It was my first real job. I mean, I had cleaned people's yards and done babysitting and stuff like that, but working in the shoe store was the first job where I had to show up at a certain time and got a paycheck every Friday. I had applied for 6 jobs before summer vacation and gotten 2 offers. The other job had been in a fast-food place, but they were paying $.35 less per hour, so I chose the shoe store.

It was terminally boring, and for a while I wondered if I had made a bad decision. At least at the fast-food place I'd be with other teenagers and would see some customers once in a while. Ah well.

I'd been at work nearly a month when SHE came in. It was another dead Tuesday in a dead store in a dead mall. I had just come back from lunch and told Bill, the assistant manager, to take his. I knew he was meeting his girlfriend at a restaurant.

"Take your time," I told him. "Nothing's happening here, anyway." The real manager only came by on Fridays. He was in charge of nine stores, and ours was the worst performer, something he reminded us of weekly. There wasn't anything we could do about it, this mall was in a bad section of town, and got no traffic.

Anyway, I was alone in the store when a nice looking woman in her 30's came in. She walked around checking out the displays, picking up a couple of samples. As she walked around, I got to see her from front, back and sides. I had to say she was pretty nice looking, I mean for an older woman and all. She had a decent figure, with a thin waist and nice chest. But I especially noticed her legs, which were long, muscular, and tanned. As she sat down I approached her and asked if there was anything specific she'd like to see. She handed me three samples.

Women are funny about shoes, you know? They like to look and shop, and admire and try on, and look and shop some more. Up until that day I liked men shoppers better. They come in to buy. They try on one pair, maybe two, make their purchase and leave.

I figured I was in for a half-hour of running back and forth to the stockroom, opening boxes, and all. What crap. If I had only known what lay ahead, I'm sure my attitude would have been better.

"And what size are you?" I asked, summoning my most helpful salesman voice.

"I really don't know," she said. "It keeps changing, as I lose and gain weight." My sister was constantly dieting, so I knew what that was like.

"Well let's find out," I said. I pulled up my little salesman's bench in front of her and slid it up until I was at the right distance to measure her. I was sitting on the cushioned part of the bench, straddling the inclined end with my legs. I reached out and took hold of her ankle and slipped one of her shoes off her feet. Then I set her foot down on the sloped part of the stool in between my legs. I was holding her foot in the metal measuring plate when she began to twitch.

"You're tickling me," she said. "It's uncomfortable. Well, not uncomfortable, just, ah, well, it tickles." I hadn't faced this before.

"Sorry," I said, lamely. "It looks like you're a 5, maybe a 5-and-a-half. B or C." I wasn't too precise because I hadn't had much experience. Bill had trained me to do it that way, since I didn't want to call out one size and end up having to argue with the customer as I brought out other sizes later. If they questioned me, Bill told me to tell them that some import manufacturers ran their sizes a little smaller or a little larger than American manufacturers. It was bullshit, but it sounded plausible, I guess.

I released her foot, and she clipped my thigh with her toes as she pulled it back. I told her that she would have to put on some "peds" to try on shoes, and we weren't allowed to have customers' bare feet in the shoes. I walked over to the register and got a pair of the thin nylon booties. Then I disappeared into the stockroom, and returned a few moments later with her three samples in the correct sizes.

I handed her the peds. "Put them on me," she said. That was also new. I'd never had a woman tell me to do that; they'd always just taken the little slippers and put them on themselves. I didn't care.

Again I straddled my little bench. I picked up first one foot and put the bootie on, then the other. It felt nice, holding this woman's leg in my hand. I offered her the first pair of shoes. They were a pair of sideless dress pumps with a single strap around the back. As I helped her into them, I made some idle conversation. One of the questions I asked was how many pairs of shoes she had.

"Oh, I don't know, 50 or 60, I suppose," she answered.

"Jeez, really? What do you do with all of them?" I asked.

"Some are for work and some are for play and some are for sports and some, well, woman just love shoes. And I'm a woman, and I love shoes. My husband asks me the same question all the time."

I said "I understand why. You must take over the whole closet." During the entire conversation I was putting her shoes on, caressing her feet, rubbing her soles, touching her toes.

"Besides," she continued, "shoes are sexy. You know? I mean they can be, and they are, sometimes, you know?"

With my limited sexual experience I could say I had no idea what she was talking about. But was I going to tell her that? Nooooooo.

She bent one of her knees and pulled her leg up, bringing the shoe closer to her face. But as she did so, the front of her dress opened, and I got a nice look up it at her shapely legs. I even got a flash of her panties before she put her leg back down.

She got up and walked around in a small circle, examining the shoes and testing their comfort. She walked over in front of a floor mirror and looked at them again. The mirror was set on brackets at a slight angle, to let the customers see the shoes more easily. She came back and sat down.

"So?" I said. "Want them?"

"I don't know. Let's try on the others," she replied.

I put her foot back between my legs on the tilted surface of the bench, and began to take off the shoes. While she was up walking around, I had what I thought was a bright idea. I had moved the bench a few inches closer to her chair, so when her foot came to rest her knee was bent a little more than before. If I just got my head down a little lower, I'd be able to see up to her thighs.

I brought out the next pair, an all black spike high heel. Again I slipped them on her feet, and again I managed to get her to flex her knees and let me see up those beautiful thighs. From the corner of my eye I saw her smirking at me, but I didn't think she really knew what I was trying to do. Or maybe she did. Who knew?

She got up and walked around. As she did, her hands went to her skirt and she hiked it up to mid-thigh. She wanted to see what it would look like with a short skirt on, I guessed. I think these were what some women call their "fuck-me" shoes. Apparently they were for a particular outfit she had.

She walked over to the floor mirror, still holding her dress up several inches above her knee. She called me over. I got up and walked over to her.

"Here, look. These hurt a little on my toes," she said to me. I bent down on one knee and began squeezing on the shoes to see how much room there was in the shoes. As I did so, I realized that I was at the perfect angle to see up her skirt in the floor mirror, especially if she continued to hold it up higher than usual.

I worked and massaged her foot, all the while staring intently into the mirror. God did she have beautiful legs, and I could see all the way up to her crystal white panties. This was a trick I would have to remember for use during the rest of the summer! After a couple minutes it became obvious that she had made her decision. But she still wasn't tell me what it was. "Decided?" I asked.

"Maybe later. For now, let's try on the last pair. None of these has been perfect, so far, though I like them both. Come on, honey." I hated it when older women called me "honey."

She returned to her chair, I to my bench. The third box contained a pair of sandals with incredibly long tie-strings. They were intended to wrap around and around the woman's leg, finally tying somewhere behind the knees. The style was called "Gladiator", I guessed because the laces were reminiscent of Roman soldiers. This was going to be interesting, I thought.

As I sat down, I pulled my bench in another couple of inches. I began by putting the first shoe on her leg, then taking the ties and reaching around behind her leg to thread the long leather strings around. By now her leg was well bent at the knee, and my head was bobbing up and down, apparently looking for the best way to wrap the ties, but actually looking for crotch shots up her dress. I was getting plenty, and it was beginning to have an effect on me. It must have taken three minutes to put on the first shoe.

I began lacing up the second. This time she plunked her foot down on the inclined bench right between my legs near my crotch. I couldn't tell if it was because she was trying not to bend her leg so much, or for some other reason. It didn't matter, and it didn't make a difference. I still got plenty of looks up her dress. When I was finished I looked at her face. She was smiling broadly at me. At the time I didn't exactly know why. Now, of course, I do.

She got up and repeated her trip over to the mirror. "Come on over here, would you?" she said to me. Of course I jumped at the opportunity. But it took me a moment to rearrange myself as I stood up from my salesman's bench. I walked over to her, hoping for a repeat of my game with the mirror. She gave me the opportunity.

"How do they look?" she asked. "I can hardly see anything with this stupid skirt in the way. I should have worn something shorter today. I mean, look, the laces come all the way up my calves..." She hiked her skirt up a little and cocked her head to one side to look. "And I can hardly tell. Here, let me look in the mirror."

She inched up the skirt a little more, then said, "Oh I know, we used to do this in school after the nuns had checked our skirts for the proper length." And she took hold of both sides of her belt and twisted it over and over, rolling up the skirt around the belt as she did so. She must have hiked it six inches, maybe seven, before she stopped.

"There. That's better," she said throatily. I was still crouched down, looking in the mirror, trying to memorize that most beautiful sight for later when I could beat off in the privacy of my bedroom. "Yeah, these. Maybe the black ones. I'm not sure."

She went back to the chair to sit down. I went back to the bench. Now her leg was bent, and her skirt was even shorter. I wasn't sure, but she seemed to be much more careless about how she looked to me. All I knew is that I was getting shot after shot up that skirt, and I was loving it.

I had almost finished removing these complicated sandals when she said "Oh, I have to pee. Do you have a ladies room?"

"Not really," I said. "But we do have a toilet in the back. It's supposed to be just for employees, but you're welcome to use it. It's not much, but it works." I wasn't kidding. It was barely a closet with a bowl. But at least we didn't have to walk the length of the mall to take a piss. And at that point I would have done anything to keep her in the store.

I continued, "It's down through the stockroom, left at the phone, last door. Here, I'll show you." We walked out of the customer area into the stockroom, past hundreds and hundreds of boxes of shoes, just waiting for the customer with the right size and wrong taste to come buy them.

"My god, look at all these shoes. Oh, a girl could just get lost in here." I didn't know what she was talking about. Get lost? I mean it wasn't THAT big. I kept walking and pointed out the door to the john. She went in.

A few minutes later when she came out, she said "Boy you weren't kidding. It's claustrophobic in there. They sure didn't waste any space on something as useless as a rest room, huh?"

"Well, to be honest, we don't usually close the door. And since it's only guys who work here, we don't usually have to sit down. We just..."

She interrupted. "I get the picture. Well, thanks for the use of the facility, and for the interesting commentary." She laughed. I couldn't tell if she was laughing at me or with me. "Now. About these shoes?" She pointed to the row upon row of shoe boxes. It was like she was a kid in a candy store or something.

"Men's on the right, women's on the left," I explained nonchalantly. "Dress shoes and boots up high, casual shoes in the middle, sneakers and sandals near the floor."

"Oh, a regular system," she said. She stood up on one of the little salesman's benches to reach the upper shelves. She stood up on it, on her tip-toes, reaching for the dress shoe boxes. I stayed on the ground, trying to get another look up her dress. I could see high up her thighs, but no further.

She started to wobble a little, and I instinctively reached out to steady her. It was only after my effort that I realized I had one of my hands on each of her hips, and that she felt warm to my touch. Steadied, she stepped back down with her treasure, two more boxes of shoes.

"Let me try these," she said.

"Sure. Whatever," I replied.

I turned to walk out front, but she said, "No, we can do it here. Just slide your bench over here. I'll sit on this carton. I'd like to stay among the shoes." She was weird, I thought. Fine.

As she sat, I again took her leg in my hands and placed it between my thighs on the slope of my stool. I bent her leg slightly, and as I dipped down to pick up the shoe box, I was rewarded with a quick glimpse up her legs.

But I didn't see as far up as before, because I didn't get that flash of white panties that I was looking for. I was actually sitting back up, working on the shoe when I realized that was because she didn't have her panties on! She had taken them off in the bathroom, and what I had seen was her bush.

I was finished with the first shoe, and ever-so-slowly bent down to pick up the second. Now that I knew what I was looking for, I stared with all my might as my eye passed the field of vision that would let me have a look at that junction between her legs. I could definitely see her pubic hair, topping off the nicest set of legs I had ever seen, including in the men's magazines I had managed to hide from my Mom.