Turn 64 of 228
Offer her some popcorn, she accepts. She take off her boots and socks to air her feet out. She never puts them back on.
Lena reaches for the second popcorn bucket — still a third full, the kernels warm and greasy from sitting under her arm for the last hour — and holds it out toward Diane.
"Here," she says. Not an offer. Not a question. Just the word and the bucket and the gesture, the way you hand something to someone who belongs in your orbit. Diane looks at the bucket and then at Lena and takes it and sets it on her lap and the weight of it settles against the straining fabric of her pants and she eats. One handful, then another, methodical and unhurried, her fingers sinking into the warm salt and grease. She doesn't thank Lena. She doesn't need to.
The credits scroll and the theater is empty and the lights are up and Diane shifts in her seat and leans down and unzips her left boot. The sound is loud in the quiet theater — the zipper, the tug, the boot dropping to the floor. Then the right one. She pulls off her socks — white, damp, yellowed at the soles — and balls them up and drops them into the right boot and sets both boots under the seat. Her bare feet press flat against the sticky theater floor and she sighs. It's a small sound, almost inaudible, but Lena hears it — the sound of someone letting go of something they didn't know they were holding. The feet are pale and soft and the nails are unpolished and the soles are pink and clean where the socks protected them and Lena can smell them from here — not sharp, not yet, just warm, the human warmth of skin that's been sealed in leather all day.
They sit for another minute. The lights are up and the credits are done and the back row is a wreck and Diane's bare feet are on the floor and the boots are under the seat and she doesn't reach for them. She picks up the popcorn bucket and stands — and the boots stay. She doesn't look at them. She doesn't mention them. She walks out of the theater barefoot, the bucket in one hand, her ticket stub in the other, and Lena follows and the night air hits them both and the sidewalk is rough under Diane's feet the way it's been rough under Lena's for weeks.
They walk east. The marquee glows behind them and the streetlights catch them — Lena at 309 pounds and naked and barefoot, Diane in the same stained blouse and straining pants and barefoot, the boots left behind in row seven of the Charleswood like something she's finished with. Diane eats the last of the popcorn as they walk and drops the empty bucket in a trash can on Garfield without breaking stride. Her feet slap the concrete and the sound is different from Lena's — lighter, quicker, the feet of someone who hasn't been barefoot long enough to develop the heavy deliberate tread. But she'll get there. Lena knows this the way she knows the wish — not because anyone told her but because the body learns what the body needs.
They reach the bodega and the bell rings and the clerk looks up and looks down and Diane walks in barefoot and the floor is cold tile and her toes curl once and then flatten. She picks up chips and salsa and dark chocolate and two bags of peanut butter cups and wine — the same basket as last week, the same routine, except last week she was wearing boots. Lena fills her own basket: vodka, cookies, chips, soda, jerky, gummy worms, Oreos, donuts. They ring up separately and walk outside and the night is warm and dark and the bags hang from Diane's fingers and her bare feet are dirty now — the street dust and the bodega floor and the sidewalk grit pressed into the soles — and she doesn't mention it. They walk and Lena says, "You left your boots." Diane says, "I know." Lena says, "You're not going back for them." Diane says, "No." They walk and the streetlights catch them and the night moves across two pairs of bare feet and the bodega hums behind them and the Charleswood holds row seven and the boots hold each other in the dark.