Six Pairs
1: Blahniks, white espadrilles with blue satin ties. She nicked them from the shoe department at Harrods - it was her first time in London, her first trip away from Ireland, and she had to look her best.
They made her feel so unbelievably wise and grown-up that her confident stride didn’t tip off security. They clearly thought she had been born to wear them.
When she jogged down Trafalgar Square in them, having shot down her first target, Fiona adopted the belief herself. Fi’s first pair of keepers.
2: Charcoal gray Jimmy Choos with gold buckles; murky, serious flats, patent leather dulled with use. Found in a charity donation box, she took them to make a serious impression on her first contact in Milan; she hates them for their stodginess but they’ve won her more jobs than she’d care to name.
They make her feel like the sort of woman who could be mistaken for a scholar or a concert violinist, and when she wears them her shoulders square and her eyes focus, giving her a feeling of heavy, obstinate determination. Fittingly, they were on her feet when she met Michael.
She hates them, has tried to rid herself of them, but still they’re jammed in the bottom of her carry-all bag, just in case.
3: Gold crocodile leather Christian Dior sandals, taken on an impulse in Tokyo from a design house. She had been forced to cause major disturbance involving a ‘lost’ dog and two confused sales clerks, but still had won them.
They are her dancing shoes, meant for merry motion, flashing legs and come-hither winks. They’re celebration shoes, ditzy – if a shoe could be ditzy. They might have been better suited to the feet of a Vegas showgirl. She wears them on cases with Sam and Michael all of the time; they’re rather good at convincing her target that she’s a merry, carefree sort of girl. When she wears them she feels a giddiness she hasn’t felt since Claire died.
She looks at them with longing, more often than not. When she dances in them, it’s not with the man she wishes to move with.
4: Black pleather thigh-high Halston boots, from her first boyfriend in Dublin. He wished she were a dominatrix; she wished she could get her hands around the throat of the man who’d ended her sister’s life. She ended up wearing them on her first robbery, decided they were good luck, and then wore them on every heist she pulled with the IRA. They’ve traveled around the world with her, securely tucked in runsacks and fancy suitcases or carried in backpacks.
They make her feel vital, the untamable woman. Even though she never has had sex in them, they put her in a voluptuous mood, and it’s something that teases the back of her mind now and again.
Maybe she’ll ask Michael if he wants to try it some day.
5: Red suede pumps from Bergdorf Goodman, bought with hard-earned money from her bounty hunting. They are the shoes of a lady, the kind Princess Diana would wear, combined with the spiked heels only a love goddess would desire. In them, Fiona could fool the most hardened diplomat.
They are the shoes of someone who’s a liar consummate, a description Fiona’s not afraid to attach to herself.
It’s no surprise that they’re her favorite pair.
6: White satin slippers by Dolce & Gabbana. She hasn’t bought them yet, hasn’t thought to steal them, but they’re in her sight, and will belong to no one but her. They’ve been sitting on the stocks in the shoe department down in a downtown Miami shop, waiting for Fi to come and pick them up, and they’ll be waiting a little longer, but one day she will slip them onto her feet.
They are, of course, the shoe’s she’s going to wear when she marries Michael.