The Checkdown Read online

  “Why aren’t you driving?”

  I waited. That wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

  “Am I supposed to be saying something?” he asked, exasperated.

  “How about apologizing for wrecking my car?” I said helpfully. “And also, thanking me for not killing you.”

  “I’m sorry about your car,” he said slowly and carefully, like each word was painfully tugged out of him. “Thank you for not killing me.”

  He hit a button on his navigation system and it started directing us to his house, and we drove in silence for a few miles. Despite the fact that it had just decimated my own car, I was enjoying driving the truck. It made me feel big and powerful, like a goddess of the highway or something. I waved at a dog sticking its head out of a car window far below us. Davis Blake would get my car fixed, and this would all work out.

  “What do you do on the field so that you get to park in the players’ lot?” he asked me finally.

  “I’m Nutty.”

  “What is that supposed to mean? You’re crazy?”

  “No, I’m Nutty. Nutty the Chipmunk. You know, Nutty and Hank the Hunter?”

  “You’re that stupid animal that runs around? We all keep hoping that the hunter really shoots you.”

  I stiffened. “Lots of people like Nutty.”

  “Lots of people are idiots.”

  Well, he was sure pleasant. But I thought I understood. “Did you get bad news about your knee or something? It that what’s the matter?” I asked sympathetically.

  At first he didn’t answer. Then his voice came out angry and mean. “Are you looking to sell some information? A first-person account? I’ll give you a tip. They’ll pay more if you get a video of me limping to go along with it.”

  “No. I’m not going to sell information about you. I was just trying to be friendly.” First he wrecked my car, then he was a total pill. I closed my lips firmly.

  I took a corner a little too sharply—this truck handled a bit differently from mine, which could have fit in the back seat and ridden along with us. He made a little sound. A groan or a moan.

  “I’m sorry!” I said. “I didn’t mean to make your knee hurt. I’ll slow down and be more careful.”

  “I’m fine.” But his skin looked pale to me. He clearly wasn’t.

  “I tore my ACL,” I told him. “In high school. It got better. I mean, it was no picnic, but it did heal.” Eventually and not completely. I thought I’d leave that part out.

  Davis Blake looked out the window. “This is the second time. In the same knee.” He quickly swung his head to look at me. “The news is going to get out anyway. The team is making an announcement tonight, so you can’t use that.”

  That hurt my feelings. “I already told you, I’m not trying to get information from you. I was trying to be nice.”

  “Sure you are.”

  “Look, you’re the one who ruined my car, not the other way around. And I’m sorry you hurt your knee, but there’s no reason to take it out on a perfect stranger who’s helping you.”

  “Helping me?”

  I gestured around the cab of the truck. “I’m driving you home, aren’t I?”

  “I’m renting you a car, aren’t I?” he countered.

  “Because you demolished mine! Sweet Jesus, what is the matter with you?” I turned to look at him and then had to brake hard for a light. Our weight swung forward and he made another little noise. “Sorry. Sorry! That really wasn’t on purpose.”

  Davis Blake stared out of the window the rest of the way to his house and I focused on driving carefully so I wouldn’t hurt his knee again. And wow, his house! If his car could have given mine a ride, his house could have invited my house over to stay. In fact, his house could have hosted mine and four or five of my neighbors’ houses as well. It was right on the lake, too, and I caught a glimpse of the wide beach in the back. Probably he had a boat.

  When I turned off the car we sat in the driveway for a moment and he didn’t move. “Here we are,” I prompted him. I looked closely. His face was all tense, as if he was in pain. “Hey, are you on anything? I remember that my knee really, really hurt.”

  “No. I’m not on drugs.”

  I sighed. “I don’t mean that you’re on drugs, just something to help with the pain! And I’m not going to try to spread rumors that you’re an addict, if that’s where you were going next.” He didn’t answer and I sighed again. “Ok, never mind.” I opened the door and leaped down, then went around to his side. He was staring in the direction of the driveway below him, probably contemplating making his descent.

  “Here,” I said, patting my shoulder. “Lean on me and slide down.”

  “No.”

  “I’m really strong,” I told him, and braced my legs. He directed his mirrored lenses toward me for a moment. Then he eased down until he could reach my shoulder. He weighed a lot, but I held steady. Sometimes I carried Sam around the field in his costume.

  He took a few deep breaths once he was standing on the driveway. “I thought you’d fall,” he said after a moment.

  “You thought I’d fall, and you leaned on me anyway?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he got his crutches out of the truck and started toward the house. I followed him to the front door, and he turned back toward me.

  “I guess I’ll wait here for the loaner car to come,” I said. “You really did call about that, right? You weren’t kidding or something?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, you got me a car, or yes, you were kidding?”

  Davis Blake turned back to the door and unlocked it. “There’s a car coming.”

  He shut the door.

  Well. Well, well, well. I stared, open-mouthed, at the door and heard several locks click shut. Well!

  I had met plenty of the players on the Woodsmen squad. Some had been nice, some not as nice. Most of the single ones (and some of the not-single ones) had asked me out. I had never even been close to Davis Blake before, and certainly hadn’t spoken to him. He had seemed to be almost in another orbit from where I was whirling around.

  Now I was glad I hadn’t talked to him. Sweet Lord, he was a pill! He destroyed my car then made me wait outside. Fine, he was in pain, but…I thought about it. Maybe the news he had gotten from the doctors today was really, really bad. Maybe he wasn’t going to be able to play again, ever. That meant not only his job and his livelihood would be gone, but all his dreams were crushed too. Probably he had wanted to be a football player from when he was a little boy. The poor guy. Oh, now I was feeling sorry for him. And the hit that took him out and caused the injury was totally illegal, and came after the ball had been called down. The futility of it must have even made the whole situation feel worse.

  I settled down on the front step to wait for my car to arrive.

  Click. Click. Click. The locks opened, and the front door swung in. “Why are you still here?”

  I stood up from my perch on the step. My butt was asleep. “The car didn’t come yet.”

  “And you were going to wait all night?”

  I checked my phone. “It’s only been an hour.”

  Davis Blake sighed loudly. “Come inside.” He left the door open behind him as he swung on his crutches back through the dark entryway.

  I followed him, unsure if I should do all the locks. I fastened one, just to play it safe, then hurried after him into a huge kitchen. “Your house is fancy,” I commented. Dusty and messy and dark, but fancy.

  He didn’t answer. “Sit there.” He signaled at a bar stool, but my butt was still asleep. I walked instead over to the stove where something brownish was in a pot.

  “What is this?” I sniffed at it, and it was almost as bad as Sam had smelled earlier. “Ew, yuck! Is this food?”

  The sunglasses were gone, so now I could see his blue eyes glaring right at me. “I’m cooking dinner.”

  “Do you really want to eat that?” I shook my head. “No, you couldn’t. Let’s see what else you have.�
� I opened his restaurant-sized refrigerator, but it was mostly empty of food inside. There was no shortage of beer, however. “Hmm…you have eggs that are about to expire.” I pulled open a drawer or two. “How about a Denver omelet? That will be pretty quick if you’re hungry.” I took out ham and a bell pepper that had seen better days.

  “What are you doing?”

  I froze as I looked through a cabinet drawer. “I was getting a knife. Do you want an omelet? I was just thinking that it would be hard for you to stand for a long time and make dinner for yourself. And eggs have a lot of good protein to help you heal. If that’s true. I’m not really sure if it is.”

  “Ok.”

  I took that as assent to the omelet. “You don’t have a lot of kitchen stuff,” I commented as I finally found a knife. Most of the numerous drawers I had opened had been empty.

  “I don’t cook.”

  “What do you eat, then? Do you mostly go out? Or get deliveries?”

  He was staring at me again. “You talk a lot.”

  “No more than any normal person.” I emphasized the word normal. “If you don’t want to take any prescription pain medication, what about some aspirin or something? Your knee has to hurt.”

  Davis Blake slowly lowered himself onto a stool. “In the cupboard next to the stove.”

  I got the bottle, found where he had his supply of four glasses, and filled one with water. I held out the aspirin, eyebrows raised.

  “What?” he asked me, taking the medicine.

  “Thank you?” I prodded.

  “Thank you.”

  By the time we were done eating, the loaner car had arrived, and peeking through the window, I saw it was way, way nicer than the one that had gotten smushed. Davis Blake hadn’t spoken more than five words to me the entire time I cooked, and while he was eating. But he had said thank you again when I put down the plate in front of him. I had made enough for two, so I ate quietly alongside him.

  I hopped up when the doorbell rang. “Bye.”

  “What’s your name?”

  I stopped, halfway out the kitchen door. “Oh! That’s ridiculous that you don’t know it. We just ate dinner together and you flattened my car!”

  He waited.

  “Katie. Katie Bell, Katriona Bell.”

  That was it. He didn’t say anything else, so I just waved, and walked out into entryway and then into the driveway.

  The guy who had driven the loaner car over was staring up at the big house in the darkness. “Is this Davis Blake’s house? Were you just in there with him?” he demanded.

  I shrugged. “Nope.”

  He looked at me suspiciously. “I heard this is where he lives.”

  “Nope,” I said again. “Do I just take the keys from you and go, or do I have to sign something?”

  When I looked up, I saw the front door was partially open, and I saw a faint gleam of a metal crutch just behind it.

  Chapter 2

  “Ten inches.”

  “Twelve!”

  “No way…”

  Sweet Jesus, they were at it again with their penis discussion. I turned off my shower and wrapped a towel around my body, and squeezed the water out of my long, brown hair.

  “What do you think about the outside linebacker?”

  “Who, Mazurski? Oh my God, Denise! Did you?”

  The two cheerleaders dissolved into giggles. They were absolutely not supposed to date the players, let alone comment on their, um, relative sizes. Trish, their boss, would fire them immediately if she heard, and these two were really indiscreet. Some of the other cheerleaders dated players, but they weren’t idiots like Denise and her friend…I squinted at her. Abbi.

  I cleared my throat and Abbi looked up at me. The water coursed down her perfect body and she lazily ran a sudsy pouf over herself. “It’s Katie, right?”

  I nodded. “Hi, there. You know, Trish is right in the next room. She comes in here sometimes. If she heard you guys…”

  Denise laughed. “She has a stick up her butt!”

  I shrugged. “Just a friendly warning.”

  “We heard that you went home with Davis.”

  I wheeled around. “What? Who said that?”

  “One of the security guards saw you in the parking lot after you had car trouble,” Abbi said.

  Yeah, car trouble. I was supposed to hear today from the repair shop how much trouble my car was in.

  “I was just getting a ride from him because of…the car trouble.” I kept any information I had about his injury to myself, just as I had when asked by the warehouse guys. They would have absolutely died to hear that I had been inside Davis Blake’s house, but I hadn’t said a word.

  Both of the women giggled wildly again. It was very, very annoying.

  “Denise! Abbi!” The head cheerleader, Rochelle, barked at them from the door to the shower room. “I hope I didn’t just hear you two discussing the players.”

  “No, but she was!” Denise pointed at me.

  “What?!” I started shaking my head.

  “She’s not your concern,” Rochelle told them, ignoring me. “Get dressed and get out of here.”

  I stayed late at the stadium that day, because Sam had been late, too—again. In fact, he hadn’t shown up at all. We were supposed to meet at 5:30. By seven, I had done sprints, push-ups, sit-ups, and rehearsed my portion of all our routines. I had called and texted him, too. I was supposed to meet my friend Lindy for a late dinner, so I decided to give up on Sam and get dressed to go. Hence, my conversation in the showers with the cheerleaders.

  I quickly pulled on my clothes, listening with half an ear to the other women talking. The vast majority of them were not as guy-focused as the two in the showers. Most of them were discussing a BBQ that Rochelle was having over the weekend. I wasn’t invited, but I wasn’t a cheerleader, either. I was in a weird no man’s land with them: I wasn’t part of their squad, but I was around enough that they tolerated me. Some of them were even nice to me.

  Trish and the other administrators had stringent guidelines posted up on the cheerleaders’ website for everyone who thought about becoming a Woodsmen Dame (the name had survived since 1953): you had to have a college degree or be pursuing one; you had to have numerous years of dance training, in several styles, if possible; you had to have experience, either on your college dance troupe or cheer squad or on anther professional sports team. Unstated were the following requirements: you had to have a great figure, beautiful face, pretty hair, and/or the ability to fake all three. Biggish breasts were a plus, as was height (long legs looked great in the sideline dances); perfect teeth were a given. So looking at this group of gorgeous women in their various stages of undress, well, it was enough to make even the most confident lady get a little down. I put on extra mascara.

  My friend Lindy was in the midst of an all-out campaign to get me settled. It seemed like most of our friends from high school had gotten engaged and married in the last few years, or at least they had a very steady plus-one and were heading in that direction. A few were already pregnant. Lindy herself had just tied the knot in July, with me as the maid of honor. In fact, over the last few years I had been in 12 different wedding parties. It had been expensive, but really fun.

  I was resisting Lindy’s efforts, but I had agreed to go out with her tonight, with her husband and one of his friends from work who she swore was perfect for me. I wasn’t so sure. The last two guys she had also designated as perfect had been far from it. One had been on what he termed a break from his long-time girlfriend, whom he talked about the entire night without taking a breath, and the other guy was marginally employed (as in, he did a little yard work for his parents and they gave him money) with no plans to change that situation. And then he made fun of Nutty. My hopes about this latest “perfect” guy were dim. Nevertheless, I put forth the effort as I got dressed in front of the big mirror, and one of the cheerleaders helped me straighten my hair in the back where I couldn’t reach it that well. She was nic
e.

  As I walked out into the hallway leading to the parking lot, I heard Trish say my name. “There she is. That’s Katie.” Her normal conversational volume was more like a yell, so I heard her perfectly. I turned and saw her standing next to another woman I didn’t know, older and official-looking.

  I cleared my throat. “Hi, there, Trish. Did you need me for something?”

  She stared at me. “If the dog went, you have to pick it up!” she said while adjusting her headset. “We were slow on the first eight-count of the third song.” She walked away.

  The other woman looked me up and down, then stepped forward, her hand outstretched. “Katriona Bell?” I shook her hand, but she didn’t say her name. “Please come with me.” She silently led me down another hall and up the elevator to the floor that held the executive offices. I had only been up there twice before, once was when I had been interviewed for the job as team mascot, and another time when there had been a social media threat about killing Nutty. Since I was the person in the Nutty suit, I took that incident very seriously, until they determined that the guy was in Denmark and never left there, and that he simply had a very strong chipmunk aversion. It wasn’t particular to Nutty and the risk was deemed negligible, but I planned to stay away from Denmark just in case.

  The woman leading me knocked on one of the dark wood doors and put her head into the office. “Frank? I’ve got her.”

  I gulped. What the hell was going on?

  “Go ahead in,” the woman told me.

  Inside the big office was a smallish man sitting behind a very large desk. And across from him was a very large man sitting with his right leg stretched out on an ottoman in front of him. Davis Blake.

  The little man stood up. “Katriona Bell?”

  “Yes.” I took another step into the office.

  “I’m Frank Pauley. Please, have a seat.” He gestured at the chair next to Davis Blake. I sat, and immediately felt like a child. The furniture had apparently been purchased with football player-sized men in mind and my feet barely touched the floor. “Ms. Bell, we are hoping that you can do us a favor.”