When I saw this photograph, taken at the Bedford Avenue L subway station in Brooklyn yesterday morning, I had to run through all the possible scenarios as to why a pair of perfectly good gold heels was splayed on the tracks. Below, see my imagining. What do you think happened?

*photo credit: Joe Gallagher, 2009

It had been a long night. Evan wouldn’t even look at her, so Brittney kept drinking PBRs–seven, to be exact, but she lost count around 4. The other girls were all slung over their bike messenger rockstar wannabe boyfriends, their arms protectively crossed over their concave chests like the straps of those messenger bags they always wear. Her gold platforms, which seemed so perfect when she was getting dressed, seem ridiculous now, in this dank basement bar, full of Converse sneakers and combat boots. In the graffitied bathroom mirror, her eyes are lost in a smudgy cloud of eyeliner and mascara. The straps of her dress keep falling down.

Apparently, the look works, because one of the wannabes, complete with leather jacket and skinny jeans, is buying her beers now, putting his hand possessively on her hip. It’s a long way back to Astoria, and her platforms are pinching. “Where do you live?” she coos to this weasel-faced boy (man? hard to tell in this light). He mumbles a reply, and it gets lost in her hair, and it’s not until she’s standing on platform of the L, wobbling a little on her heels, that the unfairness of everything bubbles to the surface and she takes the sandals (those damned shoes) and throws them theatrically to the tracks below. “What the fuck?” her new companion yelps, startled, but she doesn’t answer. Just pivots on her barefoot heel, strides up the stairs, and back out into the hot Brooklyn night.