While all that was going on, David had inherited the Bug Man business from his father, who’d died of several different kinds of cancer. During most of his career, the old man had considered chlordane, which even smelled kinda good, to be the answer to a bug man’s prayers. Turned out, it wasn’t. Turned out it was a multifaceted carcinogen.
After his father’s death, David bought out a rival business that had employees trained in the elimination of pest animals—rats, skunks, and squirrels, mostly, and the occasional raccoon—and had changed the company name to GetOut!
At forty-two, he was the undisputed pest elimination king of Trippton, as well as the owner of the only local Dunkin’ Donuts. There were some in town who considered that a salubrious combination. Others were not so sure—or, at least, they hoped he frequently washed his hands.
And he was still the Bug Boy.
—
All of that had set up the situation that left David crying in front of a blank-screen TV.
Gina Hemming, the rich, arrogant, divorced chairwoman of the board and president of the Second National Bank and the Class of ’92’s Girl Most Likely to Succeed, and David Birkmann, the financially okay divorced owner of GetOut! and the Main Street donut shop and the Class of ’92’s Funniest Boy.
On that cold Thursday night in January, they met at Gina’s house with a group of Populars from the Class of ’92, including the class president, the Homecoming King and Queen, the Boy and Girl Most Likely to Succeed, the Most Athletic Boy and Girl, and the Funniest Boy and Girl. A few of the most popular kids had left Trippton and never returned. They’d been invited to the meeting but had unanimously declined.
The group that met Thursday night was to begin working out the mechanisms of the upcoming Twenty-fifth Reunion of the Trippton High School Class of ’92 (“Go Otters”).
—
One of the committee members, Ryan Harney, a physician, had looked at the faces gathered in Hemming’s living room and said, “Man—the more things change, the more they stay the same, huh?” whatever that meant, and later said, “Isn’t it weird that we’re all still here after twenty-five years?”
Nobody seemed to know what that meant, either. Where else would they be?
The committee sorted through the usual bullshit and passed out assignments: Lucy Cheever, Homecoming Queen, now ownerof the Chevrolet dealership, agreed to have her computer assistant track down members of the class to get addresses, emails, and cell phone numbers; Gina would arrange to get the tent at Trippton National Golf Club for the big second-evening reunion; George Brown, the Most Athletic Boy, now owner of the bowling alley, would provide dancing and free beer at the alley on the first Fun Meet-Up night; Birkmann was friendly with the leader of the Dog Butt dance band, which, as June Moon, played softer, more romantic music, and agreed to pick up the cost of the band for both nights. Somebody else agreed to collect home movies and convert them to videos for the Fun Meet-Up. And so on.
Around eight-thirty, the committee members started drifting away. Ten o’clock was bedtime in Trippton, if you wanted to get a good start on the next day. Birkmann, though, had other plans.
He’d gotten ready for the night by dressing casually but carefully: tan Dockers slacks, high-polished cordovan penny loafers, a button-down checked shirt and green boat-neck sweater, both of the latter from Nordstrom Rack up at the Mall of America.
As he was leaving the house, he’d picked up his regular red company hat but noticed that it had gotten brushed with something black and sticky; no matter, he had a box of them in a variety of colors. He picked a yellow GetOut! baseball cap sprinkled with black dots that, when you looked closely, were deer ticks. Not everybody liked them, but David thought they were cool. And the yellow coordinated nicely with the green sweater and tan Dockers.
—
Anyway, he’d been looking good; casual but businesslike. When everybody but three committee members had gone, David had gotten his coat and slipped into Hemming’s kitchen and outthe back door. His van was parked in the street, with a layer of snow on the windshield.
He had stashed a bottle of Barefoot Bubbly Brut Cuvée in his van and it was now nice and cold. He’d watched the last three members depart, all in a group, saying good-bye to Hemming at the front door. When the last one was gone, he’d hustled back up the driveway and in the back door, the bottle of champagne in his hand.
He’d had something casual and sophisticated in mind. But it had all gone bad.
—
Cut to the action:
“Get away from me, you fat fuck!” Hemming screamed. She was wearing a burgundy-colored jacket and skirt, with a pale pink blouse and high heels. “You’re disgusting... you... fuckin’... Bug Boy!”
Hemming wasn’t satisfied with humiliating him, screaming at him and calling him the hated name, she had to go one step further. He’d spread his arms, embarrassed enough, trying to quiet her, and she’d stepped right up to him and slapped him on the side of the head, raking him with her fingernails. Really put some weight behind it.
Stunned, he’d swung back... not really thinking.
He’d swung with the hand that held the bottle. In the movies, if you hit somebody with a bottle of wine, the bottle broke and the person went down and a moment later got up, maybe with a little trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth.
When he’d hit Hemming, the bottle wentCLUNK!as thoughhe’d hit her with a pipe. The bottle hadn’t broken. Hadn’t even cracked. Hemming dropped like a head-shot deer.
For the next couple of minutes, there was a lot of calling her name, pleading, and shaking—“Gina, come on, I didn’t mean it, get up. Come on, Gina, get up”—but the fact was, Gina Hemming was deader than the aforesaid deer, looking up at him with half-open blank gray eyes. Gina wouldn’t be coming back until she marched in with Jesus and all the saints.
—
Birkmann hadn’t really thought about what to do next, since it was all unplanned. He stared at her for a while, lying crumbled on the floor, then said, “Oh my God!” He thought about calling for an ambulance, but that would get him put in jail.
