I stared out the window. Rain. Always with the rain. It was a feeling I knew too well. My life was a box office bomb. Santiago, who was focusing on getting my pedicure right, read my facial disdain for the flagellating nature of existence.

“What’s up, Dory?”

“What can I say Santiago? I am failing. No one cares what I do. Behind my back I know they laugh at me.”

“I know what you mean,” Santiago said. “You have one of those smackable faces. I don’t think you can be trusted, and that means you will struggle to get on in life.” Finally, somebody truthful. How easy this could all be if more people had the balls to call out a cunt.

“Thanks, Sant,” I replied. “I know I can rely on you. How are my feet looking?”

“Not good,” Santiago said. “Too much tap dancing.”

“But I like to tap.”

“And that’s why you have disgusting feet,” he replied. I sighed and sat in silence, staring out of the window. It was pouring down and I felt like Jesus on his crucifix, but without the sense of purpose.

“Tell me Sant, what is the meaning of life?”

“Well, do you believe in ghosts?” He asked, raising his eyes to look at me rather than my feet.

“Not really. I mean, I’m open-minded, but I’m not a nut-”

He cut me off.

“Let me tell you a story.” He went back to working on my toes and delivered his words with composure. “Last year, I was in the bathroom fixing my hair. It was quiet. Very still. I fixed each strand of hair carefully, trying to make myself look like Gene Wilder in his prime. Not an easy task, but a noble one. I must have been at it for fifteen minutes and still I didn’t look like Gene Wilder. Then…”

He paused. Rested my foot on his knee. Took a sip of water.

“Then,” Santiago continued; “the towel to my left leaped up as if blown by a gust of wind.”

He looked at me to check I was listening.

I was listening.

“But it couldn’t have been the wind. There was no window open. I was locked in there, all alone. I wondered if I’d imagined it. I reasoned through scientific explanations, but nothing could explain it. It played on my mind for an hour or so but, soon, I moved on. Must have been a trick of the imagination. Pa always said I was rather ‘wacky-brained’. Perhaps he was right.”

Despite simultaneously telling the story, I could tell Santiago was doing a tremendous job on my feet.

“About a week later, though,” he suddenly continued, “I’m about to go to sleep. I put my phone on a table on the other side of the room. It’s firmly on the table. I switch off the light, get into bed and close my eyes. A few seconds later – BANG!” He looked at me with wide eyes. “I jump out of bed. Turn on the light. What do I see? My phone, on the floor, a foot away from the table.”

He paused. “Strange, huh?” He said, almost in a whisper.

Santiago had my attention now. I trusted him. He didn’t make things up for effect. He cared only for feet and putting food on the table. No frills.

“So, I don’t even try and explain that one,” he went on. “How could I? A phone doesn’t just hop off a table. It’s an inanimate fucking object.” He stared into my eyes. “Now, they’ve got my attention,” he said.

“Who?” I asked. “Who has your attention?”

“Exactly,” he said. “Who indeed. Now, listen. There’s more.”

I leaned forward. I could tell he’d been waiting a while to tell this tale to someone.

“A few days after that… I enter my house. No one is home. Quiet. Very quiet. I go into the room where my piano is.” He paused. “As I open the door, I hear this resounding clang.”

He dropped my foot and clapped his hands loudly and I nearly jumped out of my tits. He picked up my foot and continued.

“The low keys on the piano ring out. I look to see if something fell on them. A book? No. Anything? No. I stand there, perplexed, trying to decipher this trio of unexplainable events. What is this fuckery? But it’s no good. Whatever way I view it, I can’t muster satisfactory answers.”

Santiago looked at me. He had my heel cupped in his hands. I stared at him, wondering where he was going with all this.

“So, what do you think?” He asked.

“I think you’re getting past your station and should stick to pedicures or I’m gonna start going to Doreen instead,” I replied curtly. Santiago looked at me for a moment. Clearly, I’d broken his heart, but he knew I was right. He couldn’t afford to lose another client to Doreen. He finished the job and I went on my way with glorious feet.

Many years later, I bumped into Santiago in an up-market dive bar while eyeing up tail and a few lines of the bambi. “Did you ever get to the bottom of those so-called ghosts?” I asked.

“The trio of unexplainable events involving the towel, the phone and the piano?” He asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Sure, that was Doreen fucking with me,” he said. “She wanted the foot market all to herself. Figured driving me to madness was the way to do it. She wasn’t wrong.”

“Thought so,” I said. “How does that help me though?” I asked. Santiago weighed me up.

“You’ve still got that smackable face.”

“At least you’re honest.”

“That, I am.”

Good old Santiago, the old and reliable foot man, I thought. He slapped me affectionately on the back. “I’ve met worse people,” he said. “But I’ve never seen worse feet.”

“Enough of this foot-talk,” I insisted, making a beeline for the bar.

It had been a tough life and I was ready to blow away some cobwebs. We did ten shots of Baby Guinness and I swear to God I saw the face of baby Jesus in the fourth one before I threw it back and waved in another line of the sniff.