Levi was now sucked into the Inferno – he was lost in the vortex, in the toe, of Christina’s right walking shoe. He was pressed down into the leathery insole, caught down by a tidal rush of pressure under her woolen knee-highs. The fabric was old, and rarely—if ever—washed, soaked with sweat and covered in grime, all of which he could feel and smell, if not see (light and a little fresh air entered faintly and yellowishly now and then through a tiny aperture to his side, and it was during those brief snatches of light that he was able, shadow by shadow, to determine where he was in Christina’s wet and overheated shoe.
After what seemed like hours, he felt the girl stop, and as the pressure on his body diminished he guessed that she was sitting down. She raised her right shoe and rested it, gently, crosswise on her other knee. Levi slid down toward the tiny aperture, and saw the cobblestones, and Christina’s left shoe, far, far below. Then the perspective changed, and he slid down a tiny slide of debris, lint and dirt, to the heel of the boot. After taking her foot away and resting it delicately on the sidewalk, she hooked Levi up between her thumb and forefinger and brought him to her face.
“Now you must be strictly plain with me, you morsel, if you want to breathe air. Who are you, and why were you with that woman? Speak up!”
Levi, bewildered, and slicked over with the foul-smelling glaze from her shoe, was tired. He paused a moment. Christina, young as she looked, frightened him terribly and seemed capable of anything, perhaps even murder--and who would ever be called guilty of murdering a two-inch tall man, or who could be caught in the act!
“Who Are You?” She dangled him over the cobblestones, 70 ft. below.
“Levi,” he said. “I’m just a lawyer, and I can’t tell you more. I don’t know how this happened to me. Six hours ago, I was not like this. We were watching the meteors, I shrunk, and we decided to leave town until…until…I am cured. We were just looking for a cure.” he said.
Christina nodded, and waited for a moment. “In that case, you may be useful to me. However, if you decide to be useless—you will never see your wife—no, my friend—" Levi struggled vainly against her fingers "—You will never see anyone, ever again. I tell you this, plainly, so you understand your situation.”
“Who are you? What do you want?” Levi shivered as the girl suspended him in the cold air, between her fingers.
“First: my name is Christina. And as for what I want: Don’t be a dunce. I want your money, Jack, I want your livelihood. I want to skip this indecent shithole. I want it all.”
“You won’t have it. Upon my life, you won’t have any of it—you, you—”
“Goddess? Or were you about to say something else?”
“Whore!” he cried out, with all the strength he had.
“Oh dear—I’m afraid, Levi, that this complicates my plan, somewhat. I had hoped to persuade you sooner, or at least for some clever lying, some gamely cheating—no, I believe you’re treating me wrong, you little shrimp. I don’t believe you understand anything at all yet. But don’t worry. Tonight, or tomorrow, or the day after, I will reform you.” She frowned at him tauntingly.
“What do you mean? If you kill me, you’ll get nothing. You will have to murder me.”
“Oh no, again I’m afraid you’ve completely missed the point. Listen carefully: I won’t have to kill you—unless you would like to be killed by me (in that case I’ll oblige, after you write out a will, at my dictation—though I suppose I can leave your wife a few odds and ends, whatever will satisfy her)—I won’t have to kill you at all.” Christina lifted her right foot from the sidewalk, and pried off her woolen knee-high.
“We’re walking home,” she told him. “And when we arrive, I will give you ample opportunity, a rare chance, to talk with me again. But for now I will give you some advice, gratis: learn some wisdom. Thank me later.”
And with that, she dropped Levi into the stocking, all the way down to the toe. She slid her foot in immediately after, and again crossing it over onto her left knee, worked him into the underside of her toes. Women, and especially women of her description, seldom had fresh water to drink (beer and liquor were far more plentiful and cheap). And of the fresh water they were able to obtain, only a small portion was used for bathing—perhaps once a month they were able to clean themselves thoroughly. Levi’s trial was far beyond the pale, and he prayed any God or gods that would listen to him, for his protection and for Lydia’s. Christina chirruped to him pleasantly far above, “I will stop for dinner along the way, don’t worry. If you’re hungry, however, I regret that I won’t be able to feed you. I get what I can, and I scrounge what I can, wherever I can, when I must. Fortunately, for you, you probably won’t grow thirsty. And if you ever get hungry, don’t be squeamish about swallowing. I won’t be long.” And with that, he was plunged again into darkness, into the depths of her thirty foot long shoe, and this time in direct contact with her moist bare flesh.
The reader will conceive that the journey Levi took to Christina’s room was the longest and most unpleasant of his relatively young life. He was plastered under the bare flesh, clad in the stockings, sealed in the leather boot, of a twenty-something year old stage dancer, covered in her sweat and grime, and doing the best he could to swallow none of it. It was the longest journey of his life, and possibly his last: his ship across the river, to the Inferno (he thought to himself grotesquely, as his imagination grew increasingly dank, lost, and clouded), would appear in the shape of this boot, the boot of a young woman. They stopped now and again. He knew when she was eating—he was surprised this fact stuck in his memory, somewhere among all the gross flotsam and odors passing around through her boot—and he knew when she was walking, but nothing else.
He may have been, once upon a time, attracted to the feet of his wife. But this was past all his erotic imagination and desire, and he could make no sense of it. The senses can be ‘overloaded’, as the expression goes, and this – contrary to general opinion – is never a very pleasant experience. Levi’s sense, stomach, and his brain were overloaded when they had stopped again, and he saw Christina’s face smiling down on him from above. He blinked two or three times, and wiped the girl’s foot-slime from his eyes, looking around. They were in a rented room in a boarding house, he guessed, and the dark girl was living alone.
“Ah, there you are,” she said, casting him a devious glance. “Feeling a bit more chummy, Jack? Or would you rather go straight to bed. I’m very tired myself”—dawn winked in the window—“So if you have anything to say, please hurry.” Levi straightened himself up, and stood up straight, or tried to stand up straight, and looked as impressive as he could. He thought for a moment, “If your name is really Christina, then perhaps you can help me. If you do this, I may help you. Please listen.”
“Hurry, hurry,” she said, and let out a great yawn.
“I have dictated a letter to the wife of my partner in law, Charles Och, which specifies—in more than one word—my interest in her. A letter has also been sent to Charles himself, in my wife’s voice (the woman you abducted and presumably mugged—she may be lost still, for all I know), which conveys her outrage and supreme disgust with the affair. Though she does not name herself, her authorship is expressly implied in the tone and style, and in her intimate connection with the seducer. Here is all I ask: I address the letter to a Lucy, but I do not say Lucy Och or Smith or Circumference. I say Lucy alone. If you show yourself to Charles, today, and confess that you—not his wife—were the object of my illicit affections, I will hand over my estate to you, in toto. I swear it.”
Watching the little man with a curious eye, Christina appeared to give this offer serious consideration. She flumped down at the ramshackle table, then stood up after a moment and picked Levi up. Sitting down on the bed, and dandling him over her crossed knees, she gave her verdict. “I’ll sleep on it, tinsel-nose, and tell you what I think in a few hours. If what you told me holds water, we’ll act on it today. If not, you stay in my possession until you decide to be useful. I have to sleep for a few hours. I suggest that you try sleeping as well.” She peeled the stocking from her foot, and then lowered him down to the toe. She stuck her foot in after him, and turned over onto the age-old mattress to go to sleep. And surprisingly, after a half-hour, Levi fell asleep too, under Christina's infernally disgusting toes–though feeling somewhat less hopeless than before, and anxious to find his wife. So tired was he that, even situated as he was, pressed into the mushy substance under Christina's toes, he soon forgot the world.