Shoes

His name was Dean, and he sold shoes.

Dean had first started selling shoes when he was twenty years old. It had started as a job while attending college, which, in the year, 1950, was still very impressive, unlike how now, almost every person after graduating from high school attends college. He had been studying to become a doctor, and needed the job selling shoes in order to help pay for his schooling. His parents had money, but still needed assistance from him.

Dean worked every moment that he wasn’t in class, and stayed up late studying for his exams, and writing research papers. However, he was surprised to realize, over the time that he was working at the shoe store, he had fallen in love with the trade. He got to be himself. Every customer that came into the store looked to him to find them the proper shoe for their foot, and at the time, in the store that he worked, it was still customary for the shoe salesman to do all the work. He helped to pick the shoe for the customer, measure their foot, and then put the shoe onto their foot for them. He was good at his work. Customers came in looking for his help in particular, and he became the best salesman in the shop.

Sixty years later, Dean still worked in the same small shop. He had never gone further in his schooling after graduating with a biology degree. Medical school had become uninteresting to him. Instead he had become the manager of the same shoe store that he had started in. Things had changed over the years. The store that had once been so glamourous, had begun to fade into obscurity. The ornate details, the beautiful chandeliers that had hung from the ceilings, now looked tarnished and past their time. Shoe stores had become more quick service. People would come in, look at the shoes, pick what they wanted, tell the salesman what size they wanted, and the salesman would throw the shoebox at them and walk away while the customer decided whether or not to purchase them. After that, if the shoe was the incorrect size, or color, the customer had to struggle to find the salesman again to help them.

Dean hated these shoe stores. He walked by them in disgust on his days off. His store held on to the old ways. The beauty of the store might have diminished, and they may not receive the most upscale merchandise as they once had, but the clientele that still shopped there, that had been shopping there since he had started, who had passed the legacy of the store to their children, they still enjoyed the old ways which they held onto. 

On a Thursday like any other, Dean opened the store. He welcomed the regular shoppers, coming back in to peruse their styles, looking for a new Oxford, brogue or Sunday church loafer. 

A little past noon, a young woman, no more than 30, whom he had never seen before, entered the shop, in a well-pressed suit. Dean’s young salesman, a boy no more than the age he was when he first started there, had gone on his lunch break, so Dean, excited to have a new customer, welcomed the woman and asked if she needed any help. The woman smiled politely at the kind old man as he came around from behind the counter, using his old wooden cane.

“I was hoping to find some new heels,” the woman said, still showing a smile, which Dean realized was not entirely genuine, however he had grown used to this generation of businessmen and women, and their fake smiles and courtesies. It was nothing new to him. “I must go to a dinner party tomorrow night and I am in desperate need. I had never seen this store before, so I thought I might stop in.”

Dean smiled kindly at her. A genuine smile. “Of course, let me help.”

Dean asked her what type of dress she would be wearing and what color the dress was. She indulged him and told him the information he asked for, as she had a seat in one of the once extravagant, though now, cracking leather chairs. She seemed amused at how he was going out of his way to help. As he went to measure her foot, she said her measurement, so he smiled. He picked out a pair of shoes and got her size from the back room before bringing them out to her.

He presented the shoes to her, and she gave, what Dean could tell, a genuine smile. “Oh my,” she exalted  “those are just marvelous!” She kicked off the shoes she had on and went for something in her purse. 

Dean got down, with use of his cane to his knee and went to put on the right shoe onto the woman’s foot. As he did with all guests, he put his hand behind her right calf, as to hold her leg in place as he placed the heel onto her foot.

The woman jolted in her seat and let out a screech that made Dean’s foot slip so that he fell forward. The woman jumped upright and, not meaningly, he grabbed her leg as he hit the floor. The woman screamed and ran to the opposite side of the store. Dean was in shock and trying to figure out what had occurred. He reached up for his cane and started to use it to lift himself back up. Once he had gotten himself standing, he saw that the woman had grabbed her shoes she had worn in, and had already left the store. Dean was quite confused, however he gathered up the pair of shoes he had offered the woman, and brought them back to the back room.

When he came back to the front of the store, he saw two police officers entering into the shop.

“Good day officers!” exclaimed Dean, excitedly. He started to imagine himself as the sole seller of shoes for the police department and how that business would help him to finally do some repairs to the shop, and maybe bring his store back out of obscurity. “What could I help you with today?”

The officers didn’t say anything as they approached him. They didn’t say anything until the one grabbed Dean’s arm and pulled it behind Dean’s back forcibly. “You’re under arrest for sexual assault,” the one officer said, while putting handcuffs onto Dean’s wrists and dragging him outside. The officer told Dean his rights. Dean had only heard those rights on crime shows on TV before this moment.

In court, the lawyers were mean. They yelled at him and accused him of trying to rape the young woman who sat as the plaintiff in the court room. It took all Dean had not to cry.
“I just wanted to sell her the perfect shoes for her dinner party!” Dean chocked out.

“Did you think that you would get away with it?” barked the prosecutor.

“I just sell shoes.”

“Did you think that in the middle of Manhattan on a Thursday afternoon you could just assault my client without any repercussions?”

“I didn’t do any of this,” sobbed Dean, as tears fell from his eyes. “I just wanted to sell shoes…”

The judge declared Dean guilty of sexual assault and charged him with 30 hours of community service, court mandated counseling, a fine of $4,000 in lieu of jail-time, and was put on the list of sex offenders. Dean had burst into tears in the middle of the courtroom, crying that he didn’t have the money, but the judge exclaimed that he shouldn’t have assaulted a customer.

A week later, to pay his fine, Dean had sold his shop. It hadn’t gone for much. The price of the shop was more sentimental than financial. It’s location meant nothing, due to the disrepair that the building had come into and the debt the store had fallen into.
Without an income, Dean had to give up his apartment and moved in with his son, a doctor in upper Manhattan. His son said that he was okay with Dean living there, but Dean could tell that he was unhappy. 

Two months later, Dean’s grandson, a boy only 9 years old asked Dean what he was doing. Dean was shining his dress shoes, for no reason, other than to pass the time. The boy marveled at the activity. “Would you like to try?” Dean asked the boy.

The boy sat next to him, and took the other shoe and the brush from his grandfather, with a smile.