Headshots
Sharmin Rahman
On Hollywood Boulevard, the shoe cobbler is reading a foreign newspaper when I walk into his shop. The store is tiny. It smells of old leather and petroleum. He’s sitting in the back room.
“Hello,” I say from the checkout counter, announcing my presence in his space. He doesn’t look up.
“Hello,” I say once more, my voice an octave higher.
He walks over to the counter slowly, pulling up the glasses that are tied to a lanyard around his neck. He has a protruding face and a sturdy nose. It is clear to me that he was once a handsome young man.
Behind him, the wall is taped with signed headshots of beautiful actors. I don’t recognize any of them by name or face. The women in the photos are busty, most of them in white shirts that droop off their shoulders. “Dear Harry, you are my sole-mate. Love, Alexis Bashal,” one picture reads.
Under the glass counter are refurbished Louis Vuitton bags for sale. Whether they are knock-offs or vintage, I can’t tell.
“So where are the shoes?” he asks huffing. He has an Eastern European accent.
He isn’t wearing a face mask. I am, thankfully. “Is it okay to put the shoes on the counter?” I say.
“Would you like to model them for me instead?”
He stares at me. I force myself to give him a closed-mouth smile as I take the heels out of my Ikea-blue bag. I place them in front of him.
“The buckle came off the left shoe,” I explain.
“So where is the buckle?” he inquires as he picks up the shoes, giving them an autopsy. “Why didn’t you bring it?”
I shrug. “I lost it after it broke off.”
He grunts and then without saying anything disappears into the back room.
While he’s gone, I take the opportunity to search for “Alexis Bashel” on my phone. A few old photographs of the actress come up. Her IMDB page indicates she hasn’t worked a job in ten years. I then look up another girl from the wall. Then another. None of them seem to have had a lucrative career. From the back room, there is a sudden melodramatic sound of metal tools clanking against each other.
I wonder if these actors brought in their own headshots asking the cobbler to display them for some publicity. How else would he have possibly recognized these, at best, D list stars? I imagine him as a young actor, starting out, working with the people on this wall. I wonder if he’s kissed Alexis, if he lowered the white blouse drooping off her shoulder.
“They don’t make black buckles like the ones on your shoes anymore.” The cobbler is back with a clear bin filled with hundreds of mismatched buckles. He rummages through the plastic bin, picking up one buckle after the other until he finds a matching pair.
“Is this fine?” he asks, tapping two silver ones on the table. His fingernails are etched a dark yellow.
“I think they would look a little weird,” I say, examining them. “Maybe I should just throw the shoes out.” I have a tendency to throw everything out, but I am trying this new thing.
He sucks in his cheeks. “You know, it wouldn’t have mattered if you brought in Prada or Fendi shoes instead. I treat all shoes equally. I always do a perfect job.”
I have a habit of agreeing to anyone once they’ve embarrassed me. Standing in front of my obviously cheap shoes, I agree to the silver.
“I’m going to call you when I finish, okay?” he says while scribbling on a notepad.
“And how much will it be?” I ask.
“How much do you want to pay?”
I hate this question immediately. “Whatever you think is fair,” I say.
“Normally I would charge $60—”
“Oh, well these shoes cost less than that so it’s probably best to just throw them out.”
“But for you I’ll do $30,” he counteracts. “It’s a lot of work to cut open the strap and sew them back with a new buckle. You know this, yeah?”
I nod again.
“And you pay now.” He points at the sign behind him that states this.
I fumble in my purse and I hand him my credit card. When he hands it back to me he looks at my name embossed on the card and he glares at my face.
“Where are you from? Where do you come from?” His silver eyebrows furrow intensely.
I glide the brass stone ring on my finger up and down.
Then he scans me, starting from the ends of my straight hair that hits below my hips, moving his eyes up until they meet mine. “Take off your mask,” he demands. “Show me your face. I want to see it.”
A drop of sweat trickles down my forehead. I avert my eyes. I look down to my shoes. Neither I, nor my shoes, want to be immortalized. I grab them and push past the glass door to flee.
Sharmin Rahman is a writer and model. She grew up in NYC and currently resides in Los Angeles. She studied Philosophy at Boston University and recently completed the UCLA Writers' Program where she focused on screenwriting and fiction. She is currently working on her short story collection. You can find her at sharmin-rahman.com.
