But he's so cool and calm and so collected

Makes a girl feel a bit neglected

-Peggy Lee, The Boy from Ipanema

Cinderella Meets Prince Charming

She watches him. Everybody does. But she is fully in the knowledge that it's fruitless. Futile. Fantastical. That's right, no matter how she pined and drooled, no fantasy of this beautiful boy would ever come true. Not for her. Not for any of her colleagues. The large group of women who moon over this virtual child, who worked somewhere in their building, would all strike out.

Many of the women know this, a few of the younger, bouncier versions haven't clued in yet. Clara cringed when she heard them plotting about him, taking their little fantasy and dragging it to the edge of reality hoping it will topple in.

But Clara is no idiot. She knows that Jan doesn't stand a chance, not because she's the overweight mother of three and a wife of 22 years. Clara knows Tracy doesn't stand a chance even though she's lean and shiny and exotic. Clara knows she herself doesn't either even though she is witty, adventurous, and unassuming but will never be sleek or lusty. Rejection would bring them some level of equanimity.

So the day that one of them finally gets to meet the walking, suited man of their wet-dreams, fate takes pity on the beautiful son of some woman somewhere and nearly drops Clara in his lap. Not Jan who will ramble on about her own children and offer him baked goods—delicious baked goods that will become addictive and threaten his prime, cut physique. Not Tracy who will slink and curl around him with arm candy of her own, single-mindedly trapping his words. But Clara who's major redeeming quality is that she gets it.

Clara lives in reality—which actually fostered her amazing fantasy life but that's another story—more solidly than anyone she knows

"Oh fuck," she calls out loud enough to echo in the emptying slick stone lobby of the bright office tower they share when one of her favorite white sandals—the ones she was sure she could stretch through another summer—gives into the abuse and sends her lurching right, her large armload of take-home work pouring to the floor.

And because she'd been watching him come down the escalator she knows it's his shoes the files, and papers slide across on the floor. He almost trips himself, trying to step over the mess and then her.

"I'm sorry," Clara says upwards at the knee caps around her. "Excuse me," she says hoping not to get stepped on. She's feeling dumb trying to scoop up the reams worth on the granite.

"Here," hands tug at pant legs while the knees near her face bend, "let me help you."

And Clara's dying inside a little to not look at him.

"Thank you," she says to his hands as they help gather up her processed half a tree.

"You're welcome."

And he's polite. She smiles in frustration, huffs a sigh of a laugh and glances at him quickly. He isn't even looking at her. He's trying to turn the pages so they are mostly all one direction.

And detail-oriented.

"Don't worry about that just… Here," she motions him to just let her have the jumbled heap and takes them from his hands to plop on the already haphazard pile she's gathered. "Thanks, again," she says making a concerted effort to hold on to all her papers and stand up. She smiles at him strained and awkward and turns to leave, ducking her head to avoid his eyes. She plods away, limping in one heel and one bare foot.

There is a laugh and shuffle behind her. It's such a nice laugh, warm and round and buoying. "Hey Cinderella," he calls out, the smile and laughter clear in his voice, ringing off the granite and glass of the hall.

She turns and lets her embarrassment show as he angles his groomed brows at her broken shoe aloft in the air and his smile at her, then her feet. She sighs and does her best to make the most of the moment. "I loved that shoe." And she contorts her face so that maybe, just maybe, the tears in her eyes weren't for her dignity but her shoe.

She keeps her eyes on it as he carries it towards her. "We could give it a nice funeral."

"Don't do funerals," she says, looking up into his near face, able to see the rings of color in his eyes for the first time, how they change around the pupil, the darker edge.

"How about a wake? A good Irish one. Lots of whiskey and Guinness."

Clara looks back down at the maimed shoe. "Whiskey was its favorite."

And that warm laugh wrapped around her as his arm did. "That settles it," and then he looks at the pile of papers in her arms and laughs harder. He looks at her face a little abashed and sees the near pain there at her predicament and laughs longer, nudging her with his arm. "Come on kid," he says.

And soon he's deposited her shoe on the bar at a place just a few blocks from their building and he knows the bartender so he stashes her huge mess of papers behind the bar and they start drinking. And Clara hopes the burn of the whiskey will take care of the lingering redness in her cheeks and her pride.

"To the bravest of shoes," he says toasting, again, the sandal on the bar before them, "you fought a good fight against… gravity."

"And grass," Clara adds.

"And grass, and cement."

"And my fat PMS Cankles." And they laugh, leaning into one another. Eyes shining and bright, connecting, holding while Clara's dim. "Gah, what a shame," she whimpers, lets her head fall to the bar.

He places a hand on her back and takes a sip and says, "All good shoes must come to an end."

"And not just shoes," she tells the one still remaining on her foot.

"What else ended today?" His smile is so vocal she winces.

"This really great daydream."

He pouts his lips and pets the back of her hair. "Daydreams never have to end, baby."

"Yes, they do."

"Why?"

"Because you're gay," she says sitting up and whining just a tad, her hands flopping with the obviousness of it all.

"Excuse me," his voice is suddenly hard, his back suddenly stiff.

"Oh God," she says realizing what has just popped out of her mouth. Her hand flies to her mouth and she calls deities again. Eyes flash to him and his face, the stunning look. "Oh, God." Clara usually has much better control over her tongue and she prays it is the whiskey who will get blamed for this terrible gaff. Letting the look in his eyes sink into her own, her mind turns over and she says it again. "Oh God." This time both hands are at her mouth, too late to catch anything helpful from slipping between her lips. "I…you're…" she turns away and whispers to herself, "ohmygah." She forces herself to look at him, the least she can do after he has been so wonderful is apologize to his face. "I…I, um… It… Ah… I… I…"

"—Shouldn't have assumed…" he offers.

"—Am an ass," she supplies vehemently, burying her face in her hands.

He grimaces, leans in, and puts a pitying, commiserating arm around her shoulder and bumps her gently, "It's ok. I kinda like ass," he says quietly between them and smiles.

Clara listens to it for a minute and turns, looks at him through the hands still shielding her embarrassment. "You…" she stumbles and drops her hands. "That was so mean."

"You assumed," he returns and shakes his head, smiling but pulling away.

"Well, yeah." She offers lamely.

"What just because I'm well-groomed and well-dressed and—"

"Never even look at the women in the building who drool over you everyday? Pre-cisely."

So he smirks at her and she laughs, dropping her head into her palm.

"Tell me all about this daydream," he says with an eyebrow quirked. "I mean, if you assumed why did you even bother?"

"Because I didn't know know. And even if I did pretty much know, I didn't know you. You could have been like anything. And that was the game we played. All the time, whenever there was a sighting."

"'We'?"

She groans and lets her eyes close. "There was a bunch of us, we… we had lunch."

"Oh, oh my God. You're one of them. One of those women." So she groans again because he knew too. "There's the chubby one with the Tupperware. And the mousy one with no hairstyling capabilities, and the clothes goddess."

"Tracy," she says. "I'm only nice to her because I'm praying someday she'll realize something is too big for her or makes her look fat and she gives it to me."

He puts a hand on her arm. "That is never going to happen. That thing has been anorexic since the day she was born."

"I know, but the vain fantasy is the only thing that keeps me from ripping her hair out. We have to work together."

"You get very attached to those," he smiles and drinks his whiskey.

"They make reality more enjoyable." She drinks too.

"So what's my vain fantasy like?" He eyes her shuttered face.

She shrugs. "It varies. Mostly you're charming, and well-educated, and British. Naked and deceptively muscular"

"Like Cary Grant." He smiles at her and she frowns, her nose wrinkling with the smell of something harsh.

"Like Rupert Everett."

"He's gay."

She nods and downs the rest of her glass, whimpering her assent. "All the good ones are," she mumbles into her empty glass.

He watches her face, as she glumly looks at her broken shoe. "And they all have better shoes." She blinks. "And better hair." She turns to him, the smile returning, the light brightening in her eyes again. "And better skin care regimes." And he laughs.

"True. It's all true. Except for every now and again," he says and orders them another round. "One will slip through the cracks and rather than become a glorious, beauty driven fag he'll become an eight year old girl who gets dressed by her lumberjack father."

She looks at him like he'd just snorted a line of Pixie-Stick off her arm.

"Trust me," he nudges said arm and reaches for his new glass, raises it in toast again to the waking shoe. "You were a stalwart shoe."

"Always there, waiting for Memorial Day every year. Putting up with beaches and stumbling drunkenness and that trip to Vegas where I had to use you on the door." She tosses back her glass and shoots it all. And clunks it on the table but he only sips and picks up the shoe.

"You really did wear these things into the ground."

"I wear them almost everyday all summer long." She sighs thinking of all the outfits that have always gone so perfectly with the shoes. "I have no idea what I'm going to wear tomorrow." Her eyes grow wide. "I have no idea what I'm going to wear home. I'll be on the bus with a baggie around my foot." She listens to him laugh as he continues to stare at her shoe. "I can't believe I let you bring me here barefoot." She says and looks to the besmirched floor and then to him to share another smirk but he's on his phone, still playing with her shoe, and she knows that the camaraderie is dying. Soon he'll be off with his usual after-work companions and she'll be dealing with public transport and sorting the mess that is laying in bus-bin under the bar.

"Well turn around and go back, I need you to do something for me." He says without the usual preamble. He looks up at Clara and winks and she stretches a smile and looks away. Ordering a water, knowing she'll have to be sober on the bus for all she'll look like a drunken mess. She pushes away the sound of his voice and the motions of his body, thinking about what is in her fridge and her closet for tomorrow. "Chill woman," he says and rolls his eyes. "I said simple. Simple, simple, simple. Classic, think Early Jackie. Early Jackie Caj." He taps her shoe on the bar in a smooth rhythm. "Thanks, see you in twenty." He flips his phone shut and turns to her. "It'll really be forty-five so we should order another round."

So they do and they tell stories about work and stories about family and then these shoes dangle in-between their faces. And they take Clara's breath away. They aren't her sandals but they are the right height, the right color, and they've got unmistakable style. Her hands come of their own free will to caress the beauty that is shoe and they drop into her waiting palms. She looks at the tall, leggy man, cocking a hip and smiling at her. "Santa how did you know?" She gasps, they giggle.

"You're right." The tall man's appraising eyes slip over her. "Very Early Jackie Casual."

She laughs, "That was about me?"

"Come here Cinderella," her companion says and turns her towards him and takes the new shoes. He puts them on her feet and she wiggles them in front of herself in admiration.

"Do you like pussy," she says to the new man, deep in contemplation over her new footwear.

"What?"

"Because I'd fuck you for these shoes." And they laugh but she's not entirely kidding.

"Alas," he returns, his face puckered. "How are you at blowjobs? Rimming?"

And she laughs. "Clara," she says offering her hand.

"Joe," he says taking it and curtsying a bit over it.

"Alex" says the man sitting beside her.

"Alex," she repeats, happy to finally have a name for him. "Joe," she smiles at both of them, "nice to meet you."

"So," Alex says, leaning in and cutting off Joe. "How jealous are we going to make those bitches tomorrow?"

"Oh," Joe croons and scoots in behind Clara, his face exultant and expectant., "bitches, what bitches?"

She smiles and leans back, giving them good, communal gossip space. "Well…"