The Body Lies

I’m not paying much attention at first as I walk up the driveway at 206 Hauser Street. This is my second time here this week, and it’s the seventh time this month. No one in my thirty-one years has ever said I’m not persistent. It’s why I have one of the highest retention rates at the company where I’m (hopefully) building my life-long career.

I normally give all former customers the standard three tries and go about my way, but this one—Nadine Hopps—is notorious for stopping and restarting her service in order to bring costs back down whenever they start creeping up. Not only will getting her back boost my sales, it’ll also boost my ego; you have to work a little to get this woman to yield. She’s eighty-two and sharp-tongued, stubborn as a mule, and has every single one of her wits about her. I want to be the one to say I got her to reactivate her account with us this time around.

It’s a sultry evening, and the sun is taking its sweet, precious time leaving the sky. I slap at the mosquitos that land on my arm and neck as I adjust my satchel on my shoulder, and I’m praying old Nadine will open the door this time so I can feel a hint of air conditioning. I can see myself in the reflection of her storm door as I walk up the three small steps to the entrance to her home. My finger is poised over the doorbell when I notice the door behind the plexiglass barrier is already wide open, giving me a full view into the house. Thank God—normally the house is shut up tight. This might be easier than I thought, my last hit of the day ending on a successful note.

I’m straightening the collar of my black Polo when I happen to look down and see a pair of feet in a pair of white orthopedic sneakers stretching out from beyond my line of vision. Someone is laid out on the floor. And if I have to guess, I’ll bet that person isn’t taking a nap.

I knock lightly on the storm door, staring at the feet for any sign of movement, any chance I’m startling someone from a spontaneous snooze on the rug. When nothing happens, I knock a little louder, panic rising in my chest.

“Ms.—” My voice cracks. I clear my throat and put a little bass into it. “Ms. Hopps? Are you alright in there?”

I wait a full minute before pressing the button on the storm door’s handle. It’s unlocked. I pull it open an inch or so, finally feeling that blessed cool air, but I hold my breath instinctively. Why do I automatically assume I’m going to smell death? I mean, the odds for a live one here aren’t looking so good, but I still feel like I should be a bit more positive.

An exhale leaves my mouth as I crack open the storm door another inch, then another. I don’t smell anything foul. The light in the living room is warm, several lamps positioned on end tables and the console table in the small foyer. I can hear the television murmuring nearby. I open the door just enough for my body to fit through and enter. Everything is still—including the feet, which I can now see are definitely attached to two very still legs. I peer around the sofa, shaking, and I see the legs disappear into a knee-length dress. The arms that protrude from her torso are petite, ending in hands covered in blue veins and age spots, knobby knuckles on fingers with nails painted pale pink. Finally, I feel brave enough to look at her face. Her eyes are closed—thank God—but her neck is turned to the side, and her tongue peeks out of the side of her slightly open mouth.

‘Oh no,’ I think. ‘She’s been strangled.’ There are no marks on her neck to suggest this, and her expression is serene otherwise, almost as if she’s sleeping. Her long white hair isn’t matted or haphazard, and there’s no blood pooling from the back of her head, no other kind of gore or chaos, so she probably wasn’t bludgeoned. Strangulation seems like the only option. Or maybe poisoning. It would explain why the scene is so clean.

My next thought is that I should call the police. I’m smart enough not to touch her or anything around the scene itself—that way, when the authorities arrive, I won’t be implicated. I do, however, set my bag down, moving slowly like I expect the motion to wake this dead woman. Actually, I’m more concerned that the person who did this to old Nadine is still in this house somewhere, that my movements will spook them and they’ll get me next. This woman is too fresh; if I touch her, she’ll probably still be warm. I gag a little, thinking about it.

Did the perpetrator leave through the front door? Is that why it was open and unlocked? ‘No,’ I think. Anyone dumb enough to commit a crime like this and then waltz out the front would have already alerted the neighbors to call the police. And considering there are no sirens wailing in the distance—yet—I assume I’m the first to discover her. Once again, I become concerned about being implicated for a crime I didn’t commit, and I tuck my hands into my now sweaty armpits to avoid touching anything. My breathing starts to labor. If the killer did leave, they probably left out the back door—that must have been how they avoided detection.

Taking quiet, careful steps, I make my way through the living room and into the kitchen to peer at the door leading to the backyard, or possibly the patio. I can’t see what’s actually back there since the blinds on the door are drawn, but I see no shadowy movement in the bright, dying sun, and the door looks intact and, from what I can tell, locked.

I suppose there’s also the option of a window escape, so I check the ones I can see: the window over the clean kitchen sink, and the one behind the kitchen table scattered with bits of yarn and cloth squares for quilting. Both are closed with intact screens on the outside. The only other window in this vicinity faces the front of the house, which counts it out.

Peering around the corner of the kitchen, I look down the hallway and see more rooms that clearly have more windows. I tiptoe toward them, treading as carefully as possible. If I were someone deranged enough to off an old woman, I would probably leave the scene via a bedroom window. Or I’d hide in a bedroom.

This makes me stop. What if I walk in on someone at the wrong time and they attack, intent on shutting me up for good?

I turn on my heels and speed-walk back to the house phone perched on the accent table in her kitchen, ready to pick it up and call 9-1-1, before I remember I’m trying not to touch anything. My cell is in my bag, near the body, but as much as I don’t want to go back over there—I can practically hear the rigor mortis setting into old Nadine’s muscles the longer I stand in her home—it makes the most sense to use my own phone.

Just as I’ve decided to make the most intense call of my life, my vision abruptly goes black.

***

I come to like I’ve just come out of anesthesia: my ears turn back on first, and I hear shuffling and frustrated muttering nearby. When I finally open my eyes, I expect to be lying down. Aren’t you usually lying down when you come out of anesthesia? Instead, I’m seated in a chair, raising my head slowly from its position against my chest. Then, as my brain finally registers the throbbing pain on the back of my skull, I realize I should be lying down for another reason…because who gets knocked out and doesn’t wake up on the ground?

I immediately try to move, but my arms are bound. Panic registers alongside the pain, and I try to kick my legs, but they’re tied to the chair as well. Oh God, the same person who got old Nadine has gotten me. Am I dead? Why does it feel like I'm not dead?

The person near me realizes I’ve regained consciousness and walks over, and I exhale, stunned to find myself looking into the eyes of Nadine Hopps.

“Oh, my God,” I exhale. “Ms. Hopps, I—”

“Shut up,” she cuts me off, her voice high-pitched and sharp like the snap of a rubber band. “You just couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you?”

“I don’t understand,” I say, unable to form much coherent thought around the pain continuing to radiate from the crown of my head to the base of my neck.

“Of course you don’t. You’ve been at my house all month, ringing my doorbell, unable to take a hint. I have no idea why I would have thought that someone as insistent as you would just leave after seeing a dead body on the floor. Not surprised you decided to traipse your way through my home, snooping around.”

“I was just trying to make sure I had something to tell the police,” I explain.

“Combing a crime scene is best left to the professionals,” she chastises. “Not some nosy kid salesman in a poorly fitted Polo shirt.”

Poorly fitted? I look down, then I look up again and shake my head. Bad idea—the throb becomes unbearable for a moment. What in the world did this old woman hit me with?

“So, please let me make sure I’ve got this right,” I say after my vision has stopped being so blurry. “You played dead in order to get out of a sales pitch?”

“That’s right,” she says, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

“Why would you do that?”

“Drastic measures,” she says simply. “You people don’t understand a verbal ‘no,’ and you clearly don’t understand an unanswered door. I thought maybe if I’d croaked, you’d get the finality in that.”

“That’s…crazy. You’re a crazy person.”

“I’m a fed up person, is what I am!” I jump at the sudden volume coming from her octogenarian body. “Do you know how long it took me to get down onto that floor? And then to get up again? I should call the police now and report you for trespassing through my house!”

“I wasn’t trespassing!” I struggle against the restraints on my arms, but they only tighten as I pull. How did this old woman get all one-hundred-eighty-pounds of my dead weight into this chair, anyway? And where did she learn how to tie such a mean knot?

I understand right then and there that I never want to cross Nadine Hopps again. There’s a reason why she’s living alone and doing just fine, and why she’s such a tough nut to crack. She’s capable of things I don’t ever want to find out.

“What I’m going to do now is let you go,” she tells me after I’ve given up on slipping free of the rope. “And what you’re going to do is leave my home and never come back. I don’t want you or anyone else from that company calling me or ringing my doorbell anymore. I’m done with your idiotic solicitations.” She turns her nose up at me.

“You’re on our list,” I remind her. “Retention is a machine, and people are going to keep getting assigned to your house, trying to get you back.”

“Then tell them I actually died. I don’t give a hoot.” She points at the floor, and I see the weapon that had been formed against me, or the back of my head, rather: a heavy bookend. “Just consider this a warning. You’re young, and you can go on to bother many more people. But I’m off your list.”

I sigh and nod. “Fine. I’ll tell the department you died, or moved, or something, and I won’t tell anyone else what happened here.”

With that, Nadine Hopps lets me go. I gather my bag and leave, and she slams the door behind me. She’ll go back to watching her evening show, possibly eat some dinner, and I’ll let my boss know about my injury and head home an hour early to nurse it. Tomorrow, I’ll tell my department head that old Nadine is no longer with us. I’ll let him decide the meaning of those words.