Billie
Holiday on vacation, it is said, once happened to meet Billy
Vacation, who was on holiday. It took place in a place that mended
shoes and cut keys. One of her heels must have come off or something.
Mr Vacation was leaning on his counter and licking his lips as if
they were located in another country. He said:
“I adore all your songs.”
“Many of them haven’t been recorded or even written
yet,” she replied with one shoulder hunched higher than the other.
It was the right one. But there is no right or wrong when it comes to
shoulders.
He nodded in sympathy. “Future events. That’s nice.”
She knew what he was probably thinking, which was that
she had a deformed shoulder, whereas in fact her posture was entirely
due to the fact that the heel had snapped off her left shoe. Mr
Vacation, for his part, was thinking that she was guessing what he
was thinking and was correct in this guess, but for the wrong reason.
Mr Vacation had seen too many people totter into his
place with lopsided shoulders and they always had the heel of one
shoe missing. But he understood that one day this would not be the
case, that someone would approach his counter with a shoulder that
was biologically higher, or lower, than the other shoulder, a person
with asymmetrical shrugs. Do the laws of chance make this event
inevitable?
Well, yes they do. And when he took his first look at
Billie Holiday in the flesh, even though he was aware that her
shoulders were normal, he decided that today was the day for the
prediction to come true. So he said in his most soothing voice:
“There’s a hospital just up the street.”
Billie had already stooped to remove her damaged shoe
and now she held it up and placed it down on the counter. “They
don’t fix shoes there. I already asked.” Her shoulders were no
longer lopsided, which meant she was standing on only one leg. He
couldn’t be sure, because the counter was in the way, but even when
there was no counter in the way he was unsure of so many things in
life. How to make soup, for example.
His soups were terrible. They were solid.
He had once been able to use one of his soups as a
doorstop to stop a heavy door, but he couldn’t recall what he had
stopped it from doing, and that’s another story and another
suppertime anyway.
Mr Vacation examined the broken shoe. It was a fairly
easy job but he made faces and made noises with the mouth of those
faces, just one mouth for all the faces, because it is good to
economise in these days of fiscal fretting, when old shoes are mended
more often than bought brand new, not that it’s possible to buy old
shoes brand new…
“But you know what I mean,” he said to himself.
“Why does this place mend shoes and cut keys?” she
asked. “I’ve always wondered why places that do the one also do
the other. That’s like a bread shop that also sells guns. I don’t
see the connection.”
“Just to be clear,” he replied, “this place
doesn’t mend shoes and cut keys. I never have and never will mend a
cut key. I cut new keys and that’s what this place does and why I’m
in it.”
“An undertaker’s that is also a hat shop…” she
was musing.
Mr Vacation continued to lick his lips but now it felt
as if they were on their way home, tanned from the sun, still sleepy
from lazy days on the beach and dancing at night. They tasted of
coconut and exchange rates. His tongue was like shoe leather, the
saliva that coated it like melted keys but cooler. It turned in the
locks of his mouth, causing it to open wide, and then he said, “The
machinery is the same.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The machinery used to mend shoes and cut keys.”
“Now I comprehend.”
They looked at each other. “What brought you to
Florida, if you don’t mind me asking?” he asked mindfully.
“I am on vacation. And you?”
“I’m on holiday. It’s a working holiday. I mend
shoes and cut keys in Oregon. I traded places with the guy who mends
shoes and cuts keys here. It’s just for one month.”
“A little trip to the Florida Keys, you could say?”
He laughed. It had been the only joke a customer had
told him since he arrived. He gestured behind him at a wall festooned
with keys. He indicated the key furthest on her left. “That one
must be Key West,” he said, as he took it down and held it under
his nose like a robot’s moustache. Did it smell of marlin and
cocktails? In his imagination, yes, but undercut with a tang of
shotgun powder.
“Is it true there’s a lock for every key?” she
asked.
“I’m certain that there is.”
“In that case, why not attach a large key to the
bottom of my shoe rather than a heel?”
Mr Vacation considered the unusual idea. He knew what
she was hoping would happen if he did this. There are doors
everywhere, doors of perception, doors of fate and opportunity,
invisible doors locked fast against our blunderings and gropings.
Some of these doors are like trapdoors, on the underside of the
ceiling of the sky, and others are like manholes, embedded in the
ground.
She might walk directly over the door labelled ‘musical
history’ and unlock it with her new heel. It would spring open and
she would plummet through into the safest of all safe spaces for
reputations. She didn’t yet realise she had already passed through
that door.
“Yes,” she said when he explained all that, “but
maybe I didn’t lock it behind me. So I still need that key.”
If the machinery is the same, why not? He cut the key
for her and fixed it to the bottom of her shoe. She tried it on and
now her shoulders were straight even when she stood on both legs at
the same time. She paid him and walked out of his sight and he never
saw her again. She must have trodden on that lock and made that door
secure against being opened by a casual talent such as his own. And
thus she vanished from the gigantic room of this world into another.
When his month was completed, Mr Vacation returned home
and an effort was later made to track him down by historians of the
great singer, but his trail, his Oregon Trail, like hot soup left
unattended on a doorstop too long, had gone cold.
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