Shelly worked at the Salvation Army store, sorting donated shoes. The shoes piled up in a room off to the side, each pair reflecting the crease of someone’s feet, the wear on the soles. She wondered if the owners had simply discarded the shoes or if they had themselves left the city or the earth. In these sheer invisibilities she dwelled, imagining people to fit different sizes of shoes, men in humongous thirteens, women in petite fives.

Oftentimes day laborers would appear in the store under pretext of trying on shoes and the next thing Shelly knew, their old and battered shoes would remain on the floor while a newer pair off the rack would have disappeared, unpaid for. It was a double theft to Shelly’s mind, a theft to the donors and a theft to the people on the receiving end of the charity’s work. So she kept vigil at times, carrying shoes out the to racks in the store itself and then hovering there, taking forever to align the shoes on the display, all while eyeing the laborers as they rummaged and removed their shoes. Always a whiff of raw carbolic when the shoes went off, for god knows where these men did their work.

She was small and old, but something about her must have scared them off, despite their size and relative youth. Shelly herself had ceased working years ago. Her husband had died and left her with enough that she could live simply without a paycheck. She had spent years looking into computer screens (they had called them CRTs in the late eighties) and her eyes ached with impressions of digits and fragments of golden light.

One man continued to sort through shoes at the rack despite her presence. She began to make more noise in the course of her work, clunking the shoes on the floor, laughing softly to herself and looking up to catch the man’s eye. He paid her no mind. He was small, almost as short as she was, only stouter. He wore coveralls with a pair of sneakers mottled with holes. His skin was a shade or two darker than hers as well, which cast him under more suspicion.

He sat on a stool near a mirror and removed his shoes with a stench of rotten cantaloupe. He then tried on a pair of loafers from the rack and proceeded to walk around in them. They squeaked with the motion. With every squeak, Shelly peeked to see if he was headed for the door. He wasn’t, but the possibility kept her mesmerized.

She finally couldn’t take the anticipation as he continued to walk. “Are you going to buy those shoes?” She asked him directly.

He scrunched his brow but didn’t respond except to walk around some more.

This time she stood and came over to him. “Are you going to buy those?”

The man smiled, seeming to see her for the first time. “I don’t yet know, senora.”

“You’re going to wear them out before they hit the register,” she said.

“I will take good care of them, I promise.” The man spoke slowly, haltingly, as if stirring up words from inside him like so many teaspoons of sugar.

“You best,” she said. “I’m watching you.” She returned to her position on the floor, tying laces together so that the shoes remained in pairs when there were laces to tie. The man at least hadn’t untied any of her work. But he was still suspect.

He finally picked up the loafers and walked off from the shoes. Shelly’s heart raced. He didn’t head for the door as anticipated but walked to the back wall where the books sat, nearly all of them in English. She couldn’t figure out his business there although he did seem to scan a few titles and occasionally pick one out to thumb through.

She finally released him from her sight and continued about her business as more customers roamed through the shoes, picking pairs up to look inside for the size, inspecting the creases and polish, mostly placing them back at awkward angles that required Shelly to stand and rearrange them again.

The man with the loafers soon wandered back and replaced the shoes on the rack. Then he sat again and removed his own shoes. That rotten cantaloupe smell again. He rubbed his tiny feet, which were encased in dirty white sweat socks. The rest of him was dirty too, now that she looked closer, his coveralls stained with handprints of mud.

“I thought you were buying those shoes,” Shelly said.

The man looked at her as if hearing a fly buzz in the room. “What?”

“Do you speak English?”

“A little,” he said, pinching his thumb and forefinger together.

“Then you understood me. I thought you were buying those shoes.”

“I am not so sure now.”

“Why?”

“I can’t pay for them.”

“You found that out in the books?”

“What?”

She ignored him by that point and realigned the shoes on the rack. If someone else were to purchase them, they would need to be in order.

The man continued to sit there, rubbing his feet. “Why do you talk so hard to me?”

“I’ve seen people steal from here too many times.”

“I don’t steal.”

“Good. Some people do.”

“Some people do all kinds of things. Not everyone should be punished for that.”

“I’m sorry if I offended you,” Shelly said, trying hard not to sound sorry at all.

“I earn my keep, as you say.”

“What kind of work do you do?”

“Whatever they tell me. They tell me to pick corn, I pick corn. They tell me to lay asphalt, I lay asphalt. Whatever they tell me, I do.”

“I only do shoes,” Shelly said, a measure of pride to her voice. “Nothing else.”

“It is good to have a thing to be good at.”

She realized she hadn’t had a conversation with anyone like this in quite some time. It had mostly been about waking in the morning, drinking her coffee, and walking down here to work, all day mingled with the absences within the shoes, imagining conversations that might have been with people who no longer existed. Her husband had worn size thirteens. He had been an epochal man.

‘It is,” she said. She removed the loafers from the shelf. “I want you to have these,” she said.

He placed his own shoes back on. “Like I say, I can’t afford them.”

“You don’t have to. I’m giving them to you.”

“I’m not a thief.”

“I’m giving them to you.”

“Why?”

“I can afford them.” She could, especially with her discount at the store. She handed them over. He took them.

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