Sparkly & Stinky - #fridayflash

'Me and My Pink Shoes' photographed by Isabelle Ste-Marie.
Isabelle is an outstanding photographer whose work can be seen here.
Please take a moment and visit her blog – you won't be sorry, I promise!

Radio’s playing R.E.M.’s Losing My Religion, coffee doused with double sugar and Coffee Mate Vanilla Caramel is steaming in the Timmy Ho-Ho’s travel mug, Cover Girl Natural Beige is hiding her bumpy bits, Soap & Glory’s Sexy Mother Pucker is tingling on her lips and, so far, nothing is staining June’s new faux linen summer dress.

She is wearing her J-Lo Glow perfume and her favourite pale pink flats, the ones with the bows and the sparkles.

The sun is shining and June is off to work at the real estate office where she sits at the front desk, answering the phone, rearranging the photo board and fending off passes from pasty-faced middle aged losers in shiny-elbowed suits and downwardly spiraling sales careers.

She sniffs.

What is that smell?

She wrinkles her natural beige nose and looks around the car to see if there are any dead animals putrefacating on any of the seats.

She lifts her underarms. She smells the collar of her dress. She checks her breath. Everything seems fine. She thinks maybe she has just driven by a swamp.

At work, she notices the smell again. When no one is looking, she takes off one of her sparkly shoes and sniffs. Her face turns the colour of pistachio ice cream and she retches.

She thinks, this won’t do.

Luckily, she has an extra pair of shoes in her desk drawer, so she puts them on. The gaseous green fog that emanates from the bright pink sparkly flats is enough to make a wild hog hold its snout.

June decides to take the shoes out to the trunk of her car so they won’t kill everyone in the office but she sees customers coming up the sidewalk, so she shoves the stinky shoes in her desk drawer and slams it shut, just as the Haskells open the door and ask to speak to Mr. Fitzsimmons, the broker.

“Was someone eating Limburger cheese?” Mrs. Haskell asks.

“Er,” says June, because she can’t think of anything to say that won’t indict herself, or the people she is thinking of blaming. “Mr. Fitzsimmons has a digestion problem,” she is tempted to say, “but don’t mention it because, you know, he is sensitive.” She imagines herself whispering this last part.

She is spared this lie because Mr. Fitzsimmons has heard them arrive. He greets them with a florid smile and a hearty handshake, then escorts them to his little paneled room, decorated with all the hundreds of dead fish he has caught and stuffed over the years.

He waits until the Haskells are well ahead of him, then he turns to June and says, “For God’s sake, what smells? Open a window!”

Mortified, June does as she is told and then the phone rings, and then rings again. The other agents arrive and soon the day is in full swing, always especially busy on a Friday with agents lining up their weekend open houses and appointments.

She forgets all about the stinky shoes in her desk drawer.

In fact, she doesn’t think about them again until she arrives for work on Monday morning, when she opens the door and is literally bowled over, on her pretty butt, no exaggeration, by an overpowering, overwhelming, over-everything, stench.

Mr. Fitzsimmons, coming up the sidewalk, watches June scramble to her feet, run at full tilt to her car and then drive away. 

"Crazy woman," he thinks.

He hopes she comes back to the office soon. He has heard from the public works department that the sewer line has backed up. He is hoping June can meet clients at the front door and steer them to a temporary office across town.