Joshua Mohr - Fight Song

Your breath is superb.

You’re a smooth talker in this place, aren’t you?

No, I just like you.

I didn’t know you wanted to ask me out.

Bob’s avatar tamped out his cigarette. I’m shy.

Me too. But you don’t need to be shy around me. I like you. You do?

Everybody at work does! You build the best games. I mean, look where we are right now! You’re amazing.

Thanks for meeting me here tonight.

Any time! I’m going to go get some sleep, Jane said. I have a CS meeting at eight tomorrow. Will you miss me until we’re at work together?

Of course.

Make sure and give the waiter a big tip. He did a phenomenal job. Bye, Bob! Thanks for doing this for me.

Hold on. My credit card was rejected. Do you have any traveler’s checks or something to pay the bill?

LMAO

Good night, Jane.

XOXO

The next day at work, there was a piece of saltwater taffy sitting next to Bob’s keyboard when he got there. He couldn’t decide if he wanted to eat it or keep it forever. Then a chat window popped up on Coffen’s screen. It was Jane.

Want to go out for lunch? I’m in the mood for calamari

I know a great place , said Bob.

I mean, real calamari. Let’s me and you go out to lunch together.

Awesome!

And that was it. They had lunch. Then they had more meals. Nobody in the office could believe it. None of the other programmers understood how or why Jane had chosen Bob, and frankly Coffen didn’t much understand it himself. But he didn’t care. No reason to question such luck.

Then after about ten dates, they kissed. Slowly, they fell in love. Slowly, they decided to get married and have kids.

And now, here Bob is, staring at her through the glass.

Jane waves and Bob clumsily peels himself off the beanbag, meets her in the doorway. They do not kiss. She smells of chlorine, which turns him on: She used to be so horny after exercise. Now its scent makes Coffen wince — when did they dissipate into their kids’ chaperones?

She says, “You’re wearing your sad face, Mister Grumbles.”

“You wouldn’t believe what game I have to build next. Humiliating. I don’t want to talk about it. How was your tread? How many hours did you do this morning?”

“Not that many. I’m tapering off before I make a run at the record again on Monday.”

“Oh, I thought that was next Monday.”

“You can’t fit my record attempt into your grumbly brain?”

“Sorry.”

“It’s this Monday. This is exactly the behavior that I need to talk to you about.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Would I be here if everything was okay?”

It’s a quick walk across the street to the corporate café. Their town is a patchwork of subdivisions and strip malls and office parks. It’s the kind of suburb that had such a quick population influx after the dot-com boom that its city planning had been slapdash, nonsensical. Chain stores popped up quicker than saloons in frontier towns. Competing businesses were in dangerous proximity to one another: A bagel and sandwich shop could be right next store to a sandwich and salad shop, which could be right next to a sandwich and coffee shop. That last one is where the Coffens walk into now.

“What kind of coffee would you like?” asks Bob.

“I had a very interesting conversation this morning with Aubrey Westbrook,” Jane says.

“How is she?”

“Is it true?”

“I don’t know what we’re talking about.”

“Didn’t you chat with her husband last night?” Jane asks, and of course Bob had, limping in the road, regaling Westbrook of Coffen’s immediate itinerary: going to Schumann’s and locking horns with the heavy favorite.

The barista asks the Coffens, “What can I do to make your day even better?”

“Black coffee for me,” Bob says, “and a latte for the lady.”

“I don’t want anything,” Jane says. “Watching my dairy before the big tread.”

“What kind of black coffee would you like?” the barista asks. “We have six house coffees. We feature ethically cultivated coffees from around the globe. We have blends from Rwanda, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Uganda, and the Malay Archipelago.”

“I take it black.”

“Do you enjoy flavors of fresh-squeezed grapefruit? Because that would be the Rwandan blend.”

“Jesus, just pour him whatever is your favorite,” Jane says.

The barista looks disappointed but does as she’s told, setting the steaming mug in front of him on the counter.

“Which one did you go with?” Bob asks the barista, playing good cop to Jane’s brusque one.

“Rwandan.”

He smells the coffee and says, “You’re right: fresh-squeezed grapefruit.”

The Coffens pay and move to a table. A Muzak version of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” trickles from hidden speakers. It had been one of Bob’s favorite songs, back when he was in high school, and now it was demoted to the barbiturate of background noise. It happens to us all , Bob thinks— we age and lose our relevance, even rock stars .

The table is small and circular and lacquered into its top is the iconic picture of King Kong atop the Empire State Building, swatting at airplanes.

“So Aubrey told me a confusing story about last night,” Jane says. “You did run into her husband, right?”

“I did. We still have their tent poles.”

“She said you told him that Schumann ran you off the road.”

“I’d totally forgotten we even borrowed their tent poles.”

“You told me you fell off your bike and Schumann drove you to the hospital.”

“I might have left out the beginning.” Bob sticks his tongue in his coffee — still too hot. He looks down at King Kong instead.

“So you lied to me.”

“If you think omission is lying.”

“Everyone thinks omission is lying.”

“I didn’t know how to tell you the truth. It’s embarrassing.”

“Do you remember when I caught you jerking off last week with the chips?” Jane’s face goes from its earlier contortion — the appropriated curiosity and apprehension and pity lifted from the Native Americans — and morphs into flat-out disgust. “Are you saying this is more embarrassing than that?”

A week ago Tuesday: Coffen had been minding his own tawdry business on the Internet — wife and kids sleeping the night away. He was another half-drunken, lonely, sad, suburban father sitting in his study, inappropriately conducting fevered searches re the shaving habits of certain coeds who were okay with strangers witnessing the upkeep of their nether regions. Coffen gawked and Googled and swigged vodka on the rocks from a sweating tumbler and munched nacho cheese Doritos, and a rhythm developed between these motions — gawking, Googling, slurping, munching. It was the vodka that presented the first problem piece of the puzzle. See, in his haste and enthusiasm Coffen wasn’t paying attention to the condensation from the glass, how it made his fingers moist, how with the next clumsy dip of his hand into the Doritos bag, the orange dust plastered itself to it. Under normal circumstances, he would have identified the vibrant sticking orange dust and properly cleaned it off, but he wasn’t exactly in his right mind, a combustion slowly stoking in his body, and as the scene built to its dejected ending, he dropped his pants and latched his phallus in his fist and the vibrant, gummy orange dust transferred and stuck to it like fluorescent sawdust.