The Checkdown

by Jamie Bennett

  I paused for a breath on the steps and sneaked a glance at Davis. He was grinning at me.

  “What?”

  He bent and kissed my forehead, then my cheek, and kind of nuzzled my hair. “You,” was all he said.

  ∞

  My phone rang in the middle of the night.

  “No, thank you. What? I mean, hello?”

  “I’m downtown. Can you pick me up?”

  “Sam?” I rubbed my eyes and turned on the light. “What?” I said again.

  “Katie, wake up. Can you come get me?”

  Blearily, I looked at the time on the screen. “What bar is still open at this hour?”

  “I’m at the police station.”

  I was fully awake after Sam mentioned that. I booked out of my house, half in my PJs and halfway dressed, gunning the little engine in my car and hoping that I didn’t pop loose another hose. Sam wasn’t being charged and he was free to go, but they weren’t going to let someone as drunk as he still was drive himself home. As someone who hadn’t spent a lot of time in police stations other than on school field trips, I was very, very unhappy to be there at four AM. I gently expressed this to Sam once we were back in my car.

  “What in the hell were you doing getting arrested? What are you thinking, at your age, getting into bar fights in the middle of the night? Calling me to pick your ass up? Sweet Lord, Sam!” I went on for quite a while in the same vein.

  “You remind me of Trish,” he remarked casually, when I stopped for breath.

  That stopped me cold. “Ok, sorry about the yelling. But you scared me to death! What happened?”

  “A larger fellow happened to remark on my smaller stature. I had a few things to say about it.” He studied his knuckles as we went under a street light and I glanced over. They were cut up and already bruising.

  “Sam! My Lord. Do you have bandages at your apartment?”

  “We can’t go back to my apartment. Dotty’s there.”

  “Yeah, so?” I asked.

  “Dotty and I have parted ways. I’m staying at a friend’s place. Make a left here.”

  I glanced over at him again. “What happened with you and Dotty?”

  Sam didn’t answer at first. “Remember Corinna, the Woodsmen Dame from last season?”

  I thought. “Oh, yeah. She was one of the retirees they called to step in when Marie got sick and Abbi got fired. She couldn’t do it because Trish said she had gained weight.”

  Sam grunted. “Baby weight.”

  “Huh?”

  “She didn’t get fat, she got pregnant,” he explained, and then said something that didn’t quite compute.

  “Can you repeat that last part?” I asked him.

  “She got pregnant with my baby,” Sam said, and I nearly ran the car off the road.

  “You and that woman? What? When? How?”

  “Birds and bees, Katie. Have you ever seen rabbits going at it? Well, that was me and Corinna. Anytime, anywhere.” He sounded very self-satisfied.

  “Please, I can’t…” I tried to clear the images from my mind. “You. And the Woodsmen Dame. And you got her pregnant?”

  “Dotty wasn’t pleased.”

  “I can imagine!” I exploded. “She probably wanted to kill you!”

  “She tried, with a knife. That was when I decided to move out.”

  “Sam!” I gasped. “Sweet Jesus!”

  “Corinna and I are going to get a place together. She’s still rooming with three of the retired Woodsmen Dames and they haven’t been very good to her. They make a lot of jokes about getting knocked up by Hank the Hunter. She’s a sweet girl. We’ll get along just fine.”

  “And you think it’s a good thing to get into fights in bars? With a baby on the way?”

  He grunted. “That guy had it coming.”

  “Wait a minute, is it even allowed with a Woodsmen Dame?” I asked.

  “Me knocking up Corinna? Her parents weren’t too happy.”

  “No,” I shook my head, another picture of Sam and Corinna having wormed its way into my brain. Yuck! “I mean, don’t the Dames have all kinds of clauses in their contracts about getting involved with other employees of the team? They’re always complaining about it in the locker room.”

  “We all have those clauses,” Sam told me. “That, and the Dotty situation, are why I haven’t been mentioning our, uh, screwing that much.”

  “We all have those clauses?” I asked, my heart sinking a little.

  “Don’t you read the damn contracts you sign your name on? We are all prohibited from fraternization,” he said, pronouncing each syllable of the word separately and distinctly.

  I didn’t have much to say to that. Besides our kiss, Davis and I weren’t really fraternizing. Yet.

  “But they’re probably not going to get that upset unless you’re messing with someone important. For example, if Nutty the goddamn Chipmunk was boning the quarterback—”

  “I’m not boning anyone!”

  “Maybe that’s your problem,” Sam said, and chuckled. “Take a left and it’s another ten miles.”

  We drove out into the middle of nowhere, to a dilapidated trailer at the edge of the woods. “This is my stop,” Sam told me.

  “Here?” I peered out the window in the twilight. “Someone lives here?”

  “Me. See you at practice.” Sam hopped out of the car, cheerfully whistling.

  I rolled down the window. “You’re welcome!” I yelled. He slammed the trailer’s metal door.

  It was so late—or early—that we had to be at our Saturday morning practice in two hours. Damn him! I went home and showered and dressed, knowing that, as always, I had to be better than my best for Trish.

  When Sam strolled onto the field later, still whistling and just as jaunty as he had been earlier, I wanted to join forces with Dotty and kill him.

  He studied me. “You looked better this morning in your PJs,” he said loudly, and a few Woodsmen Dames tittered.

  “Shut up!” I whispered. “What if they think we were, you know, violating the fraternization clauses in our contracts?”

  “As if I’d do you,” he scoffed. “You’re too pissy.”

  “Well, you’re too short for me,” I returned. “And I hate you because you woke me up at three in the morning to get you at the police station. Jerk.”

  “Thank you,” Sam said seriously. “Thanks for doing that. You were the person I knew would come.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said less grumpily.

  “And yours was the only number I could remember, because I has my birthday in it,” he added.

  I ignored that and focused on the fact that he knew he could count on me. “Let’s start with the field run,” I suggested, “and show Trish how it’s done.” She had let Sam know that we were definitely doing it at the game and I considered it a personal challenge.

  After we rehearsed, I went to visit my grandma. She had gone to see the new specialist doctor to check if anything more could be done for her hip. She would never tell me if she was in pain, but I could see on her face that she hadn’t been sleeping well.

  “Come here and give me a kiss,” she said, beckoning me over, and I did. I hated to see her looking so frail.

  “Do you want to go out?” I asked her. “We could have dinner. Or visit the library to see if they have any new gory thrillers.” Mrs. Lusk sniffed loudly.

  “I don’t think today.”

  “How about we go into the common room,” I suggested, making a significant eye movement in Mrs. Lusk’s direction.

  “I think here is just fine,” she told me, and patted my hand. So she was either too tired to move or it hurt too much.

  I hadn’t said much about Trish, only that things were a little rough at work, and that I wouldn’t be over at Lakeview Cottage as much because I had to spend extra time at the stadium’s studio rehearsing. Now when she asked, I said that things were much better with Trish, which was true: instead of actively ignoring me, she had watched u
s at one point that day and not made any horrified faces or voiced any withering comments.

  I also whisper-told my grandma about what had happened that morning with Sam.

  “Sweet Jesus,” she whispered back. “Him, with a Woodsmen Dame? Which one?” We looked her up on my phone and marveled.

  “It just shows how far self-confidence can take you. An old man who dresses in a costume can end up with a woman who looks like that,” my grandma pointed out.

  It was true that Sam had no lack of self-confidence. Some might have even called it vanity or conceit. I might have called it that. “Or she’s very lonely,” I pointed out. Loneliness could make you do some crazy things. If I hadn’t had my grandma and my friends, who knew where I would have ended up?

  “Speaking of loneliness, how are you doing with that charming boy, Mason?”

  “That boy and I have decided just to be friends,” I told her, and she nodded as if she’d known all along.

  “I like him very much,” Grammy responded.

  “Then why do you keep calling him a boy?” I asked, laughing, but exasperated.

  “Mason doesn’t know what he wants in life, not yet,” she answered me seriously. “You’re young, too, but Katie, with what you’ve been through, I don’t think you need to play around with someone who isn’t sure of himself. You don’t need any more boys in your life. I say, get yourself a man.”

  “Amen to that,” Mrs. Lusk piped up.

  I burst out laughing. “When I find one, you two will be the first to know.” My grandma just watched me as if she had an inkling of my thoughts on the subject.

  Sam and I had gone hard that morning and by eight that night, after I’d brought back dinner for the three of us, I started yawing enough that I said I had to go. “Watch me tomorrow,” I said. “Look for the ear pull.”

  “Katie-bug, one more thing.” My grandma looked nervous and a little peeved. “Your mother is talking about coming to visit.”

  It had been a while since I had depended on what my mom said. “Really?” I asked, indifferent.

  “I think she means it this time.”

  What that meant was that she was probably out of money, so she was going to try to get my grandma to sell the house (the one l lived in) or simply give her part of the meager savings we had stashed away in the bank. “Well, we’ll see her when we see her. She hasn’t talked to me about it yet.” It had been a few months since we’d been in touch.

  My grandma frowned. “I guess we will.”

  I hit the bed when I got home like a ton of bricks, and turned off the ringer on my phone, just in case Sam got arrested again.

  I was full of nerves the next day, sitting in the locker room on a bench with my Nutty head next to me. I could do it. I was going to do great. The weather was equally unsettled, and the whole way over to the stadium I had listened to forecasters wondering if the game would get delayed.

  “Katie?” I looked up to see Rochelle eyeing me. “Lyle, from security? He’s knocking at the locker room door. He says he needs to talk to you.”

  I swallowed. What now? I walked slowly to the door, feeling the Dames’ eyes on my furry back.

  “Come on,” Lyle said resignedly. “I’m too old for this messenger crap.”

  “What?” I followed him and he led me to the door to the hallway to the players’ wing of the stadium.

  “Here. This is as far as I go.” Lyle walked off, and after a moment, I opened the door.

  “Hey, chipmunk.”

  I smiled up at Davis. “Hi there. You summoned me?”

  “You weren’t looking at your phone, so I asked that security guard who’s always talking to get you. I’m not supposed to go down near the cheerleaders’ locker room.”

  I shook my head. “No, better that you don’t.” It would cause a riot.

  “I wanted to tell you good luck.”

  “Thanks, Davis.” I was smiling at him again. “I hope I do better.”

  “You will.” He looked over my head and back over his shoulder, then he leaned down and gave me a quick kiss. “What am I supposed to say? Break a leg?”

  I nodded. I wanted to kiss him again. “I will. I mean, I won’t, I hope.” I went on my tiptoes and ended up kissing his chin. In the distance I heard the music change over the loudspeakers. “I have to go.”

  “I’ll wait for you after.”

  I kind of skipped back down to the tunnel to the field, feeling lighter than air. “What the hell bit you?” Sam asked, adjusting his head. “Why are you so bright-eyed and bushy tailed all of a sudden?”

  “That’s a squirrel. I’m the Chipmunk,” I informed him.

  The game went great. Sam and I were on point and revved up, and I was impressed by both of us. The field run, which we hadn’t done yet in a game, was a huge hit at halftime and the fans got excited. Better yet, Trish didn’t say a word to us after the first half. She was focused on a problem they were having cuing up the music.

  “Nutty, it’s ok! We’ll get ‘em next time.” The Woodsmen had lost again, but only by a touchdown. Davis had met separately with the offensive line, the running backs, and the wide receivers that week at his house. An enormous amount of food had gone into each meeting and I had made multiple trips to the grocery store, filling a cart each time and cooking up a storm. It seemed like it had worked—the discussions, not the cooking, although they all enjoyed the food—and everyone was playing much better. Davis had said that the following week he was going to talk to the defense.

  “What about talking to the replacement quarterback?” I had asked him, but he ignored that question. From what I had overheard at the offensive players’ meetings, none of them were very happy with Kayden Matthews, the backup.

  I rushed like a madwoman getting dressed after the game. I even jumped the line in front of Rochelle for one of the showers when she turned her head to discuss which bar they were all heading to after they dolled up and left the stadium. They liked to go out after games in a group and it attracted all kinds of attention—imagine a horde of gorgeous women descending en masse into a place of business and the numbers of men that would follow them. Bar and restaurant owners practically begged the Woodsmen Dames to come. When I was dressed, I ran out of the locker room and straight into Trish in the hallway.

  “Katie,” she said, her smile fixed and glacially warm. “Do you have a moment?”

  Oh, Lord. “I’m in a bit of a…yes. Of course.” Damn. Damn!

  I followed her into her office, a cramped, dark room with bulletin boards covering nearly every vertical space. Every Woodsmen Dame’s face stared off photos tacked up to these boards, and underneath each photo was a series of numbers. Trish graded their every performance at games and rehearsals out of a possible 10 and averaged them at the end of the year. Your number meant a lot when it came around to whether or not you’d make the team the following season. I swallowed when I saw a photo of Hank the Hunter next to another of Nutty to the left of her desk. I kept my eyes forward on Trish so I wouldn’t be able to see my numbers.

  She took off her headset and turned over her phone. Oh, Lord. I had her total attention again? “I wanted to apologize.”

  “Sorry, what?” I asked.

  “I am apologizing,” Trish said slowly. “I’m very sorry for my behavior after the game last Sunday. I was disappointed in your performance but could have chosen a better way to express my feelings.” She kept glancing down at her desk as she spoke, and when I sat up straight to peek at what she was looking at, I saw the words she was saying written out on a legal pad. She had even written “[PAUSE]” and “[LOOK AT NUTTY]” in various places.

  “Oh.” I swallowed. “Well, that’s ok. Water under the bridge.”

  “I must specifically let you know that demeaning and belittling behavior, including name-calling and cursing, is not the Woodsmen Family Way. I will not be engaging in that type of correction with you in the future.” She looked up at me. The words on the legal pad had directed her to.

&
nbsp; “Ok,” I repeated, just about dying to get out of there. Trish’s eyes were like lasers into me.

  “Can I take that to mean that you have accepted my apology, and that the matter is resolved?” she recited.

  Sweet Jesus. She looked like a crazy person with that petrified smile pinned to her lips.

  “Resolved,” I parroted back. I had to leave. Immediately! I stood up. “If that’s all, I’ll see you Monday.”

  “Goodbye.”

  I had never moved as fast in my life as I did to get out of her office. I kept turning to look over my shoulder to make sure she wasn’t following me, like in a horror movie, getting closer each time I checked.

  Lyle wouldn’t let me into the players’ postgame lounge, but he looked around and said that Davis wasn’t in there. “I have to, um, give him something,” I explained, and Lyle totally didn’t believe me. I went over to where I had parked but he wasn’t there. So I went down to the players’ parking lot, but he wasn’t there either and neither was his car. Not that he should have been driving, anyway. I checked my phone again. Nothing.

  Just to make sure, I did one more sweep around the stadium, and I ran into a huge bunch of Woodsmen Dames dressed to the nines, as my grammy said, and almost blinding in their collective beauty.

  “Hey, Katie. We’re going out,” Marie informed me, in case I couldn’t see that for myself, and had also been oblivious in the locker room when they were discussing it. “Want to come?”

  “If you’re looking for Davis, he already left,” Rochelle added. She watched me closely as she said it.

  “Looking for Davis?” I laughed, and it sounded ridiculously fake. “No, I’m not looking for Davis.” Where did he go?

  “He was with a few of the coaches and higher-ups,” Rochelle answered my thoughts. “They were talking about something and they left together.”

  Ok, well, something more important than I was. Something so important he couldn’t use his phone to text me that he wasn’t going to wait?

  “Thanks for asking me to join you guys. Dames. I’d love to come,” I told them. Thunder from the darkening sky sounded as I was welcomed into the group of gorgeous ladies, me in my old tennis shoes and leggings with a discrete hole in the seam in the calf. I’d had a great day at the stadium, and I planned to celebrate. Davis or no Davis.