A/N: From the 2005 movie "Elizabethtown".

Now the Shoe is on the Other Hand

Bzzzz. I...can't get next to you Babe! Bzzzz. I...can't get next to you Babe!

Drew Baylor's phone vibrated while The Temptations played on his ringtone. It was a pretty catchy tune most of the time. At five in the morning - when you had just gone to bed three hours earlier - it was rather jarring. Drew startled semi-awake in a fog and grabbed the phone without even thinking. Not even checking the caller ID, he answered. "Hello?"

"Drew, it's Charlie." The voice on the other end was a man. Southern accent. And awake. Too awake to ignore.

"Who?"

"Charlie Baylor. Your cousin."

"Oh. Yeah." Drew had met Charlie, along with half of Elizabethtown Kentucky, when he had traveled from Oregon to pick up the body of his father who had passed away while visiting his hometown.

"I didn't catch you in the middle of anything, did I?"

A soft arm draped itself across Drew's chest. He looked over at his girlfriend Claire, who shifted slightly and continued trying to sleep. He yawned. "No, I'm fine."

"Good. Say, what time is it there again?"

"Early."

"Okay. Do you think you could hook me up with a pair of those shoes you designed?"

"What?"

"Yeah, the Späsmotica. Size eleven."

"Go online."

"I tried. I can't find any."

"Oh, that's right - they recalled most of them." Drew, freshly recruited from a scholarship program for Mercury Worldwide Shoes, had taken the company's motto of being bold and fresh and designed the Späsmotica - an innovative shoe that would revolutionize the industry. And it did; it received horrendous reviews and criticism, while the owner - Phil Devoss - swallowed a nearly one billion dollar investment in the line and recalled them while firing Drew. In his calm, measured voice, he had told Drew that the debacle would set back the whole industry ten years; it might have been an ironic joke, but with Phil you couldn't tell. "You won't be able to find any on Mercury's site. Better try some shoe stores," Drew suggested to his cousin.

"Sold out."

"Then try Amazon."

"Gone."

Huh. "The recall notice was for over 300,000 pairs of men's and women's shoes. There have to be more out there. How about eBay?"

"The last pair sold for almost a thousand dollars."

Drew bolted upright in bed, throwing Claire's arm off of him. "How much?"

"Nine hundred and change. It wasn't even the right size."

"A thousand dollars?" Drew asked incredulously.

"How much for what?" Claire asked, rubbing her eyes. Even with only a few hours of sleep, Drew thought she looked better than any pair of shoes and that was saying something.

"For a pair of those shoes I designed."

"Maybe some shoe museum bought a pair for a new exhibit on great failures," she said with a wry look and turned on her side away from him and pretended to snore.

Drew turned his attention back to the phone. "Are you sure?"

"How many shoes do you know called the Späsmotica?"

"Good point. Let me get back to you." Now wide awake, Drew closed his phone and slid out of bed before going into the living room and booting his laptop. Firing up the browser, he quickly confirmed his cousin's news. He even checked Craigslist and a few other less-frequented sites with the same result. Some of the shoes HAD been available, but they were now sold. Drew stood up and took down a pair of the shoes from a shelf that Claire had insisted on displaying in the living room; rather than having Drew obsess over the failure of the shoe, she tried to get him to embrace the effort and innovation he had attempted. He sat down again and contemplated his design.

Claire padded in and sat down beside him. "You're not going to sell your last pair, are you?"

"I could probably get over a thousand for this pair easy," he said as he held them up like an offering to the gods. "Since I'm its Doctor Frankenstein, probably even more."

"Keep them. Promise me you'll only sell them if I need surgery or something, okay?"

"That depends - what kind of surgery are talking about?"

"Does it matter?"

"Well, you know, maybe I could just sell my exercise bike or something."

"Cheapskate."

"Hey, I paid good money for that bike," Drew protested.

"Are you throwing in the knife?" Immediately after being fired, Drew had rigged the bike with a kitchen knife to stab him in a suicide; a phone call from his sister with news of his father had distracted him long enough to meet Claire and come to terms with his failure.

"Nah, it's a perfectly good knife; it belongs in the kitchen. But you know it's weird - there should be some of those shoes left somewhere. The last pair I saw was at that big farmer's market you sent me to."

"World's Second-largest Farmer's Market."

"That place. You stuck a note in one of the shoes, but they had a stack of them. Let me think..." he said as his voice trailed off. He started searching on the computer and found the name of the business and a phone number. Dialing, he spoke to someone briefly and hung up. "They asked ME if I knew where to get more. Huh."

Bzzzz. I...can't get next to you Babe!

Drew answered his phone after looking at the ID. It was his sister Heather. "Hello?"

"Drew? It's Heather. I know it's early, but I thought you might want to know that some guy named Phil had been trying to call you."

"Phil?" The only Phil that Drew knew was his former boss. "I haven't gotten any calls."

"He said he didn't have your number."

"My number? Oh, right - I had to turn in my company phone." His phone beeped, showing he had another call. "Can you hold on a moment Sis?" He clicked over. "Hello?"

"Drew? It's Ellen. Listen, can we meet? There have been a couple developments and I'd really like to get together and discuss them."

"Developments?" Drew asked, playing coy.

"Yeah. I broke up with Harry, and you might be able to come back to Mercury." Ellen Kishmore was a co-worker who came on to him when he was the golden boy and gave him one of those last looks when he got fired.

"Hold on for a moment, okay?" Click. "Sis? Did you give him my number?"

"No! I told him I'd let you know when I heard from you next."

"Phil's been trying to get in touch with me," Drew told Claire as he held his hand over the phone.

"You can't trust Phil's - remember? They're dangerous because they're so unpredictable," she said. When they had first met on an airline flight, Claire had gone on about names and what kind of people had them.

"This is no ordinary Phil." He removed his hand from the pickup. "Thanks for telling me Sis. If he calls again, tell him that I'll call the office. Tell Mom hello." He hung up on that call and clicked over. "Ellen?"

"Still here, Drew. Phil wanted your private number but I told him I didn't know it."

"What's happened?"

"Harry was a jerk. He wanted..."

"No, I mean at Mercury," Drew interrupted.

"Things have gone crazy. I don't want to talk about it over the phone."

"Tell Phil I'll call the office and talk to him. I'm a little busy right now."

Claire grabbed the phone. "Hi Ellen!" she said in a cheery voice. "This is his girlfriend Claire. I also handle his social calendar - what day works good for you?" She giggled and handed the phone back to Drew.

"Sorry, Ellen."

"Drew, is she your girlfriend and executive assistant?" Ellen asked. Drew was confused; the tone was a little hurt, but it also sounded worried. "She was just kidding; I don't have an executive assistant."

"Well, that's okay then. Can we still meet?"

"Let me call you back tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay. Call me." The connection ended and Drew shut his phone.

"Don't you want an executive assistant?" Claire teased. "I could send you my resume."

"I couldn't afford to pay you even if I wanted one."

"We can negotiate pay and fringe benefits later" she smiled. "I may only be a flight attendant, but I think I could make a good assistant."

"Based on that travel kit you made me, I don't doubt it. I've never had anything so planned in all my life."

"You know me - I can do anything."

"Then close that window please," Drew asked. "That motorcycle outside is too loud."

Claire saluted with a "Yes sir!" and jumped up to hurry to the window. She looked outside. "It's not a motorcycle, it's a helicopter."

"Whatever it is, it's loud - just close the window."

"It's already closed. It's that loud because it's hovering over the street outside."

"Is it the police?" Drew asked and he got up and joined Claire at the window. He looked outside and saw a very nice, mostly white helicopter hovering above the street a dozen feet beyond the rooflines of the buildings. A door opened and a rope ladder unraveled from inside; shortly afterward, a man in a denim shirt and blue jeans started climbing down the ladder.

"Who's that?" Claire asked.

"It's...Phil."

"THE Phil?"

"The only one." Drew hurried out of the door and down to the front entrance of his apartment building, and stood as Phil stepped onto the street and walked the short distance to the entryway. He held out his hand and Drew shook it.

"Drew. You're a hard man to reach," Phil shouted.

"I didn't know anyone was looking for me," Drew shouted back.

Phil waved at the pilot and the helicopter flew away. "Perhaps you'd be a little more comfortable talking inside." Phil cast his eye up and down at Drew's attire; he was still dressed in pajama bottoms and a t-shirt.

Claire came outside and handed Drew a pair of house shoes and then introduced herself. "I'm Claire, Drew's personal assistant."

"Phil DeVoss." Phil noticed that Claire was dressed in a similar just-out-of-bed fashion.

"Phil, Drew would LOVE to continue inside. If you would follow me, please?" she announced as she led the way back to the apartment. Phil followed and Drew brought up the rear, still holding his house shoes.

Once inside, Drew and Claire sat down on the couch after Phil declined anything to drink. Instead, he stared without speaking at the pair of Späsmotica shoes that Claire had replaced on the shelf. After several minutes, he shook his head and turned around. "Even the brightest and best people make mistakes. Not because they want to, or even because they haven't tried everything within their power to avoid them; but we are reflections of the patterns in which our thought processes have been molded. With specialization comes great potential, but at the same time our focus becomes limited. Like...like a pair of binoculars lets you see farther, but at the same time cuts off your peripheral view. That's why, at Mercury, we try to diversify our creative staff; the more approaches we can take, the better chance we have of staying on top. That's why we brought you along from the scholarship program. And it hurt to let you go."

"It's okay - I'm fine."

"You say that with more conviction now - that's good. But it's been three weeks now, and I'm sure you know what's been going on."

Drew hesitated. "Not really. My father died the same day you fired me. I've been tied up with family arrangements. I assume you've recalled the shoes now."

Phil gave a wry laugh. "Remember when I told you the American psyche was in turmoil, and we miscalculated? Well, I was right...and wrong. As you know, your shoe was rolled out with one of the biggest publicity campaigns we've ever created. And you also know how the shoe bombed when it came out, and how we recalled all of the shoes. Did you read the Global Business Today Fiasco article?"

"Yeah. I saw it, but I didn't need to read it."

"It's just as well. They got it wrong. WE got it wrong."

"Huh?"

"Let's put it this way: How many shoes do critics actually buy? How many shoes does an article - the actual magazine article I mean - buy? The answer is zero. They don't buy them. People buy shoes. Those same, unpredictable, uncountable, unappreciated and anything but understood people buy shoes. Maybe it was backlash against the critics, maybe it was a celebrity sighted wearing them, maybe it was some magician in a basement waving a magic wand; but people started wanting your shoes. Athletes. T-ball parents. Airline attendants."

Claire pumped her fist with a quiet "Yes!"

"Postal carriers, doctors...the list goes on. Something happened. We thought we had figured the people wrong, but it was us that were wrong. We let a few people saying 'Boo!' frighten us into giving up too soon. Oh, we got a lot of the shoes back - almost 300,000 pairs. But that's with about twenty percent unaccounted for, and it was because they sold. And the same time we were taking them back, we were getting orders for more. A lot more."

"So...the shoe worked out after all?" Claire asked.

"It did, as you say, 'work out'. It would have worked out better if we hadn't spent the money on the recall or had to retool our factories again overseas to make the model, but I figure the line will still make about 300 million dollars this year. So..." he said as rubbed his hands together "...who do you work for now?"

"I don't work for anybody," Drew answered.

"Gone independent now, huh? Smart move. I was going to hire you back with a raise and a promotion, but if you're working for yourself now we might be able to arrange something like a partnership."

"No, I'm not doing anything right now. Why would someone hire me?"

Phil turned to Claire. "Is he joking? I don't know him well enough to tell."

"No, he's serious. He hasn't talked to anyone. He would have told me."

Phil did something that Drew - in fact, most others - never saw. He got excited, giggled and rocked back and forth on his feet for a brief, awkward moment before continuing after calming himself. "I am prepared to double your previous salary, make you a design team leader, and of course you'd have your own office."

"Before Drew takes you up on your generous offer, do you mind if he calls his cousin first?" Claire asked. "He was about to call him back when you showed up."

"Sure, of course; my condolences on your dad."

"Go ahead Drew, call your cousin Charlie," Claire told him while giving him a nudge in the side.

"Oh, yeah. Let's see, he's three hours ahead. He should still be at home." He dialed the phone and waited. "Hello? Uncle Dale? It's Drew. Yeah, I'm fine. Say, I promised to call Charlie back - is he there? Sure, I'll wait." Drew got up and paced while he waited, conveniently strolling out of the room while Claire distracted Phil in conversation. She may have been beautiful, but conversation was her superpower.

"Charlie? Yeah, it's Drew again; sorry, but no luck on the shoes. Listen, you're on the forums - is there something weird going on in that area?"

"Is there?! Dude, you're like the Amelia Earhart of shoes! Späsmotica is the hottest ticket out there, and all the big shoe companies are looking for you. They know you got canned from Mercury, and none of them know where to look. Mercury probably got bombed with calls looking for you, and I wouldn't be surprised if that magazine didn't have to take their phone off the hook."

"Phil Devoss is in my apartment right now."

"Phil Devoss? I think I'm going to pass out."

"Take shallow breaths. I'll call you back after it's all done." Drew hung up and came back to the living room.

"How are things back in Elizabethtown?" Claire asked.

"They're fine. Charlie said...everyone has been asking about me after I left. Everybody wants me to move there with them."

"Drew had to pick up his father's body in Elizabethtown and he met a lot of family he didn't know while arranging the services," Claire quickly explained to Phil. "It was a very emotional time."

"I suppose it must have been," Phil agreed. "It would be nice to give them some good news about a new promotion, wouldn't it?"

"It would," Drew pointed out. "But I'm sure you understand, Phil, that right now my heart isn't in work. I don't know right now if I even want to work on shoes anymore; it's just too soon to tell, and I gotta get my head right after losing my dad."

"I respect that. Here's my personal number - call me when you're ready to make the biggest move of your life." He pulled a card out of his shirt pocket and handed it to Drew, who took it and placed it with the pair of Späsmotica on the shelf. Phil stuck out his hand and Drew shook it. "Goodbye, Drew. Goodbye, Claire. Thanks for that tip about Rome; I'll give it a try next week when I'm there. He flipped open his phone and made a call, then closed it and headed out the door. Drew and Claire saw him to the door as the helicopter was lowering its ladder in the street. Phil waved and started climbing the ladder and the helicopter rose higher until he was in and the aircraft tilted and sped away.

Inside, both sat down on the couch again and stared at the shoes on the shelf. "How many companies are interested in you?"

"Charlie wasn't specific, but it sounded like a lot of the major ones. A modest success gets you some attention, and a spectacular failure gets you even more. Combine the two and you apparently get to write your own ticket. It sounds like I've got some options to play around with. I could even go into business with Chuck and Cindy Hasboro. They love us, you know."

"That's a lot to have on your plate now. How are you?"

"I think I can honestly say I'm fine," Drew said as he leaned back and Claire settled into his side. "A fiasco is a failure of epic proportions. What's a success of epic proportions?"

"A triumph, I think."

"Well, we can start planning our triumph tomorrow. Let's just relax for the rest of the day."

"Our triumph?"

"Sure - me and my executive assistant."

Claire pretended to be too mad to talk for a full ten minutes before she gave up and they started planning lunch.

The End

A/N: I've seen this reviewed as the worst movie ever, but I actually liked it - I probably wouldn't have watched it normally, but when I found the category empty I took a shot at it. I was expected a final conflict at the end with a resolution, but when it didn't come I decided to add one.