by Joshua Mohr
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.
Rum: the other white meat
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.”
Ace smiles. “Then neither am I. And I definitely didn’t take a bath in one of the tubs in LapLand. That’s for sure.”
LapLand is one of the unusual accoutrements that DG offers its employees. It’s a room that has two endless pools—ten-foot tubs in which employees can swim against a manufactured current, covering great distances without ever moving from one freestyling or backstroking spot. Not only are these pools available for any employee to enjoy, but safety is key: There’s a lifeguard on duty, should anybody cramp up in a tub, sink to the bottom, and require immediate resuscitation.
“There are showers here, you know,” Bob says.
“Indeed there are. But LapLand has a certain je ne sais quoi. Not that I bathed there in the first place.”
“I’ve never gone in that room the whole time I’ve worked here,” Coffen says.
“You should. It’s marvelous. Hey, is your ass hungry?”
“Sure.”
“Sorry for cursing,” Ace says. “I’ve got a problem with it, and the problem is that I love cursing. It�
��s a situation I’m aware of. How can I not be with the building manager, Mr. Winston, on my ass—I mean, sorry, my hind parts—every day about watching my mouth around the building’s tenants. That means you. He thinks cussing is a bad habit. I think cussing—or ‘the poetry of the streets,’ as I like to call it—is more akin to the real world.”
“Will you please cinch your robe?”
“The poetry of the streets is a beast in sheep’s clothing,” says Ace. “But don’t egg me on. I have to stop using so many curses. My lady doesn’t like it.”
“Check.”
“This is your lucky day,” he says, very much not cinching his robe. “I’m making some of my renowned breakfast.”
“It’s nowhere near my lucky day.”
“It’s about to be. I am known for three things: One is shredding on the gee-tarrrr; the second is my glorious morning wood.” Ace pauses and makes the international gesture for masturbation with his spatula-hand, moving it like mad in front of his pelvis. Then he does a little dance that’s mostly running in place but with a sprinkle of cross-country skiing and lip-licking. “But the thing I’m known for that you shall currently reap the benefit of is my secret French toast recipe. I’ll even let you in on it. Everyone loves Frosted Flakes. And everyone loves rum. So one morning it hit me, why not put Frosted Flakes and rum in my French toast batter? I mean, I’m going to enjoy them all for breakfast anyway. Why not combine all these ingredients into one super-food?”
Coffen momentarily forgets Ace’s difficulties with the long-lost art of bathrobe-cinching, because that secret recipe sounds delicious. Some Frosted Flaked and rummed-up super-food might be what the doctor ordered, assuming the doctor is half-crazed and clad in a gaping bathrobe.
“That’s quite a recipe,” Coffen says.
“Bet your ass, Chump Change,” says Ace. “Sorry, I meant, ‘bet your hind parts.’”
“Chump Change?”
“That’s what me and the other guys on the building’s clean team call you. You’re always getting things from the vending machines with dimes and nickels. It’s a term of endearment.”
“Clean team?”
“We don’t like being called ‘janitors.’ Makes us feel like toe jam on the corporate totem pole.”
So Bob hadn’t been crazy all those times he thought the janitors—nay, the clean-team members—smirked when he stood making one of his hourly purchases. They got a giggle out of his prudent dispersal of pocket change, eh? Well, excuse me, Bob Coffen wants to tell Ace. My blood sugar gets low, and don’t forget that frugality is an admirable trait in some societies.
“Does it make you guys feel better about your job?” Bob asks.
“What?”
“The toe jam thing.”
“Exactly,” says Ace. “We are the toe jam thing. I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
“You did say it.”
Ace extends the bottle of rum up in the air and says, “To all the toe jam on all the totem poles all over the world! You’re in our hearts always. You will not be forgotten.” Then he guzzles rum.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” says Coffen.
“Enjoy yourself,” Ace says, still twiddling with the bottle of booze, “and breakfast will be served when you get back.”
On his walk, Coffen texts his kids.
To Margot: How’s your morning? I think you’re great.
To Brent: How’s it hanging, amigo?
It’s only a ninety-second trip to the bathroom—take a leak, brush teeth with the plastic-bagged toothbrush, sans toothpaste, breath still stinky afterward, his tongue a hostel for transient bacteria. He sticks out his tongue to analyze it in the mirror. It’s as if he can taste the acrid flavor that this might not be a blip with Jane, might be more than a one-weekend anomaly. The idea is globbed on his tongue along with the other germs. Jane has never asked him to sleep somewhere else before. What if Bob’s life is changing and he barely gets a say in the matter?
Ace sets two paper plates down on the small table, also plastic forks. Coffen does get a non-plastic coffee mug filled with coffee, which makes the scene a bit less depressing.
“Shall we say a prayer?” Ace says.
“If you want.”
“Please, Jesus, let my hair grow back. God, if there really is a god, why is the hair on my head falling out and the hair on my back growing like gangbusters? I mean, come on: I’ve gone mano a mano versus the world my whole life, so why can’t I keep some freakin’ hair as the fruits of all these labors?”
“Amen?” Coffen says.
“A-freakin’-men!” Ace claps his hands, then digs into his French toast. Bob follows his lead and cuts himself a bite with the edge of the fork.
There is no doubt that this is the single greatest bite of French toast Coffen has ever ingested. Still chewing, he says simply, “Superb.”
“Rum: the other white meat,” says the trailblazing, bathrobed chef.
Which, of course, makes no sense, but Ace is smiling and so is Coffen, and why ruin a good moment, a great bite, with something boring and purposeless like sense?
“You and I,” Ace says, “don’t really know each other. For example, did you know that I’m in a Kiss cover band called French Kiss? Our singer is from Paris, and he can sing like Paul Stanley. Total dead ringer. There are a lot of schmucks out there playing Kiss songs exactly the way they were originally recorded. Which is fine. To each their own. But we have a secret weapon that those schmucks can only fantasize about. Our singer sings the songs in French. In French! As far as I know, we’re the only Kiss cover band on the entire planet where the singer goes international, baby. That’s what separates us from the packs of poseurs and wannabes.”
“Sounds interesting,” Coffen says, savoring each succulent chewing motion. He’s also savoring all of Ace’s inane blathering, more distraction from Jane booting him out.
“We may be old and balding and fat as hell,” Ace muses, “but we can still rock and roll with the best of ’em.”
Coffen has devoured his portion of breakfast, and he now sips his coffee. “If you opened a diner that served only this French toast, you’d be a very rich man.”
“I do it for the buzz, not the glory.”
“Honorable.”
“Can I pry a bit?” Ace says.
“Why not?”
“Did you sleep here last night?”
“I fell asleep at my desk because I’m finishing up a new game design.”
“Oh yeah, what game?”
“Scroo Dat Pooch.”
“And it’s about … ”
“Pooch screwing.”
“Not gonna tell you how to do your job, Chump Change,” he says, “but is there a market for dog sex games?”
“Probably not.”
“It’s like rock and roll. You have to give the kids what they want. If you don’t, you’ll be banished to obscurity.”
Something makes Bob feel like telling the truth. Maybe it’s the rum. Maybe it’s waking up on a beanbag. Maybe it’s that Ace is staying here, too. “My wife threw me out last night.”
“So did my girlfriend. Not last night. Wednesday.”
“Why?”
“She wants to get married.”
“You’ve been staying here since then?”
“Unofficially.”
“I won’t say a word to Dumper,” Coffen says.
“We’ll be roommates here.”
In some way that makes Bob feel better—or again, the rum is kicking in. He checks to see if Brent or Margot texted back yet. Nada.
Coffen sends the same note to both of them this time: I’m the luckiest dad in the world!
“You’re all right, Chump Change,” Ace says.
Coffen thinks, Why all these nicknames? First, there’s the plock praising Robert for all his years of faithful service. Then there’s Tilda calling him the capitán of Mexican lasagnas and also a cop. Why doesn’t anybody think of Bob as Bob?
“I am Bob,” he s
ays.
“You staying here all weekend?” Ace asks.
“Unfortunately.”
“Are you going to mope the whole time or should we have some fun?”
“Probably I’ll mope,” says Bob.
“It’s not going to do you any good. Mope when you’re old. Tonight let’s remember that we’re lucky to be alive.”
“I don’t feel lucky to be alive.”
“Well, you are—we all are—even those of us squatting at work. And my band is gigging tonight at Empire Wasted. You should come along.”
“I think I’ll stick with moping.”
“Not a chance I’m letting you do that. Come on—get out of your head. Let’s go out and live a little.”
Coffen likes this idea of living a little. Maybe it’s exactly what this house cat Robert Coffen needs—to get out of his head, get out of his latest game, get out and interact with somebody. “You know what? I’m in,” Bob says. “Let’s live a little.”
“Rock and roll is quite the temptress. Few men can ward off her seductions.”
“What instrument do you play in the band?”
“Do you even have to ask?”
So Coffen asks, “Why shouldn’t I have to ask?”
“My nickname is Ace, as in Ace Frehley. I even got him tattooed on me,” he says, rolls up his gaping bathrobe’s sleeve and points at a picture of a guy with long straight black hair wearing white paint all over his face like a rodeo clown. There’s black lipstick on him and also black patterns painted jagged around his eyes.
Coffen doesn’t get it.
“He’s the guitarist in Kiss—meaning I play guitar in French Kiss. I’m a straight-up shredder, a bona fide, certified, genuine genius of the fret board.” Ace does his dance again: running in place and cross-country skiing and lip-licking, except now there’s more flair to it.
Bob watches him shimmy and a smile crosses his face. Here’s a guy, a core member of the clean team, who wants Coffen’s company. Here’s somebody who wants Bob around, and for a second he wonders, When did I become so dispensable in my own life?
Being included in Ace’s plans makes Bob want to see his kids today, see his wife. He wants to get out and live a little in his own life, too.