The Shoebox
===========

Shopping was never much of a chore for Danielle. After all, there 
wasn't that much she needed to buy in the way of clothes. That might 
change as she got older, of course, but as her reflection in the mirror 
inside the shoe shop reassured her, she still looked pretty good for a 
married woman in her mid-thirties. It might have been different if she 
and Paul had had kids, but that just wasn't going to be. 

Danielle spun round on the shoes she was trying on. Her body 
otherwise naked from ankle upward: a fashion statement she'd 
persevered with ever since her teenage years. But at least she kept 
herself looking trim. She'd been shaving her crotch smooth from 
before she'd ever met Paul and she still found it slightly odd when she 
passed younger women with their pubic hair totally unshaven. Not 
even trimmed into shape. But Danielle couldn't answer for fashion. 
She'd probably have been much the same herself if she were younger. 
And her breasts were still comely and proud. Why should she want to 
hide them? Like so many of her friends did these days. Well, she'd 
wait until her breasts sagged or her stomach started jutting out before 
she started wearing clothes all the time.

She smiled at the shop assistant, who was holding the shoebox that 
until a moment ago had contained the shoes she was trying on. She was 
a young girl, probably only in her twenties, wearing just a plain orange 
tee shirt and some rather clumsy shoes that Danielle, for one, would 
never dream of wearing. And that crotch! So much hair! More than on 
the shop girl's head, where the hair was kept quite short. What 
Danielle wouldn't do to tidy up that light brown scruffy mess. At least, 
to trim the edges of it!

"What do you think of the shoes?" asked the girl.

"I really like them. They go well with my hair. Black." Danielle ran a 
long strand of hair through her fingers and let it fall gracefully onto her 
bare shoulder. "But I'm not sure about the fit. Next size down, 
perhaps?"

"Okay. Let's try it out."

So Danielle sat down on the low shoe-shop chair with her leg stretched 
out, while the shop assistant eased off her shoes and returned them to 
their box. She then pulled out the other shoes, and, using a shoehorn, 
gently fitted Danielle's elegant foot into a shoe while her customer 
watched from above.

And then, without warning and totally unexpectedly, the shop assistant 
leant forward towards Danielle's shaved crotch and gently placed her 
lips on Danielle's vulva. It was brief, gentle and dry. But when the 
shop assistant's head rose up with a bland smile, Danielle's sensitive 
lower lips retained a distinct and vivid memory of this moment of 
intimacy.

And that was that.

The shop assistant made no reference to her kiss on Danielle's oh! so 
private parts. She smiled in the same way as before, no wickedness in 
her expression at all, nothing to suggest a shared secret. The shoes 
she'd tried out were fine. Perfect, in fact. She'd heard that one's feet 
grew bigger as you grew older, but perhaps not yet. Danielle paid for 
the shoes by credit card, her hand somehow hotter and damper than it 
should be, and she was sure that the world could see a flush of deep 
red burning from her cheeks and shoulders. She took the card from the 
assistant, who acknowledged her smile with no hint of recognising the 
confusion in which her kiss had engulfed her naked customer.

Danielle had no recollection of the rest of her shopping trip. It 
vanished into a hazy swirl of forgetfulness. She must have somehow 
bought some wine and cake and a few magazines, because when she 
got back to her car on the third floor of the multi-storey car park, she 
had them in the plastic bags in addition to the one containing the 
shoebox with her new shoes. All the way back, she could feel the 
imprint of the shop assistant's lips on her crotch. She occasionally 
glanced at herself down there, to see whether on the bare, shaven skin 
there was any physical trace of the kiss. But of course there wasn't. 
And anyone watching her as she bent down to regard herself would 
have seen nothing out of the ordinary at all.

Her drive back home was uneventful, though she fancied she could 
still feel those lips between her legs as she shifted in and out of gear 
and steered her car along the suburban streets. Untypically she forgot 
to put on the radio, so she was almost alarmed when she parked the car 
in the drive to find that when she attempted to turn off the radio it was 
already switched off. What had she been thinking about? All Danielle 
could recall was a tape loop of that moment of unexpected tenderness 
playing and replaying itself in her mind. 

The shop assistant was looming larger in her memory, but not all the 
particulars. Was her hair light brown or a dark blonde? Were her eyes 
green or blue? Did she wear earrings? Why was Danielle bothered by 
such fine points? There'd been no evidence that this was a prelude to 
further intimacy, of even the most innocent kind. And Danielle had no 
excuse to return to the shop in the near future to re-establish any 
contact. She had all the shoes she needed.

Danielle entered the hallway. 

"Paul! Are you at home?" she cried.

"Yeah. I'm in the lounge!"

Of course, she already knew the answer. The sound of the television 
broadcasting the soccer could be heard from the garage when she was 
taking her bags out of the car boot. Danielle made her way to the 
lounge, taking with her just the bag with the shoebox in it. The other 
bag she had quickly dropped off in the kitchen.

Paul was loafing on the sofa in front of the widescreen set, with a can 
of lager in one hand and the remote in the other. He slightly lowered 
the volume of the football match so that he could be heard. He was 
wearing the soccer shirt he always wore when there was a match, but 
of course nothing else.

"What d'you buy, Danni? D'you get those shoes you wanted?"

Danielle nodded her head. She could see that Paul hadn't just been 
watching the match. There was a gleam from his flaccid penis that 
trailed over the upholstery. He'd been masturbating again. And almost 
certainly to one of those DVDs that Danielle had found in that shoebox 
once at the back of one of his drawers. 

Of course, when they were younger, she and Paul had often watched 
porn movies together. It was a way to get the juices going before those 
marathon sex sessions that marked their first year or so together. But as 
time had gone by, there'd been less fucking, less cuddling even, and 
somehow those porn movies had got forgotten. Although Danielle 
knew that they were still on the shelves hidden amongst the DVDs of 
the non-pornographic movies they would still watch together. 

But these weren't the kind of porn movies that Paul stored in his 
shoebox. In fact, Danielle was quite alarmed by even just the titles. 
And the pictures on the sleeves made sure that she understood 
perfectly well what they were about. None of the well-filmed fuck 
films she and Paul used to watch, featuring wholesome couples 
working out their sexual desire with a combination of partners, 
including that inevitable scene of lesbian passion that always left 
Danielle dissatisfied and slightly perturbed. No, the DVDs in Paul's 
shoebox featured sex with dogs, sex with urine and faeces, sex with 
men who'd had operations to look like women, sex in the mouth, up 
the arse and with a veritable freak show of sexual gymnasts. Was that 
what Paul was like now? Danielle wondered. Someone who wanted his 
arse fisted while fucking a dog? Or someone who wanted to piss on her 
face and shit in her mouth?

 "Yeah, I got the shoes," Danielle answered. "They weren't cheap 
though."

"Well, give us a twirl then."

Danielle obliged by changing into her new shoes and spinning around. 
She could feel Paul's eyes following her. A horrid thought crossed her 
mind. Perhaps he wanted to bugger her and shit on her and get her to 
have sex with a horse like the women on the DVDs. Yeurgghh! Gross!

"They look very nice," Paul remarked with a smile.

Then with no further comment, he pressed the volume control on his 
remote and the roar of football commentary filled the room.

Danielle changed back out of her new shoes and made her way up the 
stairs to the bedroom where it was expected she'd stay while Paul 
watched the rest of the match. As she went up she passed the bathroom 
where normally she'd have a shower after a day out shopping. The 
town centre was so dusty and grimy! If you weren't going to wear any 
clothes you had to clean off the dirt as soon as you could. 

But Danielle resisted her normal impulse to shower. The sweet 
memory of the shop assistant's tender kiss on her crotch was still vivid 
on her flesh. 

And she wanted to be reminded of it for just a little longer. 










