What happens in the video
A man stands in his socks near the entrance of a shoe shop. His worn shoes are on the floor. “Get these filthy things out of here,” says a woman in a red jacket, kicking them toward the door. “Those are my only shoes,” he tells her.
“You’re scaring the customers.” He gestures toward his shoes. “Let me pick them up.” A woman in a purple shop shirt comes forward carrying a shoebox. “Please stop kicking his belongings.” The woman in red says he was camping outside the shop, repeating “outside the shop.” The employee looks at the box. “He’s here for a fitting.”
Continuation:
“Left one first, please,” the man said. It was such an ordinary request that, for a second, neither woman moved. Then the employee set the box down, pulled the fitting stool away from the window, and asked him to take a seat.
His name was Martin. After months of walking with a badly healed ankle, he’d saved enough for a pair deep enough to take his insert. He’d been outside since eight because the first bus from his estate reached town at eight, and the next one would have made him late. None of this struck him as particularly interesting. What interested him was whether he could get down a flight of stairs in these shoes.
The employee let him try the two steps at the back. Up was easy. Down, the left heel slipped. She fetched a smaller pair. Meanwhile, the woman in red brought his old shoes to the stool and placed them neatly side by side.
“Do you want me to throw away the box?” she asked, grasping for something helpful to say.
“I haven’t bought anything yet,” Martin said. Then, a little more gently, “You can find my insert, though. It came out when you kicked the shoe.”
She got down and looked. There it was, wedged under the display, barely distinguishable from the gray carpet. Kneeling in that awkward patch of sunlight, she finally understood why he’d kept asking to pick up his things. One careless sweep with a broom and he’d have gone home without the piece that let him walk.
She handed it back. “I’m sorry. I made it hard for you to get up and walk away from me.”
“Thank you for getting it,” he said. He gave the smaller shoes another go. This time he came down the steps without catching the rail.
At the till the employee asked whether he wanted to wear the new pair home. He did. The woman in red held open the door while he tried the slope of the pavement. He walked as far as the bus stop before realizing he was still holding the shoebox with his old pair inside.
For one extravagant moment, Martin considered running back to leave them. Instead he kept walking. He had nearly an hour before his bus, and for the first time in months, that sounded like time he could actually use.
