{#411 The story you shouldn’t have overheard on the bus}

I was looking at their shoes and thinking they didn’t belong. I admit, I judge people by their footwear. I can’t help it, I profile. Forrest was right, you can tell a lot about people by looking at their shoes. Where they are headed, where they’d been. And these Christian Louboutin’s did NOT belong on a scuzzy old city bus past midnight, or any other time. You’ll find duct taped running shoes on the bus. Or polished-within-an-inch-of-their-life secondhand oxfords. Or sensible thick soled lunchlady shoes. People eking their way through life, working two jobs in order to scrape by. But never Louboutin’s. Maybe some knockoffs on a hooker, some that she’d painted the soles red to fool no one. Because the people who knew what Louboutin’s were knew they weren’t gonna find ’em on a girl painted up like a brazen hussy at two o’clock in the afternoon.

But as I was saying, it wasn’t two o’clock in the afternoon. It was two in the morning and I sat very still in my muddy Redwing work boots, pretending to look at my phone but really watching a guy on the aisle two rows up on the right, silently nodding along to his iPod music. Or maybe he was listening to preaching, I don’t know. I hadn’t gotten far enough along in my investigation to know that much about him.

The heels clicked past me on the dingy scuffed floor. Their owner collapsed on the seat behind me. These shoes had been worn to some snazzy event. I didn’t know where they were going, but headed anywhere on a bus in the middle of the night, can’t be good. She was quickly followed by another lady wearing the same brand who sat down more easily, but with discernible difficulty. They passed in a fog of expensive perfume and some sort of gin, if my nose didn’t deceive me.

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” one said.

“No, you’re fine. Here, drink this.”

I hoped she was producing ice water from the depths of her enormous leather bag, and not more alcohol, as the smell was still wafting around me.

A pause, then the one drinking sputtered, “What is this? It’s wretched!”

She giggled. “Remember PGA punch from Kappa Gamma’s?”

“Unfortunately. Shit! I can’t believe you’d make that stuff!”

“I didn’t,” she informed her seatmate haughtily. “Craig did.”

“Jesus.”

I heard her head hit the back of the her seat. “God, I’m a mess.”

“It’s to be expected.”

“Tell me again why we’re on this bus.”

“Because we have to be invisible when I tell you this.”

I thought, oh boy, here it comes. She’s coming out to her best friend, or she slept with her brother, or maybe she wrecked the other girl’s car. I strained my ears.

“I had him killed, Liddy.”

A strangled laugh.

“I’m serious.”

The tenseness of the moment expanded and there was no air to breathe, even if I hadn’t been holding mine.

“What?” She whispered.

“I couldn’t stand it. And you, left without a dime because you know what your Daddy said all those years ago.”

“He’s nothin’ but trouble, Sugarbutt,” the one named Liddy said through tears I could feel.

I dropped all pretenses of looking at my phone, my current culprit forgotten as I heard this confession unfold two feet behind me.

“So I found this guy, it wasn’t hard, and he said he’d take care of it.”

I had a feeling she wanted a cigarette. I did. And a glass of Jack and Coke.

“But…how…I don’t-…”

“It’s ok. It’s done now. And you got to be the grieving widow, instead of someone to be pitied and ridiculed until you moved off or on, whichever came first.”

The bus sagged as we lurched around a corner of Jackson Square and I pitched to the left in my seat.

Silence from both girls. I heard a compact snap shut. What a time to refresh your lipstick and powder your nose. I tried not to shake my head in disgust. Now what? Was I gonna arrest this girl since I had just heard a confession? We likely wouldn’t get it again. She appeared tough as nails and twice as sharp.

“So when you’re at that graveside tomorrow, don’t tell me you’re sorry. You’ve got nothin’ to be sorry for. He had everything, so I just took what I could for you. He deserved everything he got and then some. And you didn’t deserve what he gave you, so I took care of that.”

“It was supposed to be forever,” Liddy whispered.

“And this way, it is,” the other one said, completely reasonable.

A choked sound. Not a sob. The girl was throwing up. The smell reached me and I almost added to the mess on the floor. But then she began to laugh. A high pitched, hysterical laugh that chilled my innards to ice. And then they both joined in and I couldn’t stay on the bus any longer. The driver let me out on Bay Street, way past the best part of downtown, their laughter still ringing in my ears. As I began my slow walk back, it started to rain.