I Love You, Beth Cooper

by Larry Doyle

  “Hwuwuw,” Denis said.

  Rich interceded, wedging a forearm between their necks and jimmying them apart. The Big Girl undocked with a wet pop, shook it off, and then fastened onto Rich. Rich grabbed her by the ears, and through a series of tugs and twists dislodged her. He steered her groping maw away and tossed it into the French Clubettes, where it lip-locked onto Elizabeth Nagle, who protested only momentarily.

  ALL THAT STOOD between Denis and reaching adulthood was Ian Packer. Packer still had a wild hair up his butt about Denis’s refusal to join in the mathletics program, which he felt had deprived him of a divisional championship. Denis declined participation because Packer made team members wear YEAH, I’M A MATHLETE T-shirts and even Denis had some status consciousness (named Rich). Packer contended the real reason was that Denis didn’t have the r3s to see who was the true Euclid of the class, Denis’s barely more perfect SATs notwithstanding. So whenever the occasion arose, as it did now, he liked to hurl a fiery equation Denis’s way.

  “Riddle me this, Cooverman,” Ian Packer said, blocking the front door. “If x is an integer—”

  “Not now, Packer.”

  “Oh, come on, this should be easy, for the valedictorian.”

  “Seven, okay?”

  Tragically for Ian Packer, the answer was seven. He stood aside.

  Through the open door, Denis saw the rest of life. It was dark, and getting chilly, but there was Rich, waiting for him on the porch.

  A SCREAMING CAME ACROSS THE ROOM. It sounded inhuman, a car alarm or air raid siren, but very clear in its meaning.

  “Asshole!”

  The shriek was piercing enough to be heard throughout the house, even within the killzone of the MAXX 2s, even under the ear cups of Zooey Bananafish, who, sensing this party was finally happening, pushed II. The sudden loss of sound pressure popped ears across the room and created an aural vacuum; all anyone could hear was the persistent ringing they would be hearing for the next two or three weeks, if they were lucky.

  Everybody looked to the staircase, the source of the scream. Valli Woolly stood about halfway down, in a stylish but easily accessible black tube dress. Lined up behind her on the steps were Kevin, Sean and the third Army Man.

  Across the room, Cammy said what Beth was thinking.

  “Choo choo.”

  DENIS COULD HAVE RUN AWAY. He could have crazy-legged it out of there, escaping under cover of ducks, humiliating himself in front of his entire class and for many classes to come. He could have done that. And he would have been happy to, but that bastard Ian Packer slammed the door on him.

  Rich reopened the door just as Kevin’s cavalry arrived, placing both him and Denis in elaborate and internationally unacceptable chokeholds.

  Kevin took his time coming down the stairs. His fury had dissipated, having unleashed a good portion of it on a thirty-four-year-old male nurse who would not tell him where Beth was or explain why he had her cell phone. Nurse Angell had also begrudgingly supplied Kevin and his troops with a deluxe assortment of pills he’d been skimming off invalids and the elderly. Accordingly, Kevin moseyed up to Denis with his pain killed, mood elevated, and erectile function greatly enhanced.

  “So…” Kevin grinned, his vocal molasses thickened into a treacly drawl, “we meet again.”

  Rich could not have been more delighted. “Blofeld in just about every Bond movie! Lon Chaney Jr. to Bela Lugosi in Abbott and Costello meet Fr—”

  With a minor adjustment of his left index finger, Sean paralyzed Rich’s windpipe. As if to further punish him, Kevin’s next line was:

  “Shall we dance?”

  Using the reserve air left in his upper throat, Rich got out, “Jack Nicholson to Michael Keaton in—” before passing out. Annoyed, Sean disengaged his kill finger and shook the boy back into consciousness. Rich mumbled something incoherent, something like urton.

  Denis had just thought of the perfect thing to say to Kevin, the thing that would keep everybody out of jail and the hospital, when Beth stepped between them. She had the saucy smirk and sloppy swagger of a person who thinks she has total command of a situation but really, really does not.

  “Kevin. Stop this now.” She raised a finger, but couldn’t keep it stationary. “Let’s just get you out of here”—she eyed Valli—“and get you tested for gonorrhea—”

  Kevin took Beth’s whole face in his hand. “Lisbee,” he said, still quite friendly sounding, his thumb and forefinger digging into her temporomandibular joints. “This isn’t about you anymore.”

  “Do you speak in nothing but clichés?” Denis blurted. (This wasn’t the perfect thing he had been thinking of saying earlier.)

  Kevin chuckled and roundhoused Denis in the abdomen, never letting go of Beth’s face. Denis’s arms were pinned back, preventing him from doubling over in pain but not the pain part, a sucking, searing, intensely special feeling that made Denis realize that he had never truly been punched in the stomach before, and that all the emotional setbacks he had previously compared to being-punched-in-the-stomach weren’t all that bad.

  “Oh, Denis,” Beth said. This was the first time she had not used the affectionate yet trivializing Denis Cooverman construction, which Denis noted but did not dwell on, given more pressing matters.

  “Promise,” he said, “if he kills me, you’ll break up with him.”

  Kevin placed a valet ticket in Beth’s palm and squeezed her fingers around it. “Now why don’t you get that pretty little drunken butt of yours in my vehicle,” he gallantly ordered her. “And sit there.”

  Kevin moseyed off, signaling his soldiers to follow. They frog-marched Denis and Rich with them. Beth hung her head as Valli Woolly wiggled past.

  “Gonorrhea?” Valli sniffed. “You wish.”

  ACTING ON PRIMAL INSTINCT, the partygoers pulled back to open a killing floor. Denis was dragged to the far end; Kevin assumed the lion position on the opposite side. Everyone politely awaited the bloodletting.

  “Are you just gonna let this guy murder me?” Denis asked his classmates.

  They were.

  “Wait.”

  Valli Woolly wiggled over to Denis. She pushed into him, her breasts poking his chest, her nose stabbing at his face. Adenoids quivering, she hissy-whispered, “I am not worthless. Look at this party. Look at all my friends.”

  She smelled like masturbation.

  Wiggling away, she waved regally and decreed, “Now you can kill him.”

  It was official. Denis was to be executed and no one would save him. Beth was gone, doing what she was told. Rich was seriously indisposed, and would be lucky to survive himself. Cammy and Treece were off to his right, Cammy with an expression that said, This certainly is an awkward social situation, and Treece mouthing, Good luck. Across the room, Patty Keck watched with worry and potato chips. Skeletori, beside her, snacked on no-fat fingernails. The Big Girl was holding hands with Elizabeth Nagle, wondering who the dead kid was. Ian Packer and his fellow mathletes lined the staircase, at a safe distance should the proceedings devolve into a wider geek beatdown. To Denis’s left, a few rows back, Divya Gupta sat on the shoulders of two Stevenson gymnasts. Denis had never seen her smile before.

  Valli Woolly’s party had accomplished something. She wasn’t the least popular person in the class anymore. Her parents would be so prou—

  Valli Woolly’s parents! Surely Mrs. Woolly wouldn’t want Denis’s common blood all over her Ethan Allen furnishings; Mr. Woolly wouldn’t want Denis’s skull smashed repeatedly into his thirteen-inch woofers and titanium dome tweeters.

  “Help!” Denis yelled. “Adults!”

  He’d have to yell louder than that. Mr. and Mrs. Woolly were at their condo in Cabo. Adult supervision had been left to Valli’s twenty-three-year-old brother, Willie, who had taken his heroin for the evening and was in his bed passively participating in a threesome with Ryan Petrovic and Lucy Amo, who only discovered Willie after they were already deep into the proceedings, and were using him mostly f
or leverage.

  Denis’s call for adult help broke the tension. Everybody had a good laugh, especially Kevin, who kept laughing as he started toward Denis.

  Denis’s military escort shoved him into the killing zone.

  “YO!”

  DENIS KNEW THAT YO! He hated that Yo! He was so happy to hear that Yo!

  Coach Raupp muscled his way onto the killing floor, man-walked up between the predator and his prey and placed a smallish hand on each of their chests.

  “Okay, ladies, some ground rules…”

  “Wait,” Denis said. “You’re not going to stop it?”

  “All I want is a fair fight.”

  “Fair? He’s a trained killer!”

  “You should’ve thought of that before you raided his cabbage patch.” Coach Raupp pistol-pointed as he said it. “Don’t worry, Cooverman. Just remember what I taught you in boxing.”

  “I opted out of that unit!” Denis protested. “I had a note!”

  Coach Raupp addressed to the crowd: “Let that be a lesson to you juniors.” Then to the combatants: “No biting, scratching, hair-pulling, any other sissy business…”

  “Head butting?” inquired Kevin.

  “Go crazy. But once your opponent loses consciousness, the beating is over.”

  Coach Raupp stepped back, raising a hand.

  “Aaaannnnd…fight!”

  Kevin presented his fists, knuckles out. He hopped up and down, scissoring his legs back and forth, thrusting out his lower lip.

  “Shall we dance?” he repeated for the benefit of those who had not heard him the first time.

  The crowd loved it, at Denis’s expense, as usual.

  Kevin didn’t seem very serious about killing Denis, not as much as he wanted to make the slaying fun to watch. Denis, unaware of the change in Kevin’s pharmaceutical status, found this chipper villainy oddly disturbing, though not nearly as disconcerting as his opponent’s rather noticeable hard-on.

  “Yo!” Coach Raupp snapped his fingers in Denis’s agog eyes. “Dukes up, Cooverman!”

  Denis kept his dukes down.

  “I’m not going to fight.”

  “Aw, Cooverman!” Coach Raupp screamed. “Don’t be a pussy, you pussy!”

  Denis was going to be a pussy. A pussy with a plan.

  “Look, Kevin,” he began, with the studied reasonability that had won him many worthless debate trophies. “You’ve won. You got the girl. I’ve been humiliated in front of all of my peers. I apologize and surrender unconditionally. Is that satisfactory?”

  Kevin punched Denis in the mouth.

  HE DIDN’T RECALL FALLING, but warm liquid had collected in the back of his throat, leading Denis to conclude he was supine. He swallowed and was slightly surprised to taste blood. He ran his tongue along the inner rims of his teeth. None was outright missing but two incisors on the upper left were loose. That side of his face burned and stung and ached and felt wet and sticky.

  Denis opened his eyes. Zooey Bananafish was staring upside down at him.

  “Any last requests?”

  “‘Here She Comes’ by Very Sad Boy.”

  Zooey’s head exited and was replaced with a right-side-up Kevin face.

  “Upsie,” Kevin’s face said.

  “I’m bleeding. Happy now?”

  In answer, Kevin reached down, took Denis by the shirt, and lifted him to his feet and two inches farther, dangling him on tiptoes. Adding insult to impending injury, Zooey Bananafish had overruled his last song request, replacing the downbeat dirge with some uptempo sino-blaxploitation. Kevin seemed to approve, pursing his lips with white-boy negritude and bopping Denis up and down to the beat.

  “‘Battle Without Honor or Humanity,’ Tomoyasu Hotei,” Rich explained to Sean, “originally used in Shin Jingi Naki Tatakai, 2000, Junji Sakamoto, recycled in the chop-socky pastiche Kill Bill, Volume One, 2003, Mister Quentin Tarantino.”

  “Fuckin’ A,” Sean agreed.

  Kevin continued to shake Denis like a maraca, apparently waiting to pummel him at the upcoming horn break. This was beyond embarrassing. It was sorry enough to be beaten to the delight of your peers; to be made to perform meat puppetry as your own premurder entertainment was at the very least unsporting.

  “I am not your plaything!” Denis said, all pissy insistence. “Hit me or put me down!”

  “Glad to oblige.” Kevin cocked his fist.

  Then, as is often the case with carefully planned military operations, something huge jumped on Kevin’s back.

  “Leave my friend alone!” Greg Saloga yelled, latching on to Kevin’s eyebrow ridges and yanking hard. Kevin let go of Denis and staggered backward, spinning and stumbling as the big red boy clawed his face and throat. The third Army Man stepped in, and in a flurry of expert hand combat mixed liberally with playground flailing, disengaged Greg Saloga and secured his arms. This annoyed Greg Saloga. He screamed and threw his head back, butting his captor’s eyes. The soldier fell to the carpet.

  Sean released Rich and grabbed a crystal ladle from the champagne fountain. He swung it at Greg Saloga, who allowed the leaded glass cudgel to shatter harmlessly on his temple. Greg Saloga then harmfully kicked Sean in the testicles. Sean went down.

  Coach Raupp stormed over to Greg Saloga.

  “Yo, time out, Saloga—”

  Greg Saloga punched Coach Raupp in the throat. He went down.

  Kevin, in villain tradition, had stood back and watched his henchmen vanquished like henchmice. With the seething hulk of Greg Saloga now facing him directly, Kevin had the option of fighting this obviously less skilled and now exhausted boy, or honoring the other villain tradition and running away. Kevin began to edge back toward the door. There was no need. Greg Saloga glanced at the inert and writhing bodies around him and fell to his knees, letting out the most primal wail anyone had heard in a couple hundred thousand years. He covered his face and screamed into his hands, “Why must I…hurt?”

  An electric whirr preceded Becky Reese as she maneuvered her wheelchair through the crowd and motored over to Greg Saloga. He grasped both wheels and dropped his terrible head into her withered lap. He sobbed, and she stroked his greasy hair, for wasn’t he also one of God’s creatures after all? And the only boy in the entire class who had ever voluntarily talked to her?

  Everyone had forgotten about the execution of Denis Cooverman, and were caught up in the heartrending saga of borderline retarded Greg Saloga and his repulsive love for the genetically defective Becky Something, until Greg Saloga looked up and screamed, “Stop looking at us!”

  Everybody stopped looking at them, and turned back to…Denis?

  Kevin himself was surveilling the perimeter for his missing plaything:

  Rich was at the champagne fountain, rubbing his raw neck on the ice bison…

  some kid…

  Cammy staring back with light contempt…

  Treece with vacant evasiveness…

  another kid…

  nice tits…

  Valli with a needy grin…

  “Yeeuh! Stop breathing up my skirt!”

  Kevin ratcheted back to Treece. She stepped sideways, swatting behind her, revealing Denis crouched there, breathing up her skirt.

  Denis reflexively went back into debate mode. “Kevin, let’s assess.” The swollen lower lip and blood dripping off his chin undermined his rhetorical authority to some extent. “It appears as if I’m gonna require major dental work, which I think we can agree was your ultimate goal…”

  Kevin did not agree. He started coming for Denis, and he wasn’t laughing anymore.

  Another huge something jumped on his back. This time it was the Big Girl. She was not trying to save Denis. She just thought it was a party game.

  “Wooo!” she whooped, riding Kevin. “Wooooooo!”

  From there it degenerated quickly. Assorted skirmishes, some four years coming, broke out. Eric Gallagan and Brett Pister mixed it up over their junior year Young Trump project, which failed because Gall
agan used too much peanut butter or because Pister couldn’t market fresh assholes at a homo convention. Jon Eggert had always wanted to punch someone and thought this the ideal cover; unfortunately he chose Aaron Farrington, who had just completed his black belt in Kuen-Do and had been looking for an ethically acceptable situation in which to use it. The gearheads started peeling the Mathletes off the stairs, one at a time.

  “Yeeee-ha!” the Big Girl yelled in response to Kevin hurling himself backward into a wall in an attempt to dislodge her.

  Stuart Kramer tried to get a food fight going, first by chanting “Food fight! Food fight!” and then by flinging a couple of fistfuls of corn relish around, but nobody took up the challenge, perhaps because once a class clown graduates, he loses all his power to amuse. Valli Woolly emerged from the bathroom, shrieking, “Which one of you degenerates pissed all over the floor in there?!”

  In the midst of all this, Denis made his escape. He skirted along the buffet table toward the door, dodging assorted scuffles and avoiding anybody he might have referenced in his valediction. He had gone as far as antipasti, just flatbreads from the door, when he heard a monstrous bellow that seemed to be directed at him.

  It was Kevin, of course. He lumbered under the Big Girl, lurching toward Denis, lunging with arms outstretched in the manner of classic monsters and zombies. Denis responded with a classic silent scream.

  And that’s when the front of Valli Woolly’s house exploded.

  THE INITIAL BLAST CAME from behind the buffet table, which upended in rather dramatic fashion, sending chip shrapnel across the room and spraying dips and salsas in less dynamic but more devastating arcs. Denis took a platter in the chest. The two-story bay window blew out at ground level, with the upper panes raining down in a cascading shatter of glass. All this was accompanied by the requisite screaming, shrieking, and religious conversion.