March 12, 2013 |
It was another damp afternoon in London and Vincenza had spent it sat in her parlor watching A Woman of Substance with Dimitri. Something about the story of it’s heroine Emma Harte spoke to her. How a woman who from such humble beginnings who was once a kitchen maid had become the most powerful retail magnate in all the land. Vincenza herself had had a similar start in life. She shed a single tear as she recalled the poverty she was subjected to early in life. How she’d had to share a maid with her twin sister. It was only for a month, while her maid had gone home for her mother’s funeral, but still the pain of having to share staff was something Vincenza had never gotten over. It was why she now insisted on only wearing white shoes. White Celine shoes. Stiletto like. With a pointy nose and a Cuban heel. Now that she had clawed her way out of what she termed abject poverty, she kept a maid just to look after them. To ensure that they were always pristine and snow white. Never sullied or scuffed. She favoured the pointy heel for kicking things. Like staff. Her staff. They’d become rather difficult to find these days. Ever since she’d suggested one evening when she’d banished Dimitri from her boudoir that maybe one of them would like to fill the void and keep her warm under the fox fur quilt which she slept, they’d all been oddly difficult to find. Didn’t they realize that a dive could get lonely sometimes and that no amount of Celine could fill the void. She’d spent that night asleep in her shoe closet. Surrounded by the white heels. When she looked up from the floor in which she lay, they looked like twinkling stars high above her perched on their custom maple shelves. She was very proud that she, well with a little help from Phoebe who had actually designed the shoes, had single handedly spearheaded the trend for white shoes. And that she bought out the entire supply so that while everyone who thought they were anyone wore white heels they didn’t have the white heels. It made them look desperate. They could never be her she thought. It comforted her though to know the lengths people would go to to try. And with that she called in her shoe maid to clean them all again. She had dinner plans and hadn’t yet decided which white pair would go best with her outfit. As she kicked her maid in the backside to hurry up she shed another single tear remembering her humble roots and thinking to herself that from such humility such greatness and such shoe closets spring.
by Natalie Dembinska
