Fight Song (12 page)
A groggy Otis is confused but understands enough to make a quick run for it, moving the sloshing whiskey to the passenger seat and driving off.
“What do you mean you don’t know him?” Coffen asks her. “You called him by name.”
“You a cop?”
“Do I look like a cop?”
“These days, everyone looks like a cop, and that’s why it’s getting so hard to break the law—used to be the police were all white guys with crew cuts and cheap shoes. You could spot ’em a mile away, but these days, wow, I’m going to need to see some ID.”
“You want to see ID that says I’m not a cop?”
“Yeah.”
“Do they make those?”
“They sure as shit should,” says Tilda. Then she seems to lose her drooping gall. “I can’t keep up the charade any longer. You got me, cop. I’ll sign my confession. I’ll waive
my right to a speedy trial. The men have to say a secret phrase into the intercom. They have to say, ‘Hark the herald angel likes to watch TV in his birthday suit.’ See what I mean? No one else would come up to the intercom and say that accidentally, so I thought I’d make a little extra dough on the sly and no one would ever know, but this drunken perv is always passing out on me at the intercom and now a damn cop happens to stumble upon our impure exchange.”
“Will you relax and make me something to eat? I’m not a police officer. I build video games.” Coffen thinks that maybe humor might set her mind at ease. “The
capitán
of Mexican lasagnas is no friend of the
policía
.”
“Typical cop behavior.”
“I’m really hungry.”
“This smacks of entrapment.”
“Your paranoia has paranoia,” Coffen says.
“You gum as much blotter acid as I did, and you live the rest of your life convinced everyone’s a cop.”
“I only want a Mexican lasagna.”
Tilda eyeballs Bob, probably searching for some sort of tell to indicate whether he’s a cop or not, but realizing there’s no way to know for certain. She says, “How about three Mexican lasagnas?”
“Deal.” Coffen nods and she says she’ll go inside, prep the grub. He walks back to his car and pulls it up to the intercom and says, “And also a Coke, please.”
“The beverage will be complimentary as well on account of Taco Shed appreciating your patience with our malfunctioning intercom,” Tilda says through the not-malfunctioning intercom. “I’ll deliver them personally to you out back, once it’s all ready.”
Soon, this strange woman opens the back door again
and brings the booty of Mexican lasagnas, then hands Coffen his drink. She has one Mexican lasagna for herself, too. It’s a tortilla filled with refried beans, marinara sauce, and processed cheese. They both get busy chowing down.
“This can’t be a coincidence,” Bob says.
“What?”
“On my way here, I was thinking that I needed somebody to talk to, and you’re like a therapist.”
“I don’t think so.”
“But sort of.”
“Sorry to burst your bubble, but therapists aren’t helping their clients pull their pud.”
Coffen nods, takes another bite of Mexican lasagna. “Your secret is safe with me.”
“Thanks. You don’t even want to know how bad I need the money. You don’t wanna hear about my daughter living in her boyfriend’s car, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Ain’t these weird times? Lately, life’s like one gigantic cartoon, and all I see are cops and monsters.”
“I’ve been thinking that life is pretty much a no-win situation,” he says, done with his first Mexican lasagna and sipping from the Coke.
“How’s that?”
“I seem to be in the process of ruining everything.”
“Are you going to knock it off? The ruining, I mean.”
“I’m trying.”
“Men love to say that they’re trying. But really, you either do something or you don’t. Trying is for babies learning to walk.”
In principle, Coffen agrees with what Tilda is saying—
trying
is the most tired excuse out there. The worst part is that it’s not even true, in Coffen’s case. He’s not trying. If
he had been trying, Jane wouldn’t have had to stoop to a magician for marital help.
“I miss babies,” says Bob. “I loved napping with my daughter asleep on my chest.”
“How old are yours?”
“Twelve and nine.”
“Those ages are still fun,” Tilda says. “Wait until they shack up in Roy’s car with a bun in the oven and a meth habit. Then we’ll talk.”
Bob loves Tilda’s honesty. When do you cross paths with somebody who so freely talks about their family’s dirty laundry? First, the intercom-sex scam and now her daughter squatting in Roy’s car. Her honesty makes Bob feel that he can confide, too. He says, “My kids aren’t the problem. I’m the problem.”
“Wait until you hand your daughter a notice for jury duty through Roy’s car window.”
“I’m glad to hear it gets worse.”
“Everything gets worse,” Tilda says. “It’s one of the perks of being alive.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“More often than not.”
“Thanks for the free food,” Coffen says. “And for talking to me. I needed to talk and you’re wrong, you are a sort of therapist. Truth is, I’m lost.”
“You’re trying and you’re lost. That’s not a winning combination.”
“I just need one thing to go right in my life.”
“How’s this? I’m giving you a free lifetime supply of Mexican lasagna,” she says, “and if you’re a perv, you can have a trial-subscription to my intercom-sex operation.”
Beggars can’t be choosers
, Bob thinks. Beggars also can’t
get enough Mexican lasagna, so this is really working out in Coffen’s pathetic favor.
“Do you remember the magic words I told you?” Tilda asks.
“Yeah.”
“I’m alone here from ten to three most nights. Any time in that window is fine, just say the magic words and drop your trousers.”
“Can I talk to you about non-dirty stuff? Can I come by and chat?”
“My gifts of gab are of the more pervy variety. But I can make an exception for someone who’s trying and lost.”
“Thanks.”
“And it’s not all bad,” Tilda says. “There’s still fun in life.”
“Oh yeah?”
“You’ve got to look real close.”
“Look where?”
“Between the cops and monsters,” she says.
Bob hopes that a coding bender might take his mind off the fact he’s bedding down at Dumper Games tonight. It’s past 3:00
AM
, though the plock, which sits on his desk, reads midnight. Regardless of the time, sleep feels impossible, so he’s up and at his computer, laying the framework for Scroo Dat Pooch. Of course, he’d rather be building anything else, but even this schlock is a distraction, busy-work for his brain, a way to shove aside what happened earlier with Jane and Björn. Yes, even the asinine premise of Scroo Dat Pooch allows Bob to find escape from the shame of how he acted.
That’s how it’s always worked for Bob. There’s always been escape while he coded. It’s like alcohol or pills or whatever vice somebody else uses to block away things about their own lives they can’t deal with. Bob uses computer code. Bob uses games. He uses his characters, the art of constructing entire worlds. He finds a swaddling delight in the fact he can use his imagination to create another reality, no matter how other aspects of his personal reality seem to tell him how he flounders or spoils things: how he’s so painfully average; how he often feels unfit for the simplest tasks.
For example, other human beings seem to find pleasure
in getting up and going to work—others seem to be able to abide by the five days a week of an insipid job that does nothing except automatically deposit funds in a checking account; others have let the selfish, artistic dreams from their twenties crumble and slough, embracing the realities of life in their late thirties. But not Bob: His coding used to offer him pure time-stopping happiness, and now nothing feels pure. Nothing is naked. Everything is spurred by duty. There’s private school to fund from kindergarten through senior year. There’s a mortgage. There’s the tyrannical arm of the HOA, which loves to spend the money of those entrenched in the subdivision. Car insurance alone is over $1,800 a month for the Coffens. There are college tuitions to grow. There’s retirement. There’s an urn.
Yes, Bob has fallen into the most predictable trap that exists in middle age: He’s devolved into a function. He does the stuff he has to do. He buys the stuff he has to purchase. He goes places to keep the peace, waddles down the path of least resistance. He’s devoid of identity. He’s a thing.
And he resents himself for walking into this booby trap. Resents that it’s his fault. It was his responsibility to build a life for himself that kept valuing his art. It was his, not Jane’s, not the kids. It was nobody else’s duty to make sure Coffen kept building games that sated his creative streak. He had to be in charge of carving the time to stay an artist, not a for-hire hack who builds games about bestiality. It was up to Bob to take care of Bob, just like everyone else on the planet has to take care of themselves. So why was this so hard for him? Why couldn’t Coffen set aside a few nights a week to do what used to bring him so much pleasure, so much identity? The late nights were there, though he spent his free time killing time, drinking vodka
and surfing the Internet for the pristine nether regions of unabashed coeds.
It isn’t lost on Coffen that the thing he loves doing most, building nuanced worlds in his games, is the one thing he can’t do in his own life. And if he can do it, he has no idea how to get started. Games always come with menus, instructions that explain how to play them, how to navigate and thrive in this environment, how to work toward winning. So what’s the real-world equivalent of that? What’s out there to teach Coffen?
Bob wakes up on a beanbag in the conference room. It’s Saturday morning, and being at the office is in no way restoring Coffen’s self-esteem. Not that there’s much that he should feel good about anyway. At least he made some headway on Scroo Dat Pooch. At least by fixating on the game he found a way to ignore the horrid levels of shame slamming in his psyche.
Today, however, before his groggy mind goes back to work, his nose alerts him to a delectable presence in his proximity.
French toast.
Coffen trails it to the kitchen and sees one of the building’s janitors, Ace, standing at the stove, a bottle of rum sitting on the countertop. Coffen often sees Ace around the office, but they never converse, save for the occasional tragic workplace platitude—
Man, do I got a case of the Mondays! I’m jonesing for a siesta! Friday can’t come fast enough, huh?
Ace isn’t clad in his official janitor garb—in fact, he’s
not clad in much at all, wearing an open bathrobe showing yellow boxer shorts. It makes Coffen think of Gotthorm, if Gotthorm decided to let himself go. Wow, does Bob wish Gotthorm would let himself go …
“Jesus, you scared me,” Ace says.
Protocol might dictate a bathrobe-cinch once he sees Coffen enter the galley, but it appears that Ace isn’t one for standard operating procedures.
“You sleeping here, too?” Ace asks.
Coffen pauses at this, ponders office rumors, premature stories of divorce, rueful glances from coworkers half his age, chomping for his job. Show no weakness! “Nope. Putting in some extra hours.”