Once I had my first pair of real flamenco shoes, I found it almost impossible to take them off. I was like a little girl who is so in love with her new party shoes that she insists on wearing them to bed.
At every opportunity I slipped them on and practiced clicking my heels and tapping my toes, and before long I had worn two holes in their precious soles. I showed them to Diana and she told me to go and see the Shoe Man. “He’s the only person in Sydney who understands flamenco shoes,” she said, handing me his card.
I remember the day I made my first visit to the Shoe Man, because it was the same day the new collection of Jimmy Choos arrived on Level Five. The news traveled like a wave across the floor, and by nine thirty-five everyone knew. At each counter the girls were taking turns to go up and get a look at the new shoes.
As soon as I arrived at work, Sascha handed me the feather duster. “Just look busy, darling. Back in a tick.” And before I could open my mouth to ask what was going on, she’d disappeared up the escalator.
When Sascha returned it was to grab the calculator and figure out how many hours’ overtime she would need to work to take home a pair of black stiletto heels with an ankle strap and an oversize buckle. The result was: yes, she could have the shoes, but no life for the next six months. She sent me up to take a look at them and to tell her whether I thought they were worth maxing out her only remaining credit card. So I unclipped my name tag and took the escalators up to Level Five.
I walked past the school shoes, the Clarks, the orthopedic shoes, the work shoes, and traveled around the floor to where the toes were shinier and pointier and the heels higher and higher, until I reached the wall where the Jimmy Choos were displayed, like butterflies from a far-off rain forest.
And they were beautiful. Oh yes, they were perfection on five-inch heels. Sascha was right. Every single pair was worth giving up your Sundays for. I reached out and picked one up. It was shiny and impossibly high.
I gazed at this off-the-runway confection that any woman would give her firstborn for, and as I ran my fingers over the pencil-thin heel, I couldn’t help thinking, “What good are these to me? I could break them with one stamp of my foot.” I put the shoe back on its pedestal and squeezed out of the crowd. I didn’t need Jimmy Choo. I had a date with the Shoe Man.
• • •
I had imagined the Shoe Man’s shop would be like Santa’s workshop, with boxes of flamenco shoes piled high to the ceiling and dozens of little helpers sipping on sherry as they hammered tiny nails into thick wooden soles. So when I reached the address on the card, I thought I must have made a mistake. It was nothing more than a shop front with FIX YOUR SHOES WHILE YOU WAIT in peeling paint. Surely this couldn’t be it. I hesitantly pushed open the door and stepped inside.
The walls were covered with posters for old stage shows, and a wooden shelf behind the counter held rows of resoled tap shoes, ballet slippers, sparkly ballroom shoes, and patent-leather lace-up jazz shoes. A young man in blue jeans and a leather jacket stood waiting, drumming his fingers on the counter. Then the door to the back room swung open and out stepped a man carrying half a dozen shoe boxes. This must be the Shoe Man.
If the shop had disappointed me, the Shoe Man didn’t. With tanned olive skin, dark eyes, and black hair flecked with gray he looked like a flamenco artist off the cover of one of the albums I collected from the Spain section of the CD store.
He looked up at me as the young male dancer took pair after pair of identical tap shoes out of the boxes. “You here for ballet shoes?”
“No,” I told him. “I dance flamenco.”
“You?” He looked me up and down. “You are dancing flamenco?” That thought seemed to blow his mind. I felt a little disappointed that even though I couldn’t plié to save my life it was easier for him to believe that I was a ballerina than a flamenco dancer.
When the young dancer had examined each pair of shoes, he packed them back into their boxes and counted out a wad of notes. “Come,” the Shoe Man said to me as he deposited the money in the register. “Let’s talk.” He pulled open the door to his workroom and invited me to follow him. The workroom was a big open space with white walls and exposed wooden beams. “Sit, sit.” He waved me toward a long wooden bench. “Sit down and tell me who you are.” I sat down, and the Shoe Man went to the kitchenette and made us each a cup of instant coffee.
“Tell me, why did you want to dance flamenco?” he called.
“Because I love it.”
He nodded and handed me a cup of scalding Nescafé. “And you are performing?”
I couldn’t help but laugh at that. The idea of me in a big ruffled dress on a stage was just too funny.
“Why are you laughing?” he asked.
“I don’t perform,” I explained. “I couldn’t.”
“Why not?” he asked sharply.
“I’m nowhere near good enough.”
“What you talking yourself down for? You think you can build a house in one day? No! You have to start with the foundation.” He took a flamenco shoe off the workbench. “You see this?” He ran a calloused finger over the tiny nails that were hammered into the heel. “This is the foundation. But it is not enough on its own. The great dancer needs the foundation for the feet, and the foundation for the heart. Have you been to Spain?”
“No.”
He must have heard the longing in my voice because his tone softened and he said, “But you would like to, eh?”
Like to go to Spain? It was my dream to go to Spain. My secret dream that was too precious to even articulate.
“Let me give you one piece of advice, then I fix your shoes. Deal?”
I nodded. “Deal.”
“Dreaming is good, but living is better. Maybe it is time to start living your dream, eh? What do you say?”