In the classic Powell/Pressberger film, The Red Shoes, that Hans Christian Anderson story about shoes with the magic power to make you endlessly dance, and you can’t take them off, is given music by Brian Easdale with choreography by Robert Helpmann (he was, if I remember correctly, a personal friend of Shirley’s), the shoes become a symbol of obsession, and Anton Walberg as Lermontov invades the mind of Moira Shearer as Victoria Page, saying the iconic line, “The shoes, Vicki, the shoes!”

Shirley and I loved the movie and saw it more than once.

Shirley had a similar obsession with shoes.

We were going to have a store. A bookstore, with books about everything, and a store with everything else, art, paintings, sculptures, fabrics, perfumes, folk costumes, classic movies in DVD, children’s toys, and and and…

And shoes.

Lots of shoes.

Hundreds of pairs.

Shirley haunted yard sales and thrift shops. People who were clearing out their homes and lives, shoes from all over the world that didn’t fit anymore, that wound up on tables and blankets in the front yards, and Shirley tried them on, slipped her beautiful foot into the fashion and turned it this way and that to see how it looked and if it was comfortable.

Hundreds and hundreds of pairs. Most she never wore. Her justification, “They’re for the store.”

“Yes,” I would say, “for all those customers with your same size foot…”