The Case of the Missing Manolo’s

They weren’t just shoes. They were proof.

Proof she had taste. Proof she had restraint. Proof that she could afford to suffer.

And now, they were gone.

She searched the closet. Dior slingbacks, present. Prada mules, resentful. No Manolos. She replayed nights, parties, gallery openings. Nothing.

By day five, she noticed something else missing. Her memory of the dinner where she wore them, gone. The cab ride home after that show, blank. Whole evenings dissolved like sugar in champagne.

The loss spread. One morning she realized she no longer remembered her thirty-seventh birthday. Another day, she forgot how she met a lover whose toothbrush still lived by her sink. The shoes hadn’t disappeared. They’d taken pieces of her with them.

She scoured Depop, The RealReal, even whispered questions at consignment shops. No sign. Just a growing void.

She started dreaming about them, walking by themselves, heels tapping on concrete, carrying her past with them step by step. In the dream, she tried to run after them barefoot, but her feet made no sound at all.

Waking, she checked the closet again. Still empty. And emptier, somehow.

The Manolos weren’t lost. They were keeping her. Piece by piece.