The door knocker was made in the form of a female high-heeled boot. Victoria Martins lingered for a moment, a piece of shiny yellow brass, for which she took, attracted her attention. The hammer was weighty, but skillfully made in the form of high, knee-high boots with lacing, tightly covering the seductive leg. The laces on the front were reproduced with all the details, and the seams on real leather boots were skillfully engraved from the sides and back on the metal. Victoria unusual hammer seemed in its own way wonderful. But she was completely alone on a dark street in that part of the city that she had imagined quite vaguely, cowering under an umbrella, trying to hide from heavy rain, and she hurried. Therefore, after a short pause, she hit the door with a hammer.

Victoria, of course, wanted to be heard, but she did not expect the sound to be so loud: the toe of the boot, striking the brass plate, caused a deafening roar that seemed to shake the whole building from roof to bottom. Frightened, she knocked not so hard and then stopped. Someone responded to her knock.

The door opened and the gaze of Victoria met the gaze from below, although a man came out at her knock: short, thin, middle-aged, but with rather long black hair, among whom were many gray-haired people, wearing a vest and armlets.

“Sorry to bother you,” said Victoria, “Is this the“ House of Shoes ”?”

The little man nodded.

- Please, come through. How can I help? He asked, without pausing between the two phrases.

But as Victoria followed his invitation, the answer to his question became obvious. She stood on the steps, placing her right leg, bent at the knee, a step higher than the left. When she entered the house, this leg straightened, but the other was forced to bend over. Victoria had high-heeled shoes on her feet, and the heel of her right shoe was completely broken.

She stumbled and tried to keep her balance. She squeezed her lips, but a curse fell from them. The little man grabbed her arm and helped her to stay on her feet:

- Nothing, nothing, miss.

“I'm sorry,” said Victoria, “this is so annoying. You understand?

- Of course. Why don't you sit down and take them off. It's dry here, unlike the street.

He led her to a chair by the wall. Victoria sat down and took off her shoes. These were black patent leather shoes with straps around the ankle. On their socks and climbs droplets of rainwater glistened, looking like lamps in the light of tiny sparkling diamonds. While her fingers unbuckled the buckles, Victoria looked around. She was in the hallway. A narrow staircase led upstairs, a corridor went inland. The air had a steady but pleasant smell, the smell of new skin.

- You know, outside this house does not look like a shoe store.

“I didn’t want to,” the little man replied.

- Are you the boss?

“I’m the owner,” the answer was, “James H. Kin, working since 1965.”

- Is it so long ago? - Victoria was surprised. - How do customers find you? This is not a crowded place.

- I have regular customers since I started my own business. They tell about me. You see, I have a very personal service, ”Mr Keane said proudly.

- You mean work outside office hours. I would not be surprised if you told me to clean up at such a late hour.

Mr Kin shook his head.

- I am never closed to regular customers. If the client is familiar to me, he can knock at 3 am.

- In fact? - Victoria was surprised again, - Well, I don’t think that I will ever need to repair my shoes so much. That's

She opened her purse and pulled out a four-inch shiny heels, "hairpin" elegant shape with a smooth transition from a circle from one side to almost the point - on the other.

“Could you fix it in such a way that you could put on your shoes again?” Victoria handed Mr. Kin a broken heel with a shoe.

He shook his head, raising his right shoe to his eyes and studying the place where he had been before.

“Bad glue,” he said out loud, but as if talking to himself.

“They cost me dearly,” Victoria said with a hurt tone in her voice.

“Paying more you don’t always get better,” said Mr. Keane, as if by a proverbial saying, not being distracted from studying shoes, “Let’s go to the workshop.”

He headed down the hall. Victoria was not sure that the invitation applies to her, but she decided to follow him and rose from her chair. Her legs were covered with transparent nylon so thin stockings that they seemed almost invisible. Paul was covered with linoleum, which cooled her feet.

Mr. Keane walked down the corridor to the workshop, obviously not paying attention to the fact that he was followed by his companion. The workshop was a small, not too well-lit room with windows in which stained-glass windows stood. Only in one corner, above the workplace, the lamp burned brightly. Even if there were no items in the room, it would not have seemed spacious. And it was filled with many different strange-looking objects that were difficult to pick up names: a large number of unusual metal tools, large pieces of uncut skin, separate heels, soles, climbs, belts, buckles, lightning, finally, that in the dim light most attracted the attention of Victoria, a complete selection of pads, lined up in pairs on the shelves of a large open built-in cabinet. All the pads were long, some reproduced the leg to the knee, others - just above the knee. The pads were made of light, almost white wood. The wooden surface was absolutely smooth, perfectly reproducing the shape of the human foot. All five fingertips were performed with amazing accuracy. On each of them was even a little nail. It seemed that the legs were elastic and warm to the touch.

Mr. Keane went to a large closet, and only now noticed Victoria standing in the doorway behind her. Before she entered the room, he turned to another locker, a smaller one, attached to the wall above the work bench. The door of this cabinet was ajar and he closed it with a familiar gesture, although it was clear that he did not want Victoria to see the contents of the cabinet.

Mr. Keane turned to Victoria.

- Sit down, please, miss. We must wait. Take off your raincoat. Maybe you brew us both tea?

With his thumb, he pointed to Victoria, distracting her gaze from the locker, at the teapot and teapot, which stood in the midst of the confusion that prevailed in the room.

- So, let's see, the sixth English size, narrow legs

While Victoria put the kettle on the fire, he set to work. I chose one of the short shoes, put a broken shoe on it and put the shoe upright on the bench so that the sole of the shoe looked up. Then he put on his glasses and surgical gloves: he squeezed glue drops onto the sole and heel from a small tube, carefully connected them, chose a tiny vice from his collection of tools and slowly fixed his heel and shoe together firmly enough to keep the heel in place until it was the glue dries, and at the same time not enough to damage the varnished surface of the shoe. Watching him, Victoria was amazed at the thoroughness with which Mr. Keane did the work; she felt like she had to shut up until he was done.

Sitting on the bench, he looked back.

- Tea is ready?