I Love You, Beth Cooper

by Larry Doyle

  Rich sat in the middle of the couch, gripping vodka and snack cake, with the quick rigidity of a rabbit surrounded by animals that eat rabbits.

  Treece was curled up on one side of him, and Cammy was stretching her long legs, resting her toes on his knees. They were both holding up freshly peeled Suzy Qs, spokesmodel style.

  “Watch,” said Cammy.

  “And learn,” said Treece.

  The two girls oriented their pastries vertically, and proceeded to lick the creme from their crevices in alternating short and long strokes.

  Rich wondered what the MPAA Ratings Board would make of this.

  Cammy pulled her face out of her Suzy Q; she had a white dollop on her nose. She put a foot in Rich’s lap.

  “You cool?”

  “Long as everyone else is cool.”

  Treece leaned in and ran a creme-filled tongue up his cheek.

  “See?” Rich said. “I’m liking that. I’m”—he pointed to his crotch—“reacting to that.”

  “How about this?” Treece gave Rich what he had previously known as a Wet Willie. Something about it being a girl’s tongue in his ear and not some guy’s licked finger altered the tenor.

  “Oh, yeah.” Rich swallowed. “That works.”

  Treece continued wet-working the left side of his face, and Cammy began to unbutton his shirt. Rich wondered, How far do they plan on taking this joke? Were there people waiting to jump out when he took off his pants? No, they could have done that back in the girls’ locker room. Maybe this was a game of sex chicken. If that was the case, Rich thought, then cluck cluck cluck cluck cluck.

  “Hey, this is all great and all, but, unfortunately, I left my latex sheaths back at the house—”

  “Don’t worry,” Cammy said, twirling Rich out of his shirt. “Treece has got some. Don’t you, Treece?”

  Treece reached behind her back and her top sprang off. “Gobs.”

  DENIS COOVERMAN WAS MAKING OUT with Beth Cooper.

  The corporeal reality of making out with Beth Cooper was different than all the hypothetical times he had made out with her. It felt better, and hurt more. Also, even in his wildest dream scenarios, it was always just him and Beth, and not a carnal blood orgy of the two of them and nineteen thousand six-legged females with wings.

  More troubling were the stylistic differences. Where Denis was a (mostly theoretical) adherent of soft kisses and slow caresses, Beth was apparently more of a rutter. She had pulled him on top of her within moments and had her hands under the poncho, grabbing and scratching his back. That was much appreciated. Yet Denis did not know what to make of it when she wrapped her thighs around one of his legs and started humping him dryly and, he couldn’t help but notice, fiercely.

  She was making a lot of noise. Louder and more guttural than was warranted, Denis felt, but something else as well. Intermingled with sexual growls and bucking grunts was a high keening moan, one Denis knew from his reading could signify pleasure but which he sensed did not.

  Denis sat up.

  “Listen…I’m sorry.” And he was truly, profoundly sorry, and would be much sorrier later, he suspected, and for a long time after that. But he had to ask: “Why me?”

  Beth remained on her back on the deck. Her eyes glistened, too much.

  “Because it’s graduation night,” she said. “And to not be with someone would just be too sad.”

  Don’t be sad. I can’t stand you sad.

  “Good answer,” Denis said, and climbed back on.

  I don’t want to be

  just your sweetest memory

  CAMMY, TREECE AND RICH HUDDLED NAKED under leopard, calf and sheep skins, respectively. They all had the glazed expressions of people who had just shared a terribly intimate horrific mistake.

  “That was,” Cammy said, “expeditious.”

  Treece found the silver lining. “At least we know you’re not gay.”

  “Tell that to my dad,” Rich said.

  “What’s his number?”

  Rich’s father wouldn’t have answered. Rich’s mother was sitting by the phone, waiting to hear back from the Coovermans and the police. But Mr. Munsch was fast asleep, as he had been for much of Rich’s life, because, as he liked to explain at parties or anytime his BAL went over .08, “After three daughters, I really wanted a boy.”

  What wasn’t being discussed in the cabin was what had happened after Rich had proved he was not gay. That took only a few seconds, but then things…continued. Rich had originally thought no one had noticed his startling emission and continued to play along, but it gradually dawned on him that his participation was not strictly necessary. He was not having sex with two girls. They were having sex with each other on top of him. Rich withdrew to a neutral corner and watched, with distressing disinterest, as matters reached mutually agreed-upon ends.

  “And you two can’t be gay,” Rich pointed out, “because my penis was in the mix.”

  “Right,” Cammy said.

  Treece frowned. “I just realized. My dad’s juices are probably all over this couch!”

  Even worse: “And Cheryl’s.”

  Treece shuddered, then seemed absolutely fine. “This is why I’m so screwed up,” she said matter-of-factly.

  DENIS WAS TRYING to get into the spirit of things, servicing Beth while ignoring the sorrowful surroundings. As Beth bucked into him, he bucked back, until they had a satisfying rhythm going. On his own volition, he had put his hand into Beth’s blouse and had managed, with some difficulty, to roll and fold her brassiere up around her neck.

  He fondled her breasts, stroking and pinching and randomly manipulating them, not thinking the whole time, Holy crap, I’m fondling Beth Cooper’s breasts, but praying, Please, God, make this feel good.

  His other hand rested on her hip bone, occasionally squeezing it. Beth took the hand by surprise and slapped it on her panties. Denis’s fingers twitched, then settled into the fabric. He felt a raised stitching, and giggled into Beth’s mouth.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Hello.”

  “You did look!” She slapped him on the ass. Once there, her index finger found the second largest breach in his underpants.

  “Woo,” she said, wiggling her finger inside.

  Denis reacted much like those foxes in that video Ariel Kaminer always played in the cafeteria during lunch, in other words, as if 240 volts of electricity had been pumped up his anus. It really fluffed out his fur.

  To say he flew off her would be an exaggeration, but he was off before either of them knew it was happening. He sat up on the dock, trying to catch his breath. This was where he would ordinarily spiral into abject mortification, wishing he were dead or invisible, or vaporized, accomplishing both. Instead he found that between gasps he was laughing, at himself, and happily.

  “That was…ha, I was taken by surprise there,” he said. “It wasn’t you. I’m sure you did it perfectly. I’m just…unaccustomed…Let’s try that again, shall we?”

  Beth was already sitting up, lighting a cigarette.

  “It’s okay.” She left her brassiere dangling around her neck.

  “No, really,” Denis said. “I would very much like to.”

  “Maybe later.”

  Goddammit goddammit goddammit goddammit goddammit goddammit goddammit goddammit goddammit goddammit goddammit goddammit goddammit goddammit goddammit goddammit goddammit goddammit goddammit.

  Denis tried to quickly retrace the steps that had taken him to this point, not this point but the one immediately preceding it, the one with him on top of Beth. He couldn’t find a way back on top. Events and actions stretched into the past in an unbreakable chain of cause and effect, to the talk they just had, to all the talking, back through each of his injuries, each a new intimacy between them, to Rich answering the door when she arrived, to the moment in his speech in which he said I love you, Beth Cooper, to the week before, when Rich talked him into saying it, to the first time he sat behind her and smelled her hair. There
were so many things he would do differently, but any of them done differently would have arrived at a different moment, and the odds of any of those other moments involving Denis Cooverman on top of Beth Cooper were incomprehensibly high.

  And so, he decided to take another tack. It was a time-honored one, and one that showed our Little Denis was becoming a man, unfortunately.

  “Beth,” he said, putting his arm around her. “I really do lo—”

  “Oh, fuck me!”

  Only she didn’t mean that. She meant that Denis’s face frightened and repulsed her. Given that only a few minutes before she had found it kissable, that was saying something. Now, by the light of the submerging moon, Beth could see that Denis’s face, in addition to its previously catalogued irregularities, was a swarming mass of mosquito bites. So much blood coagulated and contused up there it was rather remarkable that he had been able to maintain an erection all this time.

  Beth reached out and touched Denis’s cheek gently.

  “That must itch.”

  “I was distracted before, but now it does, yeah.” Denis scratched, leaving four red streaks down his cheek.

  “Don’t do that,” Beth said.

  Bloody mosquito bites were a turnoff with no turn back on, Denis realized. “So,” he asked for posterity, “am I the most hideous creature you ever kissed?”

  “God no,” Beth said without hesitation, making Denis feel both good and bad.

  Beth stood.

  Yes, Denis realized, it was time to go.

  He turned to get up and that’s when he saw the two headlights, very far apart, coming very fast.

  THE HUMMER RUMBLED ONTO THE DOCK at a speed inadvisably high for a rotting, waterlogged structure built by a drunk handyman. The vehicle didn’t indicate any intention of stopping. When it did finally do so, five inches from the end, Denis was in Lake Hakaka. Beth stood at the edge of the dock, her knees touching the bumper.

  22.

  DEATH IN DENIS

  MAKE UP YOUR MIND, DUDE, IS HE GONNA SHIT OR IS HE GONNA KILL US?

  JEFF SPICOLI

  SEX WAS A TERRIFIC ICEBREAKER.

  “Really?” Rich asked Cammy. “You’re studying acting at U of I? ¡Yo tambien! I mean: Me, too. And directing. I’m in business but I’m transferring as soon as my dad’s not paying attention.”

  “Your dad sounds like a real prize.”

  “Oh, you know, he doesn’t hit me.”

  They were all huddled together under the bearskin rug, nude but aggressively oblivious to their recent sexual interactivity.

  “Wait, if you want to be an actress, why weren’t you in drama club?”

  “Survival.”

  “Good call.”

  “Hey,” Treece said. “What dorm are you in?”

  “Florida Avenue.”

  “Us, too!”

  When Treece and Cammy decided to room together, they hadn’t given it much thought. Not like they were now.

  The silence was awkward for only a moment, because of all the screaming.

  THREE NAKED TEENAGERS shuffled to the window under cover of bear.

  “What the Christ?” Rich said.

  Sean was dragging Denis out from under the dock as the one called Dustin struggled to maintain control of Beth, whose kicking and shrieking showed a lot of stamina after the night she had had. Kevin was in the Hummer, trying to back up off the narrow dock and swearing quite a bit.

  “How’d they find us?”

  “Oopsie,” Treece said.

  Cammy’s right eyebrow requested elaboration.

  “I kind of invited Sean up here before,” Treece explained, before getting defensive. “Well, he should’ve known he wasn’t invited anymore!”

  Rich had a strange feeling, a sort of déjà vu, that he had been here before, only he had been Kevin Bacon. And then he remembered where he had seen this: “Come on, I love you.”—Kevin Bacon to Jeannine Taylor, shortly before they fornicated on a bunk bed and he was impaled by an arrow through the throat, in Friday the 13th, 1980, Sean Cunningham. And then he remembered the countless other times he had seen the same setup, always ending the same basic way, with sometimes clever variations.

  It fairly freaked him out.

  “Don’t you get it?” He rattled the bearskin to get their attention. “We’re stupid teenagers who just had sex in a cabin by a lake! We’re dead! We are so very dead.”

  Cammy was unfazed. “I’d hardly call that sex.”

  Treece, meanwhile, was getting excited. She grabbed them both by the shoulders and momentously announced, “I have an idea!”

  She was disappointed in their reaction.

  “I have ideas!” she pouted.

  “SEE THAT?” Kevin jabbed at the front grille of the Hummer, which looked remarkably intact, considering. “My dad is gonna shit,” he whined, mostly to himself.

  “That’s your father’s car?” Denis was bewildered. “I thought you were from Texas, or a swamp.”

  “He’s from Glenview,” Beth spat, still flailing against her restraint. “He went to Maine North. He only talks that way to be cool.”

  “Talking like a hillbilly is cool?”

  Kevin sauntered over to Denis. “We’ll see how cool you talk when I’m through with y’all.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s a misuse of y’all.”

  Kevin whispered in Denis’s ear: “By the time I am through with y’all, y’all will be begging me to kill y’all.”

  Denis smiled.

  Kevin took umbrage.

  “Is that a cliché?” He pronounced it with excessive southern elongation. “Is this a cliché?”

  Kevin punched Denis in the left eye, the only unaltered portion of his facial topology.

  “Stop punching me!” Kevin’s Denis was a fluttery, effeminate clown. “Talk about your clichés.”

  As he passed Beth, Kevin noticed her brassiere necklace. He registered this with feigned disinterest. He flicked her hard on the nipple.

  “Dick,” she said.

  “Whore,” he replied, both syllables.

  “As matter of fact, it is,” mumbled Denis, returning to full consciousness a few beats behind the conversation. With his less recently pummeled eye, Denis watched Kevin return from the back of the Hummer with jumper cables.

  “Gentlemen,” Kevin addressed his military colleagues, “remember all those excellent techniques the CIA taught us, which we were subsequently forbidden to employ?”

  The troops nodded approvingly.

  SUDDENLY, A FEROCIOUS WILDCAT leapt out of the bushes!

  “Ya!” Sean said, throwing Beth at it.

  Further suddenly, a huge owl flew at the Dustin guy! He dropped Denis and batted about his head frantically.

  “Run!” Treece yelled, holding the owl.

  Cammy thrust the wildcat at Sean again, and he reflexively cowered.

  Denis and Beth ran past Kevin, who, though disappointed in the performance of his troops, was amused by the outcome and not terribly concerned.

  “Now just what did y’all hope to accomplish with that?” Kevin mused, as he pivoted into the barrel of a gun.

  “Create a temporary distraction,” said Rich, “so they could escape and I could get the drop on you.” He wore the bear as a cowl and cape, its claws draped across his chest. Unlike the girls, he had remained otherwise naked, excepting the condom, which added a certain tribal quality. “Treece’s idea.”

  Treece curtseyed with her owl.

  “You don’t know how to shoot that thing.” Kevin took a step toward Rich.

  Rich had never held a gun before, but had mimed one a million times. It was a showy, movie move, but the gun cocked just the same.

  Kevin stopped. “It isn’t even loaded.”

  This was Rich’s best impression.

  “You gotta ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?”

  “Oh,” Treece exclaimed, “I know that one!”

  Kevin put up his hands. “Let’s cool it, oka
y, guy?” He dropped the army accent, sounding much more like the teenager he still was. “We were just goofing on you. Maybe we went a little too far. But if you shoot us, what’s that going to look like?”

  “Self-defense,” Cammy said.

  “Enough.” Denis shook his head. “Kevin, just get in your dad’s car and drive away. Don’t come back. Never bother Beth again…”

  “Denis,” Beth chided.

  “Okay,” Denis revised. “Never bother me again.”

  Rich gestured toward the Hummer with the rifle. “You heard the Coove.”

  Denis rolled his eyes.

  Kevin, Sean and Dustin marched with Rich at their backs. Rich, imitating a move he had seen in Cool Hand Luke, Deliverance, et al., stuck the rifle butt in the crook of his arm and let the gun swing down at his side, casual-like.

  The barrel fell off.

  “Yee,” Rich said in a tiny voice. He dropped to the ground, scrambling to stick the barrel back into the stock. He was quickly surrounded by three sets of black khakis.

  RICH WAS ON HIS STOMACH, his wrists and ankles bound together with jumper cables, the ends of which were clamped to his ears. He rocked back and forth on the dock.

  “Could someone turn me around, so I could see?”

  Sean kicked Rich in the head, spinning him toward the lake, where the action was.

  “Thanks, dude.”

  “Any time.”

  Beth, Cammy and Treece watched forlornly as the canoe paddled further into the lake.

  “Cheer up, ladies,” Sean said. “Once Michaels teaches mini-Romeo a lesson, we’re going to party.”

  “I’m kind of partied out,” Treece said.

  “No,” Dustin said, “you’re not.”

  EARLY TWILIGHT gloomily illuminated the small canoe as it slid across the dead lake. Denis was paddling. Kevin played coxswain, smacking Denis every few seconds to keep him on task. It was more humiliating than painful at this point.

  “Your error was not striking when you had tactical advantage back there.”

  Denis kept his head lowered and continued paddling.