Joshua Mohr - Fight Song

Brent is good at it, too — perhaps genetically inclined. No normal nine-year-old would be so gifted at these games that readily stump people twice his age. Brent’s cannibal dominates the action. In fact, he now rips out another character’s larynx and munches away on it, holding the larynx in his hand like an apple.

Brent says to Bob, “Did you see that move, Dad?”

“Good work.”

“I’m already on level five.”

“Keep it up.”

“Benny and Tommy can’t get past level two.”

“You’re a natural.”

“Tommy’s cat has worms.”

“That’s no fun.”

“Let’s get bloody!” Brent says, smiling at Bob, his avatar still choking down the larynx.

Coffen takes another swig of vodka. He’s turning his children into house cats: too helpless to fend for themselves outside the subdivision’s safe haven. They’re going to be easy targets, like him. Their futures are lined with oleanders and plocks.

He spoons out a single piece of macaroni and pops it in his mouth — still a bit crunchy.

Jane enters, dolled to the nines, walks over to a hallway mirror and fusses with her hair, working the wisps back into the elaborate pattern of braids. She has long worn her hair in a system of weaving braids that reminds Coffen of crisscrossing highways. It’s something he’s always loved about her — the way she’s kept this unique hairstyle into middle age, while other subdivision wives look increasingly homogenized.

“Are you sure he’s not too young to play that game?” Jane asks.

On-screen, Brent’s cannibal repeatedly bashes a citizen’s head onto the asphalt, then laps up the stream of synapse stew leaking from the opened skull.

“It’s nothing worse than what’s online.”

“Does that mean he should play it?”

Bob picks up his vodka and has another sip. “Are you having fun?” Coffen says to his son.

“Let’s get bloody!” Brent calls over.

“He’s enjoying himself,” Coffen says.

“He’s nine,” Jane says.

“It’s better we’re open with him about the real world, so he feels safe enough to ask us questions later about sex, puberty, drugs … ”

“Cannibalism,” she says.

“Exactly. Nothing is taboo in the Coffen residence.” Yet once this posit escapes Coffen’s lips, his face changes. Shoulders slump. He’s immediately saddened because not even his denial, a normally impenetrable fortress of rationalizations and white lies and blind spots, can offer asylum from the simple fact that almost everything is taboo in the Coffen residence these days.

Luckily, the conversation can’t continue because their daughter, Margot, three years older than Brent, comes into the room, scrolling on her iPad’s touch screen. Margot looks up and screams to Brent, “Don’t miss the teeth upgrade on the next level, or you’ll never be able to eat those Navy SEALs.”

“I know that,” he says.

“You always miss it.”

“I do not.”

“Margot, can you help me with something?” Coffen asks his daughter, watching her fingers work the iPad.

“I’m hanging with a friend right now, Dad.”

Coffen looks around the room. “Who?”

“Ro.”

“Where is she?”

“You mean, ‘Where are we?’” She shakes her tablet at him, allowing Bob to make out a 3-D representation of the ocean on its screen, two avatars in wet suits, kicking their finned feet. “And the answer is scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef.”

“Why don’t you invite her over for real?” Coffen says.

“The Barrier Reef is so much cooler than being here for real,” she says.

While Jane continues to manipulate her maze of hair and Margot studies her underwater trek and sort of watches Brent’s cannibal feast on a minister, Coffen pulls the pot of macaroni off the heat without tasting it again, dumps it in a colander. Then he pours it back into the pot and stirs in the orangey-cheese powder and milk for the kids’ dinner. He slops it into two bowls and stands there drinking vodka.

His mother-in-law, Erma, waddles in. She’s five feet and one inch of diabetic rage and immediately belts out, “What’s Brent doing?”

Brent is straddling the minister and eating fistfuls of intestines.

“Well, what’s he doing?” Erma asks.

Coffen and his mother-in-law aren’t exactly bosom chums. There’s never been any kind of confrontation or anything because Bob kowtows to her. He tries to communicate with her in simple and direct ways, like this: “He’s gaming.”

“That game is gross,” says Erma, then specifically to Brent, “Turn that off while G-Ma’s here.”

“Mom, please,” Jane says.

“But I’ve almost beat my all-time high score!” Brent says.

“Fine,” Erma says, “beat your all-time high score. Ignore your G-Ma. Pretend your G-Ma’s not nearing the end of her life.”

“Mom,” Jane says.

“What? I won’t be around forever. They should appreciate me while I’m still alive.”

Brent’s avatar is up and off the minister, slowly cornering an Amish-looking woman.

Then there’s a tooting car horn out front.

“Schumann’s here,” Coffen says.

“Schumann?”

“Our chauffeur,” Coffen says with a huge smile. “We worked out an agreement for what happened the other night.”

The horn toots once more.

“This is weird,” Jane says.

“Dad, I thought you hated Schumann,” says Margot. “I heard you say he’s a douche.”

“What’s a douche?” Brent asks, outfoxing the Amish lass and now gnawing her thigh to the bone.

Coffen ignores this and asks Jane, “Shall we go, dear?”

She rolls her eyes, goes to get her coat, pats the many braids on her head so as to verify proper geometry. “I guess we shall,” she says.

“Might I say,” Schumann says to Jane, talking with a French accent, “that your sexuality is palpable this evening. If Bob wasn’t here, I’d make my play to pleasure you.”

He’s been laying it on absurdly thick since picking the Coffens up. Talking with that canned French accent, bowing when he opened the car door for Jane, making a big show of it. He’s even dressed like a stereotypical chauffeur — black suit, black hat.

Every TV show or movie Coffen has ever seen in which there are servants, these people know how to keep their traps shut, don’t speak unless spoken to, be seen and not heard, etc. So where in his right mind does Schumann think he should be spouting off sexually explicit plans? Bob may not be any kind of chauffeur expert, but come on, this seems like Servitude 101: The help should keep focused on the task at hand.

“Um, thanks,” she says.

Both Coffens sit in the SUV’s backseat. Bob tries to catch Schumann’s eye in the rearview mirror to give him a face that means Are you seriously being serious right now — palpable sexuality? You’re supposed to be a submissive role player, Schumann. Tonight, I’m the quarterback.

“I don’t know about you two,” Schumann says, “but my wife and I love a romantic glass of champagne in the park. It’s a perfect night for it. I brought a couple champagne flutes and a bottle in case you two were in the mood.”

“That does sound nice,” Jane says, “but I shouldn’t drink any alcohol. I’m going for the treading-water record again on Monday.”

But before Coffen can muscle a word in, there’s Schumann yammering, “It doesn’t sound nice, Jane. It is nice. A few sips won’t kill you. Coach used to let us have a few beers when we were in training to blow off steam.”

She laughs. Is she flirting with him?

“She was talking to me,” says Coffen.