Whenever she collected a repaired stilt boot, Ines entered Jadranko's workshop carrying it over her shoulder like an unusual animal. The boot had an extended leg and glittering buckles that constantly fell off. He replaced them without questions. Once he came to a street festival, where Ines, raised above the crowns of the young trees, leaned toward him and lowered a paper flower into his hand.
After the performance he invited her to dinner. She was thirty-nine and experienced enough not to attach prophecies to an ordinary invitation. Yet at home she tried on four pairs of shoes. Without her costume she was small, slightly stooped from carrying equipment, with restless fingers that always needed something to tie. On stilts she could stand calmly before a hundred people. In front of the mirror she had no idea what to do with her shoulders.
She chose the highest heels she owned. By the time she reached the restaurant they had raised a blister. Jadranko stood when she arrived, and she sat too quickly, grateful that the tablecloth hid her feet. They discussed the festival, the weather, and his shop. When he praised how fearless she looked up high, Ines held her glass in both hands. Once again he was seeing the woman who had been left packed away in the basement that evening.
"I'm afraid every time," she said. She explained how she checked the ground before performing and calculated where to stand if the wind picked up. Jadranko listened, then admitted he still broke into a sweat when a customer asked him to stretch expensive shoes. She was unsure what she had expected, perhaps a little disappointment. Instead they discussed jobs people considered easy because they watched only the final five minutes.
When she stood, her face tightened. Jadranko looked at her shoes but offered no immediate advice. Ines admitted she had worn them to avoid being too short. "Too short for what?" he asked. She laughed, now partly at herself. His workshop was across the street. He waited outside while she took the flat trainers from her bag that she habitually carried as a spare pair for the journey home from performances.
They walked past the closed shop windows. She came up to his shoulder, and for the first time that evening she was not calculating where to stand. Outside her building he took the paper flower from his coat pocket. Its edges were already crumpled. Ines offered him a new one, but he shook his head. As he bent to kiss her, she rose a little onto her toes. For that height she needed neither buckles nor somebody else's footwear.