Walking Miles

Reya glanced at the corner of the bar where she would ordinarily be found nursing a very dirty martini. A dismissive smile played on the corners of her lips as she closed her eyes and swayed her hips sensually. She felt a strange pressure in her arms, a build-up of tension that up until a few years ago was completely alien to her. Reya had learned to stop fighting her body when an urge took over so let her arms go free. They shot up in the air and slowly snaked down, fingers raking through her hair and down the back of her neck before smoothing along the outside curves of her body. 

She could feel eyes on her, drinking her body in, and congratulated herself for so gracefully stealing the stilettos she was now wearing from the woman’s bag last week. Reya remembered the envy and arousal she felt watching the woman writhe, and reveled in the thought that she was having the same effect now. The sharp-tipped heels were a luminous mint green which she paired with an emerald sequin top, the glassy discs catching the light enticingly as she moved.

Reya did not measure herself against the people whose attention she had taken but felt pleased with herself nonetheless as she opened the door for her handsome guest to enter her apartment behind her. She carefully slipped her new shoes off and placed them in the shoe rack, but this time on the top shelf, marking their increased value in her life. Reya gestured for her guest to follow her into the kitchen and immediately felt a stark difference in the way her body moved, as if the bones and ligaments had come undone and reconnected with stiff scar tissue. Her steps were more jerky, and any evidence of her lithe swaying had completely vanished. She blinked her eyes in consecutive flutters, Reya’s version of an eye roll that she was back to being her awkward-bodied self. No matter, she thought to herself, this man has had enough whiskey to not notice the difference.

In the kitchen, she poured them both a glass of red wine as they engaged in half-whispered small talk and lingering eye contact. In between their sips, they slowly gravitated towards each other, shifting their postures until Reya was close enough to see the specks of amber in the stranger’s green eyes. He leaned towards her and planted a kiss on her lips, to which she responded by taking his hand and leading him to her bedroom where she dimmed the lights and put on smooth music rich with lush vocals. As Reya stepped back into the stranger’s arms he pulled away slightly, gently but firmly turning her around so her back was pressed against his chest leaving no space between their bodies. He rocked side to side, his hands on the flesh where her hips met her thighs, moving her softly with him.

“Dance for me”, he mouthed hotly into her ear.

She recognized from the way the stranger acted throughout the evening that if she had felt uncomfortable and asked him to leave, he would have done so respectfully, but she found that she didn’t want him to go. The more time she spent with the stranger, the more she liked him. He had a dry sense of humour aimed mostly at himself that she found charming. Reya thought it sweet the way he ran his hand through his hair when nervous, like he did just before he approached her on the dance floor or while he fiddled with the stem of his empty wine glass before kissing her. So, she let the liquor induced buzz convince her to try a few moves, how hard could it be to slowly toss and glide one’s hips? Very hard it turned out, as after a few seconds she could feel the stranger’s hands taking over again and guiding her to a different rhythm, that she wasn’t giving him what he thought he signed up to on the dance floor. She resented the numbing of her judgement, took a sharp breath in and turned to face him.

She placed a hand on his chest, and with her eye-lids half closed seductively, she said “I have an idea, I’ll be right back.”

A small questioning crease formed on the handsome man’s brows, but she ironed it away with a smile.

Reya returned with nothing on but her mint green shoes.

The next morning, having exchanged numbers with the stranger after a passionate night together and sent him on his way, she jumped into the shower, already late for work. She put on her scrubs for her shift and ran to the shoe rack. Furthest to the left was the pair of worn grey and white padded sneakers she was looking for. They were the first pair of shoes Reya had taken, although in this instance mistakenly, from the woman getting dressed next to her at the gym. They'd even made a joke of complimenting each other's tastes for having identical sneakers and how comfortable they felt while teaching raucous kids (Reya) or all-day doctoring in a hospital ward (the woman) yet they still both went home with the wrong pair.

On the subway home she felt an itch on her outer-ankle, and as she bent to scratch it, she heard a voice hum “lateral malleolus”. Confused, she looked around her to see who had spoken but no one around her acted like they had heard let alone said anything.

When Reya returned to her itch, she heard it again, “lateral malleolus.”

As she dragged her fingers up to her lap the voice hummed “Fibula…Patella…Femur.”

She moved her hands to her mouth in shock as Reya realized the voice was hers, that it came from within her mind. Although she had never heard these words before, she was confident they were naming her bones.

Eventually the dots, that Reya was wearing a medic’s shoes and suddenly knowledge had spouted from her, had connected and as farfetched as it felt, she considered that she had somehow absorbed the knowledge of the previous owner through the sneakers. To test her theory, as soon as Reya got home, she poured herself a generous serving of vodka, threw in a single cube of ice, and plonked in front of the laptop. She searched some medical procedure names and would guess what they involved before reading on beyond the title, and found she was almost always correct. She then took the shoes off but kept them within her sight superstitiously and repeated her experiment, wondering if the information would stay with her. Without the shoes however, she couldn’t even remember the name of her leg bones, let alone procedural protocols. She concluded that these shoes held some magic, and decided to quit her job and study medicine, after all she knew she would pass. So here she was, years later, a successful doctor. The shoes did have deep signs of wear and tear, but she found a specialist mender who would repair the sneakers but always with an annoyed sigh that it would be cheaper to buy a new pair altogether.  

A few months into studying medicine the thought came to Reya that she hadn’t considered all the variables whilst doing her experiment. She had thought the shoes held some magic, but what if other shoes had the same effect on her. The next weekend was her friend Amy’s birthday party, and they had planned to get ready together at her house. Reya (conveniently) arrived having forgotten formal shoes for the evening, and apologetically asked if she could borrow some of Amy’s.

“Of course!” she replied breezily, “Help yourself, they’re in my closet.”

Reya took a deep breath before stepping into some patent black kitten heels and testing her knowledge of financial trading. She thought back to a conversation they had had a while ago, where the topic had gone completely over her head, but she remembered vaguely Amy using the term Options.

It wasn’t overwhelming or shocking, just a calm intake of knowledge as Reya’s mind spoke “Trading Options is about trading volatility, if the market is more volatile one day the option will be more expensive, but if the market moves less the next day, then the option becomes cheaper.”

“Huh” Reya whispered to herself as she removed her feet from the shoes, “this is going to be interesting.”

Reya shook herself out of the reverie, looked fondly at her small shoe collection, and packed the studded boots that she had stolen from a semi-professional soccer player in her bag, along with the tennis shoes she’d snuck from her instructor in case she was in the mood tonight for some sports. Reya had been mulling that it was time for a promotion so set her eyes on a pair from a cardiologist she had spoken to a few times, maybe she would work on swiping those today. She smiled to herself as she closed her apartment door behind her.