4: Party
“Get up and do it AGAIN!” Decker yelled. Breathing hard, I pushed myself up off of the mat. I was shaky but I got to my feet. Aryeh stood there, patiently waiting for me to get my bearings. It was very polite of him to be so considerate while issuing his beatings.
Taking a deep breath, I nodded and Aryeh came at me again. He was, of course, holding back, but I was having difficulty in mastering this move. Corwin had picked it up handily, and even Triana seemed to be doing better in hand to hand combat than I. I’d never been in a fist-fight in my life, and was ill-prepared for this sort of thing.
Aryeh swung his fist out, a violent right hook. I moved, and everything happened in slow motion. As his fist came around, I dodged to the right, grabbed his arm, and flipped him over my shoulder. He landed on the mat with a loud FWAP sound and looked up at me with a toothy grin.
“Very good, Hopper,” he said. “I knew you’d get it. Now I slowed down to make it easier for you, so next time I’ll go just a bit faster, okay? The trick is to be fluid. This isn’t about strength and aggression, though those are assets.” He stood up, straightening his protective headgear. “It’s about flexibility. You use the other man’s strength against him, let him waste it trying to hit you. Then you surprise him with speed and violence. Also remember that you are a very big young man. When I’m finished with you you’ll be as strong as an ox, and you have body mass on your side. Use it. Smaller opponents may be faster and more agile than you, but you can use your size to absorb their attacks and overpower them.”
Aryeh was a former Israeli commando and Mossad agent. He made a lot more money in the mercenary business, though. Apparently he and Decker went way back, though neither of them talked about the past much.
What Aryeh did talk about was hand to hand combat. He’d been an instructor for the Israeli Special Forces and really knew his stuff. He was used to teaching out of shape kids how to kill with their bare hands, and I was doing my best to learn. It was a frustratingly slow process for me, though. Decker absolutely insisted that all of us become as lethal as possible. Even Triana, who served as our tech geek and rarely went on operations, had to learn how to shoot and how to fight.
I was a big kid, clumsy and awkward to boot. As such I presented a special challenge to Aryeh, but he seemed to revel in it. He kept pushing me to try harder and never let me quit. To emphasize that last point, if I whined about wanting to quit I’d have to move fast to dodge a boot to the gut. He was a harsh instructor, but even I was making progress under his tutelage.
I’d done much better with firearms. Hawk was an excellent instructor, even considering that before this, I’d never fired anything bigger than a .22 in my life. I’d progressed rapidly with handgun, rifle, and shotgun, and Hawk told me he was impressed. He chided me for my choice of pistol, a 9mm CZ-85B, but I liked the Czech gun and it shot well. I did okay with Decker’s CAR-15, though I really preferred the powerful .308-caliber carbine that Hawk used. Mostly, though, I shot the Chinese AK-47 they’d given me. It wasn’t nearly as nice as Hawk’s carbine or as slick as Decker’s CAR, but it was easy to use and was always reliable.
I loved the shooting. Hawk wanted me to try his revolvers, and I was looking forward to that. I wasn’t so sure about the martial arts, though. It seemed like little more than an excuse for them to pummel me, and I honestly wondered when I’d ever have cause to use what I was learning.
***
I found myself thinking that all of these college house parties were the same. I looked around at my surroundings; people had had formed into small groups and were chatting loudly. The air stank of cigarette smoke and booze, and the place was littered with brown bottles and those ubiquitous red plastic cups.
Austin, Rebecca, and I sat with a couple of their geeky friends from the Art & Design Department. Rebecca had had more to drink than Austin and was giggling loudly at everything. Austin had become incessantly chatty, and the drunker he got the more he talked. With us were two of their friends, a big guy with a buzzed head and a stubbly beard, and another kid with long sideburns and a funny little goatee. Also sitting with us was a skinny girl whose name I didn’t know. Rebecca kept looking at me and grinning. It seemed like the more this girl had to drink (her name was Trisha, I think) the closer to me she’d sit.
Holy crap, I thought to myself. I’m making time. With a girl. I was going to have to thank Becky for this later.
Our little cluster of chairs was in a corner, with a coffee table in the middle, away from the rest of the crowd. We discussed nothing of importance, but were having a good time. I didn’t know Austin’s friends, but they were a hoot. I was having a ball just listening to them go back and forth with each other.
The rest of the party seemed to be dying, though. It was about that time, nearly three in the morning. Quite a few people had passed out already, though a few still shuttled back and forth up and down the stairs. Upstairs, of course, there were rooms for having sex or smoking marijuana (or possibly some combination thereof). So yeah, it was a pretty typical college party, and I was sure I was the only one there drinking a Mountain Dew. I hate Mountain Dew.
There was one other group of people at the party that were being loud, though. That is to say, one member of the group was being loud.
“Who the **** is that?” I asked of my group, looking over at him. He was a lean, short, pretty-boy with an obnoxious voice. He was loudly discussing white water rafting or something to a group of drunk freshman girls, and he had them utterly captivated. He smoked a tiny cigar of some kind and laughed at all of his own jokes.
“That’s Cory Walker,” one of Austin’s friends said.
“Yeah,” Austin agreed, “he’s a rich kid. His dad is like some big shot lawyer down state. He has all kinds of money.”
“So what the ****’s he doing at Northern?” I asked. A fair question. NMU isn’t exactly Ivy League.
“He’s too stupid to get into Tech,” Rebecca said with a red faced giggle.
“And State won’t take him,” Austin’s other friend agreed. We all laughed.
“So he’s an Art major?” I asked.
“Sort of,” Austin said. “He does metal sculptures. It’s bad. Really, really bad.” His friends laughed again.
“He does get the girls, though,” someone said.
“I see that,” I replied, watching him. There were four girls sitting around him, red cups in hand, giggling at his lame jokes and hanging off of every word. He continued to blather on about kayaking, rock climbing, and how freaking awesome he thought he was. I rolled my eyes.
“He’s a ****ing *******,” Rebecca said suddenly. We all looked at her in surprise.
“Language, young lady,” I said, laughing. It wasn’t like Becky to swear quite so loudly.
“He wouldn’t stop hitting on me,” she went on. “I finally told him just to leave me alone, and he called me a bitch, and…”
“He what? When the ****…?” Austin cut in.
“Okay, settle down kids,” I said. “**** ‘im anyway, he’s an asshat.” I gestured at him with my thumb as I said this. That proved to be a mistake, as he was looking in our direction as I did so.
“Hey!” he yelled. I ignored him and continued sipping my Mountain Dew. I wasn’t going to get into it with this guy.
“HEY! You!” He yelled again, louder this time. The room began to quiet down as everyone sensed the disturbance. I continued to ignore him.
“HEY! I’m talking to you! Yeah, you! With the glasses! You got a ****in’ problem with me?” Everyone was quiet now, and all eyes were on me.
God damn it, I thought. I honestly didn’t know what to say to him. I was never good at situations like this. As I came of age, I had two methods of dealing with people: ignore them or kill them. I know that sounds terrible, but that’s the life of a professional bag man, and that’s the environment I grew up in. Your only friends were your comrades on your team. Everyone else was either a target, a client, or someone that would sing to the cops. So you learned to keep to yourself, and social situations were often a little awkward for me.
Cory approached, striding towards us confidently. You can tell a lot about a man from the way he carries himself, and Cory moved with an arrogant air. It was more than self-confidence; it was ego, undoubtedly bolstered by a lifetime of getting everything he wanted. He seemed self-conscious about his height, though, and tried to puff himself up. One of his girls moved with him, hanging off his arm and loudly chewing on gum. She was obviously amused by the entire situation.
“So what’s the problem big guy?” Cory said, standing over me. Big guy. I was quickly losing patience with him, and everyone in the room was still staring at me. Still, the best thing to do would be to swallow my pride and walk away, I thought to myself. I didn’t need any kind of exposure, and I sure as hell didn’t need to talk to the Marquette Police. Punching this ****** bag in his loud mouth was not the best way to resolve this, however tempting it seemed. I didn’t stand up.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he said with an arrogant gleam in his eye. “You just keep your mouth shut. I’m wearing the daddy pants here.” As if to prove his masculine prowess, he took the girl in his arm and sloppily French-kissed her while grabbing her butt. A black thong was showing from the tops of her low-rider jeans, and he snapped her waistband as he came up for air. She laughed out loud at this.
“You ****ing skank!” someone yelled from across the room. All eyes shot to an inebriated young woman who had just come down the stairs. Her blond hair was mussed, and her short skirt was wrinkled. She stormed over towards Cory, wobbling on her high heeled clogs. She wasn’t focused on him, though.
“Lisa how could you do this to me?” she said loudly to the girl Cory had just kissed. She put her hands on her hips and glared at her (former?) friend. If looks could kill…
“Vanessa, I…” her friend started, but Vanessa wasn’t having any of it.
“You slut! And you,” she said, looking over at Cory at last.
“Who’s that?” I asked, leaning over towards Rebecca.
“Vanessa Tyler,” Rebecca replied. “Cory’s girlfriend. They were upstairs doing it earlier. I guess she passed out again.”
“Former girlfriend?” I asked. She was a hottie.
“I doubt it,” Rebecca said. “They do this like twice a month.” Vanessa continued to bitch Cory out, and everyone was staring at them. People were starting to laugh, and Cory was obviously embarrassed. The problem is, when people like Cory get embarrassed, they feel the need to reinforce to everyone how tough they are. I saw it coming before it actually happened, and sure enough…
“Shut UP, bitch!” Cory yelled finally. Vanessa slapped him across the mouth. The audible smack resonated through the room, and afterwards you could’ve heard a pin drop. Cory visibly fumed for a moment, then with both hands shoved Vanessa roughly. She stumbled to the floor, and my heart dropped into my stomach. Oh hell, I thought. This is gonna be a long night. I stood up.
“Mike…” Austin warned. I ignored him. I felt the sudden anger subside, replaced by the calm. I strode over to Cory, though he didn’t notice me. He was glaring at Vanessa, who sat on the floor, sobbing now.
I tapped him on the shoulder. As he turned to me, I violently cracked him upside the head with my left fist. He spun around and fell to the floor, and I stood there looking down at him. He was shocked, but his shock turned to anger when he touched his nose and found the trickle of blood there. I waited for him to get up.
He swung at me with a punch of his own. It was slow and clumsy in his intoxicated state, though, and I dodged it easily. As his arm swung past me, I grabbed with my left hand. I grabbed his left shoulder with my right hand, and used his momentum to flip him around. I brought his left arm up behind his back, bending it at an unnatural angle, and slammed Cory against the wall. I moved my right hand to the back of his head, grabbing his hair, and slammed his face against the cheap, 70s-vintage wood paneling several times.
“Calm down,” I said into his ear. He struggled some more, but all I had to do was pull on his arm and he quieted down. “I can break your shoulder or I can snap your wrist. Now you calm the **** down.” He was wide-eyed with exasperation and surprise. I held him there for a moment, and the room was dead silent, save for Vanessa’s sobbing.
“Holy ****,” someone whispered.
“This is ****in’ awesome,” someone else said.
“My dad’s a lawyer,” Cory managed weakly.
“I think you should leave,” I heard someone say. I looked over to my right. I didn’t know who the young woman was, but she sported jeans, a tie-dyed t-shirt, horn-rimmed glasses, and some kind of weird dreadlocks. “Get out before I call the cops. You need to leave.” Taking a deep breath, I let Cory go.
“I think you’re right. I don’t know about calling the cops, what with all the underage drinking and pot smoking going on. Austin, you ‘bout ready, or you wanna walk?”
“Yeah…” Austin said, staring at Cory, who was slumped against the wall. Two of his freshman fan club immediately came to his aid. One of them called me an *******, and I smiled at her. I walked over to Vanessa. She looked up at me as I extended a hand down to her. There were thick streaks of mascara running down her face, and her nose was red. She took my hand and I pulled her to her feet.
“You alright?” I asked. She sniffled and nodded her head in the affirmative. “Okay,” I said. “C’mon, I’ll give you a ride home.”
“Get out of my house,” the hippie girl said, more forcefully this time. Ignoring her, I led Vanessa out the door with Austin and Rebecca in tow. So there I was, driving home early Sunday morning. Rebecca and Austin sat in the back seat in awkward silence. Vanessa sat in my passenger’s seat, sobbing once more, the victim of a volatile cocktail of alcohol and estrogen. Why do I always have to be the dad? I sighed heavily and looked at my friends in the rear-view mirror.
“I don’t know about you guys, but I had a great time.”