The Cheer Leader (20 page)

Beck thinks for a minute and then starts doing
Lassie.
How easy can you get? And that is such a very sad song. She can just see Timmy burying those toys and all of a sudden, woof woof arf arf, and here comes Lassie barrelling down that hill. She and Bobby had watched that one every single time and she had always cried but Bobby hadn't, or had he? Had Bobby ever cried?

“Lassie,” she says so that Beck will stop with the sad
songs. “But who was Lassie's owner after Timmy?”

“Oh! I know, it was that ranger,” Beck screams.

“But what was his name?” Jo Spencer waits for Beck to answer but Beck can't remember. She really shouldn't tell the answer because that's not the way the game is played but Beck says that she will go crazy if she doesn't know. Jo Spencer cannot carry that burden, the burden of someone's insanity. “It was Corey Stuart.”

“That's right!” Beck says and goes to get another beer. “Last one, wanna split it?”

Jo Spencer must think about this. Should she share with Beck, a person that she knows but has never thoroughly exposed herself to? She is feeling good, just like that night at the lake a long time ago. It could even happen again, she could fall in love again, because this is the right feeling; big thoughts are coming in so fast that she can hardly think of them. “Yeah, okay. Let's split it.”

While Beck pours half into a plastic cup like the kind that people who go to the football games get and save, Jo Spencer must get up and check the clock and her face once again. Perfect, she still looks perfect and it is just twenty minutes before time for Pat, just twenty minutes before she can test her effects, her charm. She drinks her half fast, faster, fastest and sings along with Boz in spite of the fact that she doesn't know all of the words.

“I'll get it,” Beck says when there is a knock on the door. “You just stay cool and calm.” There is no need for Beck to tell her this because she is already very cool and calm.

“Why, hi Pat!” she says in such a friendly voice. “Long time, no see.” She gives him a hug, a coy, flirtatious hug. “It's so good to see you!”

“Looks like you girls have already started partying,” he says and looks around the room. He has yet to look Jo Spencer directly in the face.

“Oh yes,” Jo says and giggles. “You know how it is when the girls get together.” She punches Beck in the shoulder like all good friends do.

“Are you ready to go?” Pat asks and she gets her coat off the end of the bed. It is the beautiful camel coat that she got just last Christmas before she went on a skiing trip. It seems like she's had it for years. “Nice to have seen you again, Becky.” He is so polite! So effective!

“See you later, Beck,” she says cooly, calmly. “We'll finish what we were talking about later, okay?”

“Okay,” Becky laughs and starts doing
Hogan's Heroes.
“Y'all have fun.”

“Oh, we will,” Jo yells and slams the door. “I just know that we will.” She loops her arm through Pat's and they walk side by side all the way down the stairs. It could be happening, she can feel it all over and she wants to talk and talk and talk. She wants to tell Pat about that pubic hair in the shower stall but no, she must save that, she must have some secret all her own. “So, where are we going tonight?” she asks as though they go out every night.

“Some friends of mine are having a party.”

“Oh terrific!” she says and hugs his arm. “I've been
wanting to meet your friends.” She is very relieved that they are not going out to eat. Why, she has already eaten a can of chunky chicken soup because the night is so special and what would he have thought if he had taken her into an elegant restaurant and she had had to tell him that she had already eaten!

“You have?” he asks in a funny way. He takes her hand off of his arm and opens her car door. While he walks around, she has one split second of dark silence in which she decides that this is the night for Jo Spencer to come out of her shell. “It's been a long time since I've seen you,” he says. Yes, she knows that. She knows that she has made him suffer too long. She wishes that she had another beer. “You look so different,” he says and stares at her.

“It's the hair,” she croons. “See how long.” She pulls her hair over one shoulder.

“Yeah, and you've lost weight.”

“Just a little,” she says. “You know how us girls have to watch our weight. If it's one thing I can't stand, it's a woman who doesn't take care of her body.”

“Yeah,” he says and stares straight ahead. “So, how's school going?”

“Just fine!” She lights a cigarette and holds it poised so delicately in her fingers. If she glances nonchalantly to one side, she can see the fire twice, the real fire and the reflection in the car window.

“What are you taking?” Pat asks and she can tell by his surface questions that her presence is making him nervous.
He cannot control his feelings and thoughts about her and he is building up to serious things. She will make it easy for him; answer the questions.

“French II, English II, Poetry Writing, Philosophy of Religion and Geology.”

“Boy, that's a rough schedule.”

“Not really,” she says very casually and takes a long draw on her cigarette. “You see they all are basically the same course.”

Pat Reeves has to laugh at this one, just has to laugh because she is so entertaining, elegant, intelligent. “I don't see that.”

“Foundations, structures,” she says and uses her hands and eyebrows in a serious yet enticing way. “You see everything has a foundation for the formation. Rock formations, thought formations, word formations. Do you see how it all connects?”

“Not really, but I'll take your word for it.”

“Really, Pat, I'd think that you could see,” she says and pouts a pretty little perfect pout. “Why sometimes I can even use the same material over and over just in different terms, say it in English, say it in French, use geological terms, philosophical terms, poetic devices.”

“Give me an example,” he says and laughs again, this time an “I'm not believing a word of this but aren't you just cute as a bug” laugh.

“Okay.” She clears her throat. “Take for example a word like
petrify.
You know you can trace it back to a French word meaning stone or something but that's not
even important. Think about it, petrified wood, one little piece of wood hardened by years, turned to stone. It's not really wood and not really rock.”

“Go on,” he says and laughs a “this is nonsense” laugh. “I'm listening.”

“Well, don't you see? You could put it into some sort of form and the whole time it would sound like it was about a piece of petrified wood when really it would be about a person. Sort of like, ‘You can never soften me but do not pine, you may chisel the features you want and they will be mine.'”

“Oh Jo,” he says and reaches over and slaps her leg the way that good friends always do. “You had me going for awhile there.” He doesn't want to talk about this so she must laugh right along with him like it is all a joke. “Here we are.” He stops the car in front of a little white house.

“I thought your friends were students,” she says.

“They are!” He gets out and she doesn't wait for him to open her door. “All students don't live in dorms you know.”

“I know that, silly,” she says and slams her door. “I just like living in a dorm. There are so many different places you can go inside a dorm. It's like not seeing the forest for the trees.”

“I'm not even going to ask about that one,” he says and opens the door to the house. He doesn't even knock.

“Hi Pat! We were wondering where you were!” This girl wearing a skirt that looks like an old beach towel
opens the door. “And you must be Jo.”

“That's me,” she says and follows Pat Reeves into the room. She smiles and nods at everyone and they go to the kitchen where there is a keg of beer.

“Here you go,” Pat says and hands her a cup. It is a big plastic cup all to herself. “Come on and I'll introduce you. Some people from Blue Springs are supposed to be here.”

“Who? Who?” she asks in that precious way, half hoping that Red will come, half hoping that he will not. Hoping that he will so that he will see how she doesn't need him—hoping that he will not because he has ruined her life. “Love is a rose but you better not pick it,” Linda Ronstadt sings.

“Do you remember Nancy Carson and her friend Buffy?”

“Do I remember? My brother dated that whore bag for years.”

Pat looks at her real funny and so does the girl in the beach towel skirt, and another girl with long blond hair who is wearing a bright pink skirt with frogs on it that are blinding. Has she said something wrong? If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. Who the hell said that little tidbit? Had she said something wrong? Heavens no! “Those two are bad news let me tell you!” Again the funny looks. She doesn't have to eat those words. Is this a little faux pas? A little false step? Put a false foot forward and never draw it back!

“Jo's a real kidder. You just got to know her sense of
humor!” Pat slaps her on the back harder than good friends usually do and laughs. “Some people don't know when you're teasing, Jo.”

“I'm not kidding at all. Would I kid you, Pat?” she asks, bashfully, spinelessly and it brings a laugh from all. She has effects.

“One of your old loves is going to be here, too,” he says when they are seated in the room right beside the stereo. Sing it, Linda!

“Red's coming?” she asks and cannot help but laugh at the witty pun that just slid out of her mouth.

“Hell, no,” Pat says and he is a little perturbed. “Ray Peters.”

“Why would you ask Ray Peters?” she asks and sits back. Build up for a let down. Perturbation sets in. Why was there an initial shock of excitement when she thought that Red might come? It was electrifying, petrifying.

“He goes to school here.”

“Ray Peters goes to Duke,” she laughs and spills some beer down the front of her sweater. No problem, it soaks right in. “I didn't know he was smart enough.”

“Well apparently so. He got in.” Pat sits back and puts his arm around the back of the sofa. He is working up his nerve. “Are you okay, Jo?”

“Sure, why do you ask?”

“You just seem different that's all.” Pat has that glum worried look on his face that he is so famous for. He looks pitiful but at the same time he looks very much in control, sort of like Bobby.

“It's my hair, I told you. It's so long and do you know
what's funny about that? It's just the way that Red wanted it to grow and now that it's all grown out, he isn't around!” She slaps Pat on the thigh and keeps her hand there. “Isn't that a scream?” Pat wants to kiss her, she can tell and before she knows it, it will be after midnight and they will be kissing and kissing like a pair of gouramis and she will be in love. She leans forward but it is more than Pat can stand. He can't even look into her eyes and see the truth. Instead, he looks around the room, the girl in the beach towel, the girl with the froggy skirt, and then he pushes her away. Isn't that just like him, though? He wants to be subtle, discreet; Pat Reeves hasn't changed a bit.

“Maybe we need to talk, Jo,” he says and gets up and pulls her towards the kitchen. They still can't talk because the girl in the froggy skirt is standing by the keg with a boy that isn't wearing socks even though it is February. He has the sense enough to keep his loafers polished to a shiny deep burgundy but he doesn't have sense enough to wear socks in February. The boy can talk; he says, “Hi Pat, where's Trudy?”

“She went home this weekend,” Pat says and takes Jo Spencer by the arm. Froggy is staring at Jo Spencer while Pat pulls her away. He pulls her way down the long hall and into the bedroom and closes the door.

“This is breaking a rule,” she tells him but she doesn't mind. After the rule has been broken once, it doesn't matter. Isn't that what they say about a virgin? She can do it just once and then she is altered forever; there is no return. “Who's Trudy? Sounds like a cow.”

“Trudy is the girl that I'm dating,” Pat says and stares at the door.

“No, because I'm the girl that you're dating,” she says and looks at the door, too. There is nothing on that door to hold her interest.

“Look, Jo, I just wanted to explain things so that you wouldn't get any wrong ideas.” Pat looks at her squarely, straightly, seriously. “I like you a lot, you know that.”

“Yes, you've always liked me,” she says and squeezes his hand. “You've always been in love with me. I know. I know these things.”

“Maybe once I did love you, or thought that I loved you. That was a long time ago.” He squeezes her hand and then lets go. “You know we're friends, just like you used to always tell me. We're friends.”

“So, why did you ask me out then?” Jo Spencer feels like she has been socked in the stomach. “Why didn't you ask Trudy if that's who you date?”

“I told you, Trudy went home for the weekend. You're the one that called me remember?”

“No, no, I don't remember it being that way at all,” she says and gets up to walk around. There are not many places that you can go in this room. There is a beach towel skirt just like the one that that girl is wearing except in different colors, thrown across a chair. She is in that girl's room, alone with Pat Reeves, and she shouldn't be here.

“Yes you do. You called me up and since Trudy was out of town, I thought it would be a good chance for us to get together. You sounded like you needed a friend.”
He sounds pitiful, weak. How can he be so controlled?

“I've got loads of friends! All that I need, anyway.” She turns around and around and stares at the lightbulb. If she had a broom, she'd throw it down and jump over it. She was always very good at doing that, the best in the neighborhood. “Who needs 'em?”