Read Online Goofy Foot by David Daniel - Free Book Online Page B

twentieth. Leave a message and we’ll get back to you.” I left my name and phone number and asked Ben Nickerson to call me about a personal matter.
    I headed back to the beach house to see if Nickerson and his daughter had returned. If they had, I was going to take the afternoon off and walk the beach. Some of the women in town were looking good in their suntans. My social life of late had been about as hot as Norma Desmond’s. Of course, I didn’t have the wax museum to play in or Erich von Stroheim at my beck and call. Still, that was okay. Lowell’s Red Sox farm team was playing pretty good ball, and a night in the stadium with a hot dog and a beer was my speed. The Spinners didn’t win any more games than their parent club, but then the players weren’t earning twice the GNP of Pakistan, either. But all of that was moot; the Nickersons hadn’t returned.
    I remembered Ted Rand, whom I’d met yesterday. Officer Ferry had said Rand was a player in Standish. Perhaps his knowledge of the town might shed some light I could use. I walked down to the last house, a weathered cedar affair built on pilings. There was a
handicap ramp leading to a side door. The inner door was open, just an aluminum screen door in place, and a television set playing loudly within. I knocked.
    Down on the beach, a few bathers were poking toes into the water. Other people lay sprawled in the sun, working on their tans. It was the only work anyone seemed devoted to. I knocked again. Under the sounds of a detergent commercial I heard a faint creak and a noise that sounded like slithering. Despite the warmth, a shiver went down my spine. I leaned close to peer through the screen and was startled to see somebody sitting in there, a foot from the screen. “Sorry,” I said, recovering. “Is this where Ted Rand lives?”
    â€œYes? What is it?” the person demanded through a rusty pipe. Man or woman, I couldn’t tell.
    â€œMy name is Alex Rasmussen. I met Ted yesterday afternoon.”
    The figure loomed nearer, coming into partial light, and I saw now that it was a woman. The rubber tires of her wheelchair bumped the screen door. “Teddy ain’t here.”
    Years of confinement had atrophied her. The flesh on her face sagged. Limp white hair danced around her head like a hula skirt. A thin sour odor came from within the house, despite the TV announcer’s claims about springtime freshness. “Well, that’s okay. Just tell him—”
    â€œHe’s dead.”
    That stopped me. Images from Hitchcock rose in my mind. I stood staring through the screen at the fuzzy image, as if it too were just another plot twist. “You can come in if you want to.”
    I didn’t want to. Something about the sallow old woman sitting in her dark house with the TV at full volume unnerved me, made me want to run down the beach and plunge into the cold water, as if a contagion might exist in there, or worse: as if I might find the body of Ted Rand lying in the flickering light of a daytime rerun, seized in the grimace of a chest-clutching knife attack. But that was just heebie-jeebies. I’d seen Rand alive and well not twenty-four hours ago. I opened the screen door and stepped in. The woman rolled her chair backward. “Come on, I don’t bite.” I followed her through a short entryway into a large kitchen full of modern appliances and felt rationality reassert itself. It wasn’t the Bates Motel.

    The old woman used a remote control and shut off the sound, leaving on the picture. Bay Watch . I dragged my eyes back to her. Her arms were puffy, with a lot of sunspots, giving the effect of nutmeg sprinkled on an egg custard that had cooled and curdled. Between the hem of a faded housedress and tattered slippers, burst veins mapped her lower legs. What did I expect? She looked ninety. Her eyes were the only things that seemed to have life in the pudding body. They met