Saks Fifth Avenue, 2 PM 3/13/07

I need new shoes, I think, and the last place I got them was Saks, back in the fall of '01, in the shadow of 9/11. So I return to the scene of the crime, through jewelry, up what turns out to be 6 well burnished escalators, populated mostly with skinny done-up women of multiple vintages. To a one, they did not saw howdie.

Round about the 4th floor, a particular done up african american young woman in fur is coming down my way. In her hands she holds a card: "Exotic fur." Oh, I get it, a model. Later a similarly lanky young model in black and desperately uncomfortable looking shoes hobbles her way across the floor with a sign for some Italian like "Unnelio Quargredettoncini" or something. I wanted to put her out of her misery.

I felt vaguely like Augustine entering into Carthage, "a cauldron of hissing lust," though it wasn't me doing the hissing.

On the men's floor, ties cost $145, and everything gleams, and I'm thinking: "Do I really belong amongst all this money?"

Unsurprisingly, I found no shoes.