ear then inspected the crud that came out under the nail. "But only you can really know."
I looked down at my old penny loafers amid the tissue paper--creased with experience, as individual as a face, but just not powerful enough on a planet of office buildings.
As I went home on the red line with the box on my lap, I became sick. My angry reflection in the train windows accused me. I couldn't believe that I had bought such long and pointy shoes. I would look like a complete jerk. Worse, I would look like Bobby Rydell. When the train stopped at Union Station, I wanted to throw the box out the doors. But I began to study the shoes of other passengers. Duck-footed, pigeon-toed, scuffed, and tacky, they were a host of sad and ugly shoes without even a millimeter of unnecessary length to convey elegance. I began to examine their faces. Fat, pale, and lumpen they were--asleep, dead, and bored. They were the timeless medieval peasants whom Breughel painted dancing in the mud, people who spent their lives slogging through shadowy valleys, while I now felt the breaking warmth of sunshine across my face. We had come up into the placid evening of green suburbs, and I knew that all things come to those who dare to reinvent themselves. The windows were flashing. Outside was a lovely world.
The telephone rang. It rang again. And it was ringing in my dreams until I went stumbling between the dining room chairs, thinking: plane crash, heart attack, car accident--
"Collect call from Tony," the operator said. "Will you accept?"
"Tony? Who's Tony?"
"For Charlotte, man," a deep voice said. "I got the purse."
I accepted the charges.
"She lose the purse?" the man asked.
"Uh--yeah, she lost it."
"I got it."
I sat down at the dining room table, working my eyes and mouth, and checked the clock radio--4:13 a.m. "Okay," I said. "So, now what?"
"Well, you want it back, right?"
"Yeah, yeah."
"Well, come and get it."
I wondered what time would be convenient.
"Now, man. You want the purse, come and get it now, you dig?"
I had to think a moment, but couldn't. "What do you mean? Like, now?"
"Yeah, man, now. You want the purse, right?"
I checked my wrist watch against the clock radio. I couldn't go anywhere at that hour and said so.
Silence on both ends of the line. Him breathing in my ear. Me breathing into his.
"Well," he said, "what are we going to do?"
In my position at the A.S.C.C., I had dealt with all sorts of powerful people, from a raft of Congressmen to their aides, and even a few intractable hair stylists. So I knew how to say yes and no and close a deal. I began to drum on my thigh.
"I got to tell you some things, though, okay? I didn't take it, I found it. So I figured, you know, like I would like it if someone did it for me, so I figure I do it for you, you dig?"
"I hear you, Tony."
"That's not my name. You got a pen?"
He told me his real name was Reginald but every single pen I tried ran dry and pencils broke. "Nope," I said. "Wait. Nope. Hang on. Here we go. Shit. You still there? Hang on." It took us nearly ten minutes of saying everything three times to get his name, phone number and address. And then I still had to carve impressions into an envelope with the hollow tip of a pencil.
"And when you come and get it, man, don't be bringing no polices, you dig? I know there's white people and black people with bad feelings but I don't want no trouble. You know, cause like I know where you live and I got your number."
"Right," I said, "got it."
Anxious light bled between the blinds, and my mattress rolled me up one plane and down another until my face turned to the glare of Sunday morning--I had just been racing down a street in the North East section of the city, trying to escape an angry mob of werewolves. Dispatcher 210 told me not to go to Reginald or let him come to me--but Reginald wouldn't hear of it. "No, man," he said in five calls that Sunday. "You don't understand. I got a friend that's got a car. We'll drive it over there and give it to you."
"No, no, no," I said Sunday night, in the flickering dark of the television, "that's impossible--"
Monday morning. Larry's bald spot was waiting for me in my cubicle--visible on my approach--so I went to the men's room. In the third stall with the Style section I found some refuge. Then a pair of shoes came in and stood at the sink--Larry's exploded old Florsheim tassle loafers--and I drew mine back from sight.
"You know," he said, towelling his hands, "I wasn't kidding last week. I want those packets today. A.S.A.P."
Joy was paging me. Her voice was everywhere in the halls, echoing, chasing. "Hunt Brophy, it's him, line four...Hunt Brophy-- It's him, line three...It's him, line two, Hunt Brophy, it's him--"
I pinched the flesh at the bridge of my nose as if I could turn on my brain by doing that. It didn't work. "The A.S.C.C. announces," became, "The A.S.C.C. would like to proclaim," evolved into, "The A.S.C.C. would like to scream--".
"Joy, take a message, please."
"Hunt Brophy, it's him again, line six."
"Will you please for God's sake take a message?"
"He says it's important that he talk to you now."
"Can you put him on hold?"
"Larry wants to see you five minutes ago."
"All right!" I shouted. And hit line six.
"Okay," Reginald said, "I'll turn it in at the Metro after work, but you said something about a reward."
I brimmed a hand over my eyes. "Twenty-five bucks."
The line went quiet. "Okay," he said.
Done deal! I swung back in my chair, slapped my hands together, let out a whoop of hot damn, and jumped to my feet. Reginald would turn it over to the police and an officer would bring it to our house that night. All the fear of crime, of any contact with someone who might harm us, dissipated. I felt like taking myself to lunch, but instead, sat down and banged out the release. Larry loved it. Packets done.
"Well, it wasn't easy," I told Charlotte that night in the kitchen of our Maple Street house. We were celebrating--a plate of triskets and cheddar cheese and bottles of Corona, with wedges of lime. "But the thing is you just have to negociate hard."
The door bells chimed.
"Talk turkey," I said as she walked through the living room.
Munching, I leaned out of the kitchen. Charlotte was listening to a newspaper kid who stood under the porch light with a canvas bag of papers over his shoulder.
"We get the Times at the metro stop," I called out. Glancing at my new wing tips, which I had put on for the occasion--though I was saving them for the big press conference--I strolled to the door to see if I could help her again.
The kid was wearing a Daniel Boone hat of gray imitation fur, with genuine racoon tail. Bright red Reboks. But the hat caught my attention because I had owned one just like it once, and flashed-back to asking my mother to buy it for me. Their tone changed into an argument and I tuned in.
"No, see, you don't understand," he was telling her in a deep voice, "I don't want no big $300 box like last time, all I want is this nice little one that's only $39.95 at Radio Shack. So, what do you say?"
"I'm sorry, Reginald," Charlotte said. "I will reward you because I am very thankful. I really appreciate everything you did to return my purse. But I think a twenty-five dollar reward is plenty, don't you?"
I was aware in a distant way that I had stopped chewing, then swallowed. The fact stood before me that this was Reginald, the negociator with whom I had struggled over the phone, but all I could do was look at the hat, remembering the way I had begged for one; and in Charlotte's stern refusal to give him more money, I heard an echo of our mother's reproving penury.
"Well--" Reginald looked at his new Reboks. "Twen-fi' bucks, it ain't nothing."
Charlotte tore out the check, which he accepted, and I remained under the porch light. The man who had inspired such terror was a boy who strutted slowly up the sidewalk, with a sack of newspapers over his shoulder; and but for the pronunciation, I could still hear myself saying the same thing whenever I gave in to my mother.
The press conference was a big success, which was a relief after the moody week had passed. Why it was such a lousy week mystified me. In soft ball, we finally beat the poseurs from the Soft Drink Foundation, but I didn't feel like going out for pizza with everyone afterwards. Throughout the press conference, I created a commanding presence in my Brooks Brothers suit, yellow power tie and new wing tips. Schmoosing the reporters as they stuffed themselves with devil's food cakes, I handled them all so suavely you might have thought I was running for office. And yet, I began to feel just a bit sleazy.
"Welcome, welcome," Larry began at the podium, as though he were Reagan himself. "Welcome on this historic occasion."
"This September at Snax-Po, the producers of America's favorite action foods will call on Congress to investigate the conspiracy between foreign manufacturers to control the price of sugar. It is an issue that affects all of us, from those who are well off--" Larry waved left, to the male model behind him in the charcoal suit and yellow tie, "to America's inner-city youth," and waved right, to the young black actor we'd hired through William Morris, who wore a ball cap sideways. "We here at the A.S.C.C. have a list of suggested import regulations we will submit to Congress at that time." He waved the list then put it down.
"In this year of hardship, then, let us all remember that good eating and good health are aspects of the good life. Like nougats and caramel," Larry said, "they're a dynamic combination. Are there any questions?"
A hand went up in the back of the group. "Are you able to name names at this point in time in terms of who you're talking about?"
"No, we are not," Larry said. "All names will be made public in September, at Snax-Po."
"Then can you tell us who you're investigating?" the same reporter asked.
"Tobelerone," Larry said, "but you didn't get that from me."
The reporters wrote furiously in their notebooks. Now the questions came fast.
"Do you know how this will affect the U.S. balance of trade with the French?"
"What figures have you got on tooth decay and gingivitis with regard to Europeans in terms of chocolate consumption?"
"Can you recommend a good tooth paste?"
"Are you willing to sponsor community-based needs-oriented snack food workshops?"
It seemed that only a week earlier I had loved beguiling reporters into covering our issues and concerns, but now I had to find refuge in my cubicle. I raised the blinds. The jointed carcass was livid with crawling men in red helmets.
"Great coverage!" Larry gave me a slap on the shoulder.
"New shoes," I said--he wore a pair of wing tips, about forty dollars less expensive than mine and short in the toe.
"Here, everyone, take what you want. Little present," he said, amid the office cheer, and handed me a plastic bag heavy with fruit pies, devil dogs and chocolate bars. They were all going to an early lunch and I said I would join them.
The clouds were breaking when I stopped outside in the June heat. For some reason I felt bereft, even sad. It was the same despondency that had plagued me all week but was now piqued, like a stero cranked up to ten. It focused in my stomach, and patting myself there, I looked at my wing tips. And stopped breathing. In the noon brilliance they were not cordovan at all but black--dull black with bright cherry circles on the toes. I closed my eyes. I'd been cheated by the dim lights of the store.
Voices went by then got quiet--looking at me, no doubt. Motionless with my eyes closed, I was overwhelmed with a sudden nausea of vanity. And suddenly I was in a rage hurling galoshes across my bedroom, white socks in the garbage, a yellow raincoat into the driveway. I had to look again. The cherry toes winked this time like Raggedy Andy. My mouth went watery, and lurching down the sidewalk, I wished to God that I was someone else.
When I came to Kramer Books I slowed down. There, on the sidewalk, lay an elderly black man. He was asleep. One arm was bent under his head for a pillow; the other, draped across his chest, was wrapped in cellophane which formed a cone around his hand. Young men in formidable suits and popsicle ties were striding by, and as I kneeled, I knew suddenly that I would not be at the council when Snax-Po came around in September.
"Trick or treat," I said, and slipped a Snickers bar inside the frayed lapel. A nice Harris tweed, too, or it had been, and green alligator shoes: I always wanted a pair of those. People were staring at me as they went by. They all seemed very far away, gliding back into a landscape of time, all those mental engineers and climbers driven by self-importance and issues and concerns and connections--comic and over-dressed as they went round and around, up here and down there. I had a sensation of the earth quite far beyond these immediate streets and of people and cities prospering far beyond the ambit of all these people in the important clothes and candy colors, all of whom were checking their passing reflections in store windows. I laughed outloud in the sunlight. "Fuck it if you can't take a joke," I said, and they veered away from me.
That day I gave the bum a Devil Dog and a Ring Ding. I liked doing that small thing: life rolled out before me. Maybe I could work for a shelter, help the homeless, join the Guardian Angels. And maybe not. But there were thousands of trade councils, and I had always wanted to save the environment. People were next.
But there was more in the bag. I slung it across my back and hiked on to Dupont Circle. Men lay in sprawling possession of the benches around the fountain and in the shade of the trees. Dry voices asked for my spare change and calloused hands received instead Twinkies, Ho-Hos and Yum-Yums. A few of them were surly, a few threw them back or gave them away, and one of them told the others I was an ambassador on drugs. But I didn't listen. I was dispensing candy. And I went on down the hot sidewalks, across boulevards and through revolving doors, on and on, until I felt myself merging at last with the millions already circling the trees and buildings of the gleaming city.
After lunch one Thursday afternoon not very long ago, I found myself loitering in the summer heat at the windows of Massey's shoe store on 18th Street. Wing tips--a pair gleamed on a brass pedastal behind the glass. The bells chimed and a man came out in the sunshine. Brushed silver hair, yellow power tie and Brooks Brothers suit--so distinguished he might have been an ambassador. On his feet were new wing tips which caught the sun and flashed. He seemed to shine all over. And yet, he looked a little silly holding that plastic bag with his old shoes inside. In the shade of the awning, I laughed. The man glared cautiously and moved into the flow of pedestrians, no doubt feeling my smile on his back.
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