The Checkdown

by Jamie Bennett

  Tentatively, I reached over and touched his hand. He jerked and opened his eyes. “What?” he asked loudly. His music must have been turned up. I gestured to the headphones and he pulled one away from his head.

  “Want to hold my hand?” I asked him.

  “Are you kidding?”

  I hadn’t been. “Yes. Is there anyone you want me to call or text, to give updates to?”

  “Just my agent. He’ll let the team know.” He gave me the number. No family, no friends.

  “Mr. Blake?” a nurse, or somebody official looking, held open a door for him.

  Davis handed me his headphones and I put them in my bag. “I’ll be right here,” I said reassuringly.

  “You don’t have to wait.”

  “Of course I’m going to wait. Right here,” I repeated. “Good luck.” I reached up and patted his shoulder awkwardly and he stared at my hand.

  I watched his big back disappear behind the door and sat back down in the chair. Barring complications, Davis had said the surgery was supposed to last an hour and a half, tops. I really, really hoped there were no complications.

  Almost three hours later I was still sitting in the chair. I had gotten more and more edgy as the minutes stretched past, and now I was full-on anxious. I went up to the guy at the desk, one more time.

  “For Mr. Blake, right?” He smiled sympathetically. “It’s hard to wait, I know. Let me see if there’s anything new.” He typed away and stared at his screen. “Ok, looks like the procedure is over, and they just took him to recovery.”

  “Can I see him?”

  He smiled again. “You can go wait in a different place.”

  Finally, finally, finally I got to see Davis. The waiting had been killing me. Even if he wasn’t my favorite person and made unfavorable remarks about mascots, I was still very concerned. Anytime anyone was in the hospital…anyway, I was concerned. They had put him in a private room to recover and he was partially propped up in the bed, eyes closed. A familiar basin was on his lap, so I knew that he wasn’t feeling good. His leg was covered in bandages and a brace. I carried a chair over next to the bed and sat down quietly.

  A nurse came in and smiled at me. “He pulled through! He’s doing fine, just a little queasy. As soon as he feels up to it, you can take him home. Ok there, Mr. Blake?”

  Davis leaned forward and retched.

  “He didn’t react well to the anesthesia,” the nurse told me, taking the basin.

  We were in the hospital for another hour before he opened his eyes and said we were leaving, no matter what. By that point, I had texted his agent a bunch of times, the doctor had been in twice, and Davis had puked again. Poor guy. The ride home was equally rough.

  Looking at him in his bed, when we finally made it to his house and got inside, I didn’t think I could leave him for the night. I put my hand on his forehead. “I’m going to stay, ok? I’m going to stay here for a while,” I said softly. I watched him swallow. “Can I get you anything?” I brushed back his hair.

  “Why are you being so nice to me?” he asked me. “Because I’m paying you?”

  I pulled my hand away. “I don’t need your money to treat you decently. I’ll be in the kitchen but I’ll hear you if you call.”

  He didn’t call. I went in a few times to bring him water and crackers, and later, when he felt up to it, some broth and juice and toast.

  Davis watched me straighten up the sheets and comforter. His house was always cool with air conditioning, unlike mine. “Leave it,” he barked.

  “I don’t mind. I’m used to it,” I told him.

  “Taking care of people?” I nodded. “Your grandma?”

  “Yes. And my fiancé.”

  “Your fiancé? I thought you were going on blind dates. Did he get tired of being with a Furry?”

  “What…oh, yeah, ha ha.” That was actually kind of funny. “I can tell you’re feeling better. Now you can do the exercises the doctor gave you, comedian.”

  I stayed the night anyway. Just in case.

  ∞

  “Are you hungover?” I hissed.

  “Not too much.”

  Sweet Jesus. “Sam, the ownership committee is visiting today. You can’t act like an ass!”

  “I forgot they were coming.” He was moving as if his limbs were going through molasses. I had to slow down too, to match his pace, and we looked ridiculous, like an old movie played on the wrong speed. It didn’t help anything that it was about a thousand degrees and the afternoon sun was pouring down right on where we were supposed to perform. Even the Woodsmen Dames were wilting a little bit, and they always looked perfect.

  Davis was up and around at his house, snappy and tired after spending the morning at the rehab center. He wouldn’t admit to it, and despite the fact that he’d been through it before, I thought that he secretly expected to be healed when he woke up the next day after the surgery. Instead he had been in pain, he was cranky, and in sum, just a joy to be around. Now, a week post-surgery, the pain was mostly gone but he was still crabby and sullen. I had not been sorry to pass him off to the physical therapist that morning and I had actually been looking forward to working off some of my own frustration at the Nutty and Hank rehearsal, but it was not going well. Not at all.

  “Sam, a word?” Trish smiled at us, but her eyes were shooting poisonous darts. Apparently, on top of the problem of the still unsolved locker room ring theft, sometime in the past week Trish had gotten a memo from “the higher-ups” about how she was mistreating the cheerleaders, and that was not the Woodsmen Family Way as delineated in the Woodsmen Family Handbook. Someone had gone above her and ratted her out about how she yelled and demeaned them all, was the whisper going around the locker room. So Trish had morphed into an even scarier version of herself, because now everything she said was…nice. Somehow, it was way, way worse to get called out by the friendly version of Trish.

  “Carla, have you been enjoying a lot of fun dinners out with your BFFs?” she had asked one cheerleader, a demonic smile on her face. Carla had immediately burst into tears, knowing that she had put on a pound or two. “I said griege. Not grey, not beige, griege. You’re the painter, figure it out. We all need to give our best, right? That means making our uniforms look great!” Trish had continued. “Is there anyone here who doesn’t want that? Let’s have a discussion and share our feelings! Won’t that be fun?” Her hard eyes swept across the cheerleaders. The Woodsmen Dames had nodded robotically, and incrementally scooted away to disassociate themselves from the sobbing Carla.

  “Who thinks we did a good job? Go ahead, raise your hands!” Trish had said to us, grinning, after one particularly messed-up routine. “Were there any problems? I sure didn’t see any! No, tacos. Tacos. Get what’s on the list, then. Kelley, did you see anything wrong with what Amanda was doing?” She went around the group, and one by one, forced the weakest dancers to pick each other apart. I had almost fear-puked on the field, it had been so awful.

  So now, “Sam, a word?” could easily mean that he was fired. Sam reluctantly followed her, still doing the loping walk he used when he was Hank the Hunter. He pulled off his head and Trish leaned in close to talk to him. She was still smiling fixedly, but from the way Sam was swallowing and trying to back away, the kindly things she was saying were shaking him up.

  Rochelle, the head cheerleader, wasn’t saying a word about her ring anymore. Apparently there weren’t actually cameras in the locker room, so no one had been recorded stealing it red-handed. The word was that the team had narrowed it down to a few suspects, but they still didn’t want to call the police. Nothing to sully the Woodsmen/Woodsmen Dames’ reputations. I thought maybe they had given Rochelle some money or bought her a new ring so she would let it go.

  Sam came back over to me, now walking quickly and purposefully. “Let’s do it again,” he said tightly, and swung his Hank head back on. We picked it up, and the cheerleaders did too. Trish’s smile started to seem more real and the team owners were lovin
g it. Of course, the all-male group was sitting in the shade, drinking iced tea, and watching a bunch of beautiful women shake their butts, so it was hard to see what they wouldn’t be enjoying.

  “Now do the field run,” Trish directed us. Sam swiveled his big head to look at me. Oh, my Lord. Now? After we had already rehearsed for so long? It was hard for me to do the field run on fresh legs. The cheerleaders gathered in formation in the end zone and the two of us mascots jogged to the other end of the stadium. “Go!” Trish shouted.

  Sam and I began our run across the field. Every 15 yards or so, we stopped to do a special trick, a gag, a dance routine. The cheerleaders had responses choreographed to everything we did, and when we finally reached the other side, they did a cheer and another dance to congratulate us. Then Sam grabbed my tail one last time, and I had to swing him up on my back and hurry off the field with him pretending to fight and protest. On camera, and from the stands, it always looked very cute.

  Sam wasn’t a huge guy, but he did weigh something, and after a long practice, then running and dancing for more than a hundred yards from the back of one end zone over to the other one, I could barely make it off the field carrying him. When we got into the tunnel, to the applause of all the cheerleaders and the audience, I dropped Sam and slid down to the ground myself. Phew.

  “Good job,” Sam said, gasping for breath. He yanked off the Hank head and sat down next to me. “Lucky I made you run all those miles to prepare.”

  “Lucky,” I agreed, barely able to speak. I had just enough energy to sock him one in the arm.

  After I got off the Nutty costume, I sat for a moment, trying to cool down. I was planning to go over to visit my grandma, so I checked my phone to see if she was still awake and up for seeing me. She loved to text.

  In addition to her message, I also saw one from Davis: “Dinner caught on fire. Can you cook more.”

  What? He had literally burned up his food? I sighed and slowly stood up from the bench. Grammy had said she was hitting the hay early, so I would go over there to help him, but I decided to get something out of it for myself, too. I stopped at my own house on the way and changed quickly, not even bothering to check myself in the mirror or to comb my hair.

  “Why couldn’t you just order dinner in?” I asked him later, as I put plate of chicken, sautéed spinach, and brown rice on the kitchen table in front of him.

  “Yours tastes better.”

  “Well, just FYI, I’m not at your beck and call.” I sat down too, and he studied me.

  “What happened to you? Why do you look so…” His lip curled.

  “Gross? I had a very tough practice.”

  He laughed, that snorting thing. “Tough practice.”

  It made me angry. “Yes, it was very hard and long. And very hot, in costume. All the owners were there and we had to be perfect. We had to do our special routine where we run across the field and I carry Sam.”

  “You carry that guy?” Davis looked very doubtful. “How far?”

  “From the end zone to the tunnel. I told you I was strong.” But I could tell that he didn’t believe me. “What did you do this evening?”

  “Watched game film. Burned up the dinner.” I had seen the entire pan, the contents now black and unrecognizable, in the garbage, and a faint odor of smoke hung in the air inside the house. He really had burned it up.

  “I’m not quite sure how you lived alone without dying of filth or starvation,” I mentioned.

  “I didn’t live alone,” he answered, then took a huge bite of chicken.

  “What? Did you have a girlfriend?”

  “A roommate. Gavin Peters. You know him?”

  I did, actually, so I nodded. He was a player on the practice squad who had been cut at the end of last season.

  “We went to college together. He was more in charge of the house. He had people doing stuff for us. When he left, that’s when the woman stole from me. I fired her and I got a little…lax.”

  I thought of the monstrous pile of laundry. “You did.” He got a little lax in the same way he had gently tapped my grandpa’s car. I carried our empty plates to the sink. Both of us had eaten in record time. “Ok, I’m going swimming. See you later.”

  His eyes widened. “Swimming?”

  “That’s why I came back to cook you more dinner. Quid pro quo, right? You do live on the lake.” I tilted my head. “Want to come down to the water? It’s ok now with the incision.” Davis didn’t say anything, but slowly stood and went back to his bedroom while I put the dishes in the dishwasher. I really wished my kitchen had one of those. When he came back out, he was wearing a pair of boardshorts and his t-shirt.

  It was pitch dark outside, but we could see by the light of the big August moon hanging low over the horizon. Fireflies flashed in the trees, little blips of light. I pulled off my clothes and left them on a chair on the deck, shivering a little in my bikini. I turned to see Davis peeling off his shirt. Oh, sweet Jesus. There was just, um, a lot of him, and it was all muscle. One hundred percent cut, defined, gorgeous…I swallowed. “Leave your crutches. You can lean on me.”

  He put his bare arm across my shoulders and we slowly walked down to the edge of the water. It was very strange, being skin to skin. It had been a long time—I stopped myself from thinking about it.

  I left Davis standing waist deep and dove in, swimming as far as I could out into the water. I loved night swimming. The lake was mirror smooth and glassy, broken only by the occasional splash of a fish. I treaded water and watched Davis swim on his back, arms only. Hm. He looked like he knew what he was doing. Before I had decided to put all my time into dance, I had spent a lot of years on the Sharks swim team like every other kid around here, so I was very confident in my swimming, too. But now I just wanted to play. I dove down and swam underwater as far as I could go. It was so quiet and peaceful. I went farther and farther out into the lake, feeling so lucky to have it in my backyard. Well, Davis’ backyard.

  When I came to the surface, I heard my name. “Katie!” Davis was yelling. Loudly.

  “What’s wrong?” I gasped, then sprinted over to him. His knee. It was hurt again. We shouldn’t have come down to the lake!

  He grabbed me by the arms when I got close and held me up. “What happened to you? Where did you go?”

  I wiped the hair out of my eyes. “Are you ok? Is it your knee? What’s the matter?”

  “Fuck, Katie! You fucking scared me to death!” he said hoarsely. He breathed out a big breath. “Don’t do that.” We stared at each other in the moonlight. “You were under for a long time. I thought you had drowned.”

  “You’re all right?” I asked anxiously. “For sure?” We were still out pretty deep, and he was holding me above the surface. I put my palms on his shoulders and his big hands went around my waist. I could feel the calluses on the thumb and first finger of his right hand, his throwing hand, against my skin.

  “I’m all right.” His voice sounded softer, somehow. “You?”

  “Yes.” My voice sounded funny too. “I was just swimming.” His thumb moved on my stomach, almost like a caress, and I pulled myself free of his hands and treaded water. “Let’s get out. I’m getting cold.”

  I helped him again up out onto the beach and back up to the deck. I dried myself off quickly and started to pull on my clothes.

  “Do you have to go right now?”

  I looked up. “Did you need something?”

  Davis shook his head. “No. I’m not tired, though. I don’t want to go in the house.”

  I sat on the Adirondack chair next to his. “It’s a pretty night.”

  “I have to go over to the stadium tomorrow. To talk to the front office. My agent will be there too.”

  “Is something the matter?”

  He rubbed his hand over his mouth. “They got all the surgical reports from the doctor and they want to talk.”

  “It’s probably fine. They probably want to hear how you’re feeling, from the horse’s mouth.�
�

  He made a noise. “I’m thirty-two years old. I’m on my second knee surgery. I’m pretty sure it’s not ‘fine.’ They’re not asking me over there to give me a pat on the back and a fucking lollypop.” He sighed now. “It’s nice out here. I don’t go in the lake much.”

  “You know how to swim.”

  Davis stared at me. “Why would I not? I grew up on the Pacific Ocean.”

  I thought back to what I had read about him. I knew he went to college in California, but I didn’t know he grew up on the west coast. “Where are you from?”

  “Near Los Angeles. I lived in a house overlooking the water. I like to be able to see it, still.”

  “Did you surf a lot? That’s what I always think about people from California. That, and you drink a lot of wine and know a lot about software and stuff.”

  “Those things are all true. Everyone in the state is a wonky computer lush who surfs.”

  “Davis, are you making another joke? I’m not sure how to react when you do that.” I started laughing.

  He actually cracked a little sideways smile back. “I didn’t surf. I played football. But of course I can swim.”

  “Do you miss it, California? Is your family still there?”

  “I don’t miss it, not anymore.” He looked across the lake. “My mother still lives in Malibu. I don’t see her much.”

  “Does she come to your games when you play out there?”

  “She doesn’t like football.” He reached and dragged over a footstool. I helped him to adjust it and he carefully swung up his leg. “Why did you break up with your fiancé?” he asked. “What was his name?”

  “Julian,” I said carefully. “Things happen.”

  “‘Things happen.’ So he dumped you?”

  I shrugged in reply.

  “Are you with that guy in the Hank suit? You’re always talking about him.”

  I was shocked. “Sam? Are you joking? No! He’s way too old for me and way too weird!”

  “How old?”

  I thought. “Well, he’s been Hank the Hunter about thirty years. He’s in his fifties.”

  “Hard to believe he still wants to run around in a fuzzy suit at football games.”