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She was wearing gold shoes and no stockings.

Her bare legs were scratchy. She had not shaved for a day or two. He swept his index finger on the lower half of her leg just above the outside of her right ankle, at the dip where lower calf slopes into bone. He should have put his gloves on.

His eyes darted back to the lime green of the inside of the shoe peaking out between the leather and her instep, the arch of her foot. He liked the arch. It was aristocratically high, and it served a function. It held up her weight.

It wasn’t holding her weight now. The right leg was bent at the knee at a ninety-degree angle, and the left was long and open—the knee pointing to the side, and the arch looking up at the sky, curving deep into her foot like a monolith.