The Last Cheerleader

I added soap to the bowl of warm water, and a soft dishcloth. “I don’t understand. How did you know where I live?”

“I read a piece about you in the Sunday Los Angeles Times. They said you lived in Malibu, and then I ran into someone who knew you. He gave me your address.”

Warning bells went off. Lindy shows up after all these years—fifteen, to be exact, since high school—and tells me that someone who knows me gave her my address? Who would do that?

For that matter, what were the odds of her “running into someone” who even knew my address? I protect my personal information from almost everyone, as I don’t want agitated authors showing up at my door in the middle of the night. That had happened frequently when I had my office in front of the little adobe house in Hollywood. I didn’t want it to happen here.

“Who was this person?” I asked.

Lindy shook her head. “I can’t remember. I met him at a bar in Hollywood and we got to talking. I told him I’d been wanting to get in touch with you, especially after I read that piece in the paper. Just to tell you how happy I am for your success, you know.”

I’ll bet, I thought suspiciously. Lindy had obviously met with bad times. How much was she here to hit me up for?

I knelt down and began to wash her feet with the soapy water, then dried them carefully. “Leave the shoes off,” I said. “I’ll get a Band-Aid, and I’ve got a pair of socks and some tennies you can have.”

“Thank you, Mary Beth.” Lindy looked around and added with an edge in her voice, “You’re doing very well now, aren’t you?”

I looked up at her and she flushed. “I didn’t mean it to sound that way. It’s just that everything’s turned around for both of us. You were poor and now you’re not. I was…well, I guess you heard that I married Roger Van Court.”

I looked back at her feet and then stood, taking the bowl back to the kitchen. “Yes, I think I must have heard that,” I said vaguely. “It’s been a while. Ten years or so, right? Since you were married?”

“Since right after college,” she said, nodding. “I can’t believe I was that stupid.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. The last thing I wanted to talk about was Roger Van Court. In fact, my pulse was racing and my hands had begun to shake at the sound of his name. I took a Band-Aid out of a drawer and tried to bring my focus back to Lindy and her plight.

“What’s happened, Lindy Lou?” I asked softly. I applied the Band-Aid, then sat beside her on the couch, my legs crossed in tailor-fashion. It was the way we used to sit when we were teenagers, chatting till all hours of the night. A familiar scene—yet not familiar at all. Now that I could see Lindy more closely, I realized that though we were the same age, thirty-three, she looked closer to fifty. Her face was lined, and I could see now the gray in her dark roots.

My heart broke a little. In high school, Lindy’s long blond hair had always looked sexy and a bit out of control, as if she’d just stepped out of a beauty salon into a warm spring breeze. With her high cheekbones and perfectly proportioned body, she could have been a high-fashion model. I’m sure she would have been hugely successful.

Instead, she’d married Roger Van Court.

There was a time when I might have jealously wished Lindy would end up down and out, but that was only because I never believed, in my wildest dreams, that she would. Though I hadn’t seen her in many years, in my mind she had always been the same Lindy Lou—vivacious, laughing, flirting easily yet harmlessly with the boys—someone I longed to be like but never was.

Suddenly, a part of me evaporated as the real Lindy Lou sat beside me. I had wanted to be like her, but even Lindy wasn’t Lindy anymore. A strange thought flew through my mind. Where did that leave me?

Lindy covered her eyes and began to sob. “Roger threw me out,” she said between loud hiccupping sounds. “Three weeks ago. He changed…he changed the locks…and I couldn’t get back in. To get my things, you know? He closed my bank accounts, too, Mary Beth, and cut off all my credit cards. I didn’t have a thing, and I couldn’t bear to tell any of our friends or ask to borrow money. We live in Pacific Heights now, and people there can be so damn hoitytoity.”

I almost smiled at her use of the old-fashioned phrase. Instead, I just shook my head and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Well, it’s one of the priciest areas in San Francisco, and none of our neighbors would understand in a million years. They’d have it all over town that I was out on the street.”

“Lindy, I don’t get it. What on earth possessed Roger? I thought the two of you must be happy.”

Which wasn’t at all the truth, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that now.

“I thought we were happy at first,” she said, rubbing her eyes. I reached over to an end table for Kleenex and handed her a couple. She dabbed at her eyes and cheeks, then turned her gaze on me. “Mary Beth, I’m so…damn…tired.” She broke down then, gulping back huge, loud sobs.

I took her in my arms and patted her on the back. There but for the grace of God go I? That was something my mother had always said when reminding herself of how blessed she was, just to have food on the table and a light to read by. My mother had worked long hours as a waitress to support herself after my father died, and there wasn’t much to go around. When she died shortly after Pop, her loss left a hole in my heart that no one else has ever been able to fill.

Taking the Kleenex, I dabbed at Lindy’s eyes and held her back from me a foot or so. “Why don’t you take a nice relaxing bath while I put some food on,” I said.

“You don’t have to go to that trouble.”

“Don’t be silly. I haven’t been shopping this week, but I’ll make us some grilled-cheese sandwiches. How’s that? Just like old times.”

Her eyes said it all: This is not like old times.

She came with me to my bedroom, though, and took off her clothes while I drew a warm bath, putting a scented bubble gel in it. When the water was ready, I went back into the bedroom, where I’d left a terry-cloth robe for her to change into.

Lindy was sound asleep sideways on my bed, the turquoise satin spread wrapped around her like a cocoon. The robe I’d left for her was on the floor. A light breeze lifted the sheer white curtains at the French doors leading out to the deck.

I sighed and drained the bathwater, then got a sheet and blanket from the hall closet and stretched out on the couch in the living room.

I didn’t sleep well. Scenes that I’d long ago stuffed back into the far recesses of my mind, hoping never to see them again, kept flitting across my closed eyes.

Roger Van Court.

The bastard.

But how much could I—or should I—tell Lindy?

Lindy had knocked on my door at about one-thirty, and it was just after three, according to the clock over my mantel, when I woke, thinking I’d heard a sound on the deck. I sat up carefully and walked to the double French doors, which were similar to the ones in the bedroom. There was no moon, and it was hard to see if anyone was out there. Even harder to hear, over the ocean’s roar.

I cussed myself out for having left everything but the front door unlocked. I’d turned off the lights in the living room, though, and I figured that was good. A long time ago, I’d learned in a self-defense class that it’s better to be in the dark in your house when an intruder is there. The intruder doesn’t know your house, but you do, which means you can navigate around it better than he.

On the other hand, flashlights can be useful.

Crouching close to the floor, I made it to the kitchen and was just reaching for my one flashlight in the utility drawer when I heard the doors leading from the deck to the bedroom slam open against the inside wall. Lindy screamed.

I grabbed the flashlight and ran to the bedroom, shouting, “Get out! Get out of my house!”—also a technique I’d learned in a class. Take the intruder by surprise and get him off balance. Stupidly, however, I hadn’t remembered to stand to the side of the doorway, in case whoever was in there had a gun.

That thought blew through my mind only an instant before bullets whistled by my ear. There was no loud pop, but more of a quiet thud, which told me the intruder must have a silencer on his gun. I dropped to the floor and set the flashlight as far away as my arm could reach. Then I flicked it on and pointed it in the direction of a large, dark figure by the bed. The figure was big enough to be a man, but he wore a ski mask and was dressed all in black. In the perimeter of the light, I saw that Lindy was leaning back against the headboard with my sheets pulled up to her neck, her eyes wide open and horrified.

As another bullet zinged into the floor next to my flashlight, I wiggled around about eighty degrees and reached for the baseball bat I kept by my closet. The intruder’s eyes must have adjusted to the dark by now, however, because he was on me before I had a chance to grab it. An arm came around my neck, cutting off my breath, while a knee in my back kept my lower body from moving. I couldn’t kick, couldn’t fight back in any way. I started to see pinpoints in my eyes, little flashes of light that told me I’d soon be left in eternal darkness.

Just when I thought I was checking out for good, though, the crushing weight of my attacker slumped on top of me. A few seconds later he hoisted himself to his feet. Cursing in guttural tones, he ran past me into the living room, kicking the flashlight aside.

“Mary Beth!” Lindy yelled. “Are you all right?”

I rose quickly and saw that she was holding the bat, and that was what had made the intruder fall. Little Lindy Lou had smacked the bastard with it.

I held two fingers to my mouth. “Shh. I think he’s still out there.”

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “Do you know who it is? Is it Roger?”

I gave her a sharp glance in the dim light. “I didn’t see his face. Why do you think it was Roger?”

She didn’t answer. At the sound of a loud crash in the living room, I said, “Never mind!”