The Matchmaker
Edwin stood near the back of his car, the four-way flashers blinking steadily. With one hand resting on the trunk, he watched the freeway traffic, looking for a large enough break in the erratic stream of cars, turning his face away from the blasts of air pushed his way by semi-trucks and fifth-wheelers. He waited for several minutes before a large enough break in traffic allowed him to sprint out onto the traffic lanes, grab a shoe that was lying between lanes three and four, and sprint back to his car.
Edwin was opening the trunk the trunk of his car when red and blue lights began to flash behind him. A spotlight clicked on and flooded his car trunk with it strong, flat glare. Edwin turned, blinking into the spot light and flashing red and blue. He watched as two shadows stepped from the vehicle and walked towards him; their shadowed shapes eventually blocking the spotlight, trimming their edges in white, highlighted by intermittent red and blue. They stopped several feet from Edwin, who couldn't see their knowing smiles.
"Edwin," one of them said loud enough to be heard over the stream of traffic. "Playing in the streets again?"
"I was careful." Edwin held up a red shoe, a women's pump. "Just this."
"Not criminal evidence again?" Asked one of the officers as he took the shoe and looked at it, using his flashlight for further illumination. The shoe was in good shape with only a few scuff marks, probably from falling onto the freeway. "You ever wonder how a single shoe manages to wind up along a road somewhere?"
"Wonder? Yeah," said the second. "Never have a solution. Can't imagine someone just tossing out a shoe as they're driving along."
"Yeah," agreed the first. "What about you, Edwin. Ever wonder where the shoes come from? Or do you just run out into middle of the freeway and save them, no questions asked."
"There not always in the middle of the freeway," Edwin replied.
His face was as passive as when he had first been watching the traffic. He'd met both officers before like this. He even remembered seeing one of them, ten years previous, standing just outside the camera lights; a shadow then, a shadow now.
"No, I don't imagine they are," the officer said, handing the shoe back to Edwin.
No one spoke for several minutes. Edwin looked at the two officers, his expression patient while his pupils expanded and contracted in time with the flashing lights behind the other two.
"Say, aren't you going to be late for work, Edwin."
“I leave early for work.,” Edwin replied.
Again the silence. Red and blue lights continued to flash. Cars continued to blur past.
"Try to stay out of the road,” the second officer said with a can-you-believe-this-guy shake of the head. He turned to his partner. “Let's go."
The two police officers turned and walked back into the light, climbed into their vehicle and switched off the flashing lights, conceding to the darkness of night. They quickly pulled onto the freeway and left Edwin by his car with its open trunk.
Edwin watched them leave before he looked down at the shoe in his hand. He shrugged his shoulders and turned to the open trunk. Inside the trunk were four battered baskets and a plastic bag. There were several shoes in each basket and Edwin added the red pump to a basket that held several other women's dress shoes. He closed the trunk and climbed into his car, turned off the four-ways, and drove to work.
Edwin's graveyard shift at the Red Apple Market was ending. Pushing shopping carts back to the store front he noticed a white blob on the far side of the parking lot. To him it looked like a white tennis shoe. There was no one else in the lot. He'd taken out groceries for the last customer. It would only take a few moments to go over and check it out. However, there were no shopping carts in the far side of the lot, so he had no job related reason to go near the suspect blob. As much as he was tempted to go and look, it would have to wait. He checked his watch; ten minutes until the end of his shift. He pushed the last of the carts to the front of the store and with one last look at the white dot on the far side of the parking lot went inside to clock out.
The employees' lounge was on the second floor with windows that looked out across the store check-out stands and the aisles. Edwin had made his way there and was placing his apron inside his locker when several of the other employees entered the break room, chatting. They looked at Edwin and then at each other, sharing a smirk. One of them, Phil, pulled off a shoe and held it up.
"Edwin," he called out. "Hey, I've lost a shoe. Do you have one just like this?"
The two employees laughed at their little joke.
"What size is it?" Edwin asked.
Their laughter stopped and they both looked at the featureless expression on Edwin's face. He was serious.
"Forget it," said Phil as he slipped his shoe back on. He was sure that Edwin was retarded. However, what he was never sure of was whether or not Edwin had ever told the management about catching Phil helping himself to a few loose twenties from the open and forgotten safe. Edwin never spoke of it and neither did Wendy or Carl, the manager and her assistant. Phil had walked on water ever since and even earned employee of the quarter, but he knew he could never trust a retard that collected stray shoes to keep his mouth shut. All his good behavior would counteract anything the shoe collecting freak could ever say against him.
"He's weird," Shelly, the other employee, said. She was new, young, impressionable, and already infatuated with Phil.
"Ignore him," Phil said.
They sat at one of the tables with their shoulders turned inward a few inches, excluding Edwin who stared at them for a few passing seconds and then walked out of the break room and then down the steps to the main entrance.
The doors of the main entrance slid open before Edwin and snapped shut behind him as he left the store. He began walking towards the far side of the lot and just as quickly came to a stop.
The white spot, the potential shoe, was gone. Where could it have gone? He looked over at the source of a low roar. A street sweeping truck was meandering around the lot. Edwin watched as the truck made several passes across the lot where the shoe had been. He began to walk in the direction of the street sweeper. Several times he switched directions, trying to figure where the driver of the truck was going. Eventually he found himself in the path of the sweeper and he waved the driver to a halt and stood besides the driver's door until the window was rolled down.
"Yes," asked the driver, his impatience visible on his face, behind the cloud of cigarette smoke he blew in Edwin's direction.
"I'm looking for a shoe," Edwin said.
The driver leaned out the window and looked at Edwin's feet. "Looks like you got both shoes."
"It was another shoe. White, I think."
"You think?"
"Well, I didn't get a good look at it. Could it be in there," Edwin asked, pointing at the tank that was the back of the truck.
"You're looking for a shoe, you don't know what it looks like, and you want to check the tank?"
“Yes.”
"Get out of here," Barked the driver. He put the engine in drive and pulled away. "Freak," he mumbled as he rolled up his window. Ten years he'd been driving the stupid sweeper truck, driving at the ugly hours of night so snotty people could park their fancy cars on a clean lot and the only thing he ever heard was complaints about the noise and the dust. Losers. He turned the throttle on the vacuum engine up another five hundred rpm. See how they like a little more of that, he thought with a grin and lit another cigarette.
Edwin watched him drive away. Slowly he turned around, looking about the lot with the idea that maybe the shoe could still be their. Unfortunately, the shoe was nowhere to be seen. With sagging shoulders Edwin went to his car and headed home.
He drove along the freeway in the right lane at fifty miles an hour. The right headlight had been adjusted so that it illuminated the shoulder of the road. Every now and then Edwin would slow as an object came into the path of light from his headlight, but then he would pick up speed
if it wasn't a shoe and continue his search. Cars coming from behind would zoom around him, honking furiously.
The loss of the shoe in the parking lot bothered Edwin and so he drove south for an extra hour past his exit. He stopped twice for a child's boot and a man's dress shoe that was battered and ruined by the rain. He placed the child's boot in one of the baskets and the battered shoe into the plastic bag; it was not a keeper.
After the hour was up Edwin used the next exit to turn around and head north to his apartment. He was tired and still dejected about the sweeper truck incident so he had to break quickly when he passed the white shoe on the side of the road. His car came to a stop about thirty yards past the shoe. Putting the car in reverse he backed up until the shoe became visible in the pale illumination of the reverse lights. He turned on the four-way blinkers and slid the gear shift into park. Applying the parking break and removing his seat belt Edwin climbed out of the car and walked back to the abandoned shoe.
The shoe was laying on its side, the sole facing Edwin and his car. Edwin picked it up and brought it close to his face to inspect it. It was a Nike court shoe and was in nearly perfect condition. Edwin brushed off some of the road dust and dirt with his hand and turned it so that he could look inside. The sticker that is often on the inside, with the shoe size printed on it, was there. It was a little faded, but Edwin could just make out the size. He nodded approvingly.
Holding the shoe close to his chest, Edwin turned and went back to his car. He bypassed the trunk with it's baskets of shoes and got directly into the drivers seat, turned off the four-ways, undid the parking brake, and quickly drove away as he pulled on his seat belt.
The neighborhood around Edwin's apartment was crowded with cars and, as usual, he had to park several blocks away. He unloaded the baskets of shoes, stacked them inside each other, and placed the new white shoe on top before picking up the stack and baby- stepping his way to the apartment building where he lived. At the security entrance he tried to open the door with the baskets balanced on one knee, but the baskets began to slip and he had to lower them to the ground. He straightened the stack of baskets and turned to open the door, but it was already open. Another resident, Lily, was holding it open.
Lily stood with her back to the door, one hand on the push rail and the other in a back pocket of her jeans, looking down at Edwin where he knelt next to his baskets. Her hair was dyed a deep purple and her left eyebrow was pierced. She smiled, and the look she gave him was not the same disdainful look he had received most of the day.
"Anything in my size, yet," she asked.
Edwin nodded and moved the top basket to reveal a misfit collection of ladies dress shoes. He pulled out the red pump he had found earlier in the night and presented it to Lily; holding it up to her.
Lily took the shoe and examined it.
"Mmm, a Nordstrom brand; classy.” She laughed. "Any chance you have the other one?"
"Not yet," Edwin replied, quietly.
"Pity. But when you do, I'll buy a pizza and we'll celebrate. I've never owned Nordie shoes."
"I'll find it," he replied.
"I believe you will," Lily responded sincerely. "I've got to go open shop. Good luck."
Lily handed back the shoe and waited until Edwin was through the doorway before she released the door with a wave good bye. With his hands full, Edwin could only nod a thank you. Lily turned away, smiling, and walked towards the bus stop. Yeah, Edwin was about ten years older, but he was thoughtful and caring, and amazingly, he was a vegetarian. There were worse hobbies than collecting lost shoes. She laughed at the though of wearing a pair of Nordstrom's pumps at the espresso stand, they'd clash with her new hair color.
Once inside his apartment, Edwin carried the baskets down the hall to the door of the second bedroom. He managed to open the door without dropping the baskets and carried them into the room, sitting them on the floor before turning on the light.
The room looked like a store house. Boxes and large plastic containers lined the walls, stacked to the ceiling. Each had a white piece of typing paper taped to the front with words like "women's dress red," or "men's sport black." He separated the baskets he'd brought up from his car and began to sort through the shoes.
He started with the women's dress shoes, pulling out the large box that had "women's dress red" written on the typing paper. He didn't think he had a match but he checked carefully, just in case. One shoe came close, but the color was slightly off and it was a different brand. He shrugged and added the new shoe and placed the "women's dress red" box back in its place.
The rest of the shoes were quickly placed in their respective containers. All the time that he performed his task, though, he kept an eye on the Nike shoe he'd found on the way home. He had a good feeling about it and when he had finished with the others shoes he turned to a special stack of boxes. These were similar to the others except they also had a "9" on the typing paper; his shoe size. He pulled down the box for "men's white court shoe 9" and opened it. The box held twelve other white court shoes, four of them were Nike brand, two of those were for the opposite foot of the new shoe. He pulled them out. One of them had blue trim. The new one was all white; and so was the last shoe from the box. Same brand, same color scheme, and same style. They were a perfect match. He held the shoes together, examining them, and his eyes drifted to the special shoe.
Across the room, beneath the window, was a small table, much like a shortened coffee table. On it were several picture frames that held articles and pictures cut from the newspapers, two unlit candles, and a small shoe box with the lid underneath. Inside, the box was filled with pink and white sheets of tissue paper. Resting on and amongst the tissue was a single, white dress shoe that would fit the average ten year old girl. It was the first shoe that Edwin had ever found.
He could still remember sitting in the tavern, cracking peanut shells and working on his first beer when the five-thirty news came on. They ran the headline story with video feed live from the crime scene. The evening light of the scene was overwhelmed by the camera lights as a diver lifted the young girl's body from the stagnant water and handed it to the waiting coroners. They placed her on a metal-framed stretcher, threw a blanket over her body and quickly moved towards the waiting morgue van. As the camera followed them Edwin saw her feet.
Her parents, on a replay of an earlier interview, had talked about the new, white shoes they had just purchased for their little girl. She had been so proud of them and wore them to Sunday school that very next Sunday. She had walked to church so she could see the shoes in the sunlight and then walked back home after Sunday school was over. Of course she never completed the two block journey back to her home.
Edwin had stared fixedly at her feet as they carried her by the news camera. Her white, ruffled socks were wet and stained with mud and she was only wearing one shoe. Edwin had seen a shoe just like it earlier in the day. He left behind the last beer he would ever order and drove out along the waterfront road he had driven earlier that day. The sun was already setting but he was able to locate the small, white shoe that had caught his eye. He had wondered why and how it had come to be there. Picking it up, he examined it closely. It looked like blood on the heel of the shoe, but his eyes had suddenly blurred with tears and he could not be sure.
Now it sat in his spare room, in its own special place. Every time he looked at it he remembered the girl. Someone evil had taken her life. Edwin knew that he could never bring her back. No one could; gone was gone. But every time he looked at her shoe and those pictures he remembered her. In that small way she continued to live.
The side effect of all this was the collection. Every time Edwin had seen a shoe after that on the side of the road, in the middle of the road, or any where, he was afraid that it might be all that was left of a life. That's how it was at first, collecting lost shoes for the lives they represented. Later it was merely the shoes themselves. They were lost and he found for them a place. Occasi
onally, like today, he found them a mate. These were in his size. A celebration was in order.
Edwin kicked off the shoes he was wearing and sat on the bedroom floor, pulling the Nikes onto his feet. They felt different from each other as he tied them up. It took a few minutes to realize the difference was that the new shoe was colder from being outside for who-knew-how-many days. He stood up, rocking backwards and forwards on the newly matched shoes. Comfortable arch, toes didn't feel pinched, and the backs didn't rub at his tendons; definitely a cause for celebration.
With a little bounce, Edwin left the room and grabbed a coat on his way to the door. He left the apartment building and walked down the street to the little market that was owned by an elderly Korean couple; they had been there as long as Edwin could remember. He waved as he pushed through the glass door and walked towards the back of the low-ceilinged shop. Without hesitation he grabbed a can of Coke and then walked by the candy bars and picked up a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.
"Good morning, Edwin," said the shop owner in his accented English.
"Morning," replied Edwin.
"A Coke and a candy bar? What are you celebrating?"
"A perfect match," he said, looking down at his own feet.
The shop owner looked over the counter at the shoes. He knew, like Lily and several others, of Edwin's eclectic hobby. He also knew about the little girl and her shoe because he had come across Edwin, sitting on the side of the road, cradling a little, white shoe and crying. Edwin had held up the shoe for the shop owner to see and said, with a heaving sigh. "This is all that's left of her." And for ten years he had watched as Edwin collected the shoes, going about his silent crusade.
"Congratulations," offered the shop owner as he rang the sale and gave Edwin his change.
"Thank you. Have a good day."
Edwin walked out of the store and back to his apartment building. He sat on the front stoop and opened the soda and ate one of the peanut butter cups. His eyes were constantly on the newly paired shoes. The sunlight was brightening the sky around him. Smiling, he thought about taking a walk in his new shoes to admire them in the sunlight.