The Calendar From the Closed Shop

After closing his shoe shop, Victor kept its calendar on the kitchen wall. Every day, he tore off a page before breakfast. The dates continued even though the business had not, and he found the small routine comforting. His wife suggested buying a prettier calendar, but he said the advertising logo did not bother him enough to matter.

In March, an old customer telephoned to ask where she could have her boots repaired. Victor gave her another shop's number, then spent an hour wondering whether he should reopen in a smaller place. The call had made him useful again. He began calculating rent on the back of the day's calendar page, avoiding the reasons he had closed originally.

His wife found the figures and asked whether his knees had improved or the unpaid invoices had disappeared. Victor said she was being negative. Later, he admitted that he missed being the person people called. She suggested he could miss that without signing another lease. He disliked the advice because it offered no project in which to hide the missing.

The next morning, he kept the calendar page instead of throwing it away. On the reverse, beneath the impossible rent calculation, he wrote the customer's recommended repair address. More calls might come. He could answer them without becoming a shopkeeper again. At breakfast, he tore off the next page as usual, then asked his wife whether she wanted to go somewhere neither of them needed to be.