“Jaine, sweetie,” she said, fluffing her hair. “I’ve got an important business appointment I really must keep.” She handed me three twenties. “Here’s cab money. Be a dear and take Heidi home, will you?”

I nodded mutely as she gathered her things and strode off toward the escalator.

I hoped her heel got caught in one of the slats.

After a while, Heidi came out from the dressing room, looking about as perky as a Vietnam vet.

“Where’s SueEllen?” she asked.

“She’s gone,” I said.

I could practically feel the relief flooding her body.

“She said she had a business appointment. She gave us money to take a cab home.”

We took the escalator down to the first floor and were making our way past the $80 socks and $300 barrettes, when suddenly I heard someone call my name.

“Yoo hoo, Jaine!”

It was Lance, waving at us from the shoe department.

“Who’s that?” Heidi asked.

“My neighbor. He works here. C’mon, let’s go say hi.”

I brought Heidi over and introduced her to Lance.

“Lance, this is Heidi Kingsley.”

“SueEllen Kingsley’s daughter?”

“Stepdaughter,” we both corrected him.

“What’re you guys doing here?”

“Getting a dress for Heidi,” I said. “Tomorrow is her birthday.”

“Really?” Lance grinned. “Happy birthday, cutie pie.”

How sweet. He called her cutie pie. I could have kissed him for throwing her a compliment. The poor kid probably hadn’t had one in years.

Heidi blushed with pleasure.

“You gals want to try on some shoes?”

Lance knows how much I like trying on shoes I can’t possibly afford.

“How about it, Heidi?” I asked. “Want to?”

She shrugged indifferently.

“Oh, come on!” Lance said. “It’ll be fun.”

And it was. Lance brought out box after box of outrageous shoes, and we tried them on, giggling.

“You’ve got beautiful feet,” Lance told Heidi. “Such a slender instep.” Another compliment. She soaked it up like a sponge.

After a while, two actual paying customers approached, elegant Japanese women with feet the size of Prozac’s.

“Guess we’d better go,” I said. Heidi and I put our shoes back in their boxes, and I hugged Lance goodbye.

“Thanks,” I whispered in his ear. “You’re the best.”

“That’s what Jim tells me,” he whispered back.

“Bye, cutie,” he said to Heidi, who once more blushed with pleasure.

Heidi and I headed out to Wilshire Boulevard to look for a cab, no easy feat. Finding a cab in Los Angeles is like finding a fat person in Malibu. We decided to walk over to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, in the hopes that some cabs would be lined up out front. We hadn’t gone very far when I remembered what SueEllen said about Heidi having no friends.

“Hey,” I said, stopping in my tracks. “Let’s not go home yet. Let’s hang out for a while. Okay?”

Heidi nodded.

“Feel like a frozen yogurt?”

She nodded again.

“Well, let’s go get one.”

She looked out at me from under her fringe of bangs, and smiled. A beautiful smile that warmed my heart. And you know something? Lance was right. She really was a cutie pie.