"Can I see your left shoe?" she said.
He looked at her.
"You can say no."
He did not say no. He bent and untied the left cleat, the one with the stitches, and worked it off his foot, and handed it to her. She took it in both hands. She turned it over and looked at the sole, at the studs worn down on the inside edge, and then she turned it back over and looked at the heel, and she ran the pad of her thumb along the row of red X's, slowly, one stitch at a time, the way you might read something in Braille.
"Nineteen," she said.
Tavo felt the hair on his arms stand up.
"I ran out of thread," she said. "I had a little sewing kit from the hotel, the Best Western in Visalia, one of those little paper folders with a needle and three colors of thread. White, black, and red. White wouldn't hold and black ran out. Red was what was left. I sat on the end of the bed and I stitched it until the red was gone, and that was nineteen. It held. I was so sure it wouldn't hold." She turned the cleat a little in the light. "It's still holding."
"You did this," Tavo said.
"I did this." She handed it back to him. "When I was seven years younger and a good deal dumber. Where did you get these, Tavo?"
He held the shoe in his lap. "A guy gave them to me."
"What guy?"
"A guy I know. From the park."
"Does he have a name?"
"Wyn."