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the shoe shops, but that’s the extent of what they think you can do. Funny, when it comes to the rush jobs it’s always ‘Get the fat girl to do it’, like they think the overtime won’t eat into your life while they rush off down to the pub.
    There is a life, just not the one they want you to have.
    The printout of the map smells faintly and sweetly of shoelaces. A printout isn’t really necessary, most of the time your eidetic memory takes you the places you’ll never see, but you like the feel of the colours bleeding into your fingertips.
    You put on your walking shoes which are halfway through their life — sorry shoes, your interment is planned — hat, gloves and jacket that will never die, and steer by the prow of your bosom out into the damp-bitten streets. There is an appointment to keep.
    The passengers on your Walking Bus fluctuate but you can always count on Angela, Rosa, and Vinnia to share your route. You climb aboard the concrete steps and paths that rush beneath your feet, judiciously avoiding the stares and collisions and more stares.
    Angela, a local all her life and infused with the grey rash of the city, keeps her eyes downcast. Rosa, a ray of Samoan sunshine, and Vinnia, a sparkle of a girl from SoCal, refuse to. Depending on the weather and the day of the week, you fluctuate. A rainy Monday, you have a crick in your neck. A sunny Friday, the cricks are in your crow’s feet.
    Today is an overcast Thursday, the sun already lost to your toothy horizon.
    Vinnia can smell the promise of shoes in your pocket. She’s always looking for stilettos that fit. You don’t know how she can walk in those things, but even the ones she has to squeeze into make her pins look filthy gorgeous. Women like that, you think, are so lucky — she carries most of her weight in her barrel chest, and even then she has a fantastic window ledge made of 22 Double Fs.
    “You’ve found a new shoe shop,” Vinnia says as you fall into step beside her. You say nothing, which isn’t unusual. This shoe shop belongs to you. She arches a perfectly plucked eyebrow, and Rosa runs a bow across the string of her infectious giggle. Rosa adores Vinnia, but not as much as Angela, though that’s doomed to go nowhere. Angela is a lot like that, and much could be said about the trope that is her mother, but Angela prefers not to. She knows why her mother does it, but it doesn’t stop it from hurting any less.
    “It can wait until tomorrow night,” you protest, but Vinnia has you by the wrist and is dragging you back towards town. You would prefer to wait until tomorrow night, so you can go on your own, because this map smells like the sort of adventure that will only do for you. Vinnia prefers to dance in her shoes, while you walk…and walk and walk and walk.
    “Show,” she demands with rapid snaps of her fingers tipped in a dangerous pink that matches her lips, and you reluctantly pull the carefully folded paper from your pocket.
    Vinnia scowls at the print out. That’s right. She can’t smell it, not all of it. She’s got a whiff of the leather, but she doesn’t know what to make of that tang of elephants, sun soaked linen, and packed dirt.
    “I’ve never seen a shoe store there, and I go past there all the time on the way to the Flamingo bar.” Perplexity pinches between Vinnia’s perfect eyebrows, and her pink lips turn wistful.
    “It’s not a shoe shop, it’s a cobbler.” Your voice is lost beneath that of your rambunctious friend and you have to trot to keep up with her firm grip as the four of you swim against the tide of humanity sweeping for home. No parting of the Red Sea this. Despite your size, other pedestrians greet you with elbows and shoulders. Another storm on the sea to weather. You’re the elephant in the room that people refuse to see wherever you go.
    Angela and Rosa follow like the good little stooges they’ve been taught to be.
    When the four of you get to the spot where the shop should be