Fight Song A Novel - By Joshua Mohr Page 0,8
be a game,” Bob says, “without any handset controls. No, a game of this transgressive magnitude would need to work with user movements. We’ve seen Wii games where a user’s body movements can translate to the screen, the character in the game mimicking what the user is doing at home. This title would require that sort of technology. It would be an advancement for us in many ways, as we’ve never built anything in this style.”
Bob holds his hands out, waist high, pretending that somebody—or some animal—is positioned in front of him, bent over. Then Coffen begins maniacally thrusting his hips in a coital-inspired manner. He strikes a rather rollicking pace with his thrusts and keeps them up while continuing the pitch.
“I imagine a game where the character meanders the mean streets trying to have sex with every stray dog he can find. As the game progresses, soon the avatar has to prowl into the homes of private citizens to defile man’s best friend. Finally, for the grand finale, the sneaky, horny, mal-adjusted avatar must evade Secret Service and screw the president’s dog right in the Oval Office.”
Coffen gets winded as he continues to give the business to the imaginary dog while talking.
“Dude, that’s disgusting,” the mouth-breather says, smiling, “and I would play it all day, every day, until I died.”
“What about the rest of you?” Dumper asks the remaining team members.
“I’d totally play that!”
“It’s awesome!”
“My friends are gonna love this filth!”
“What’s it called, Coffen?”
Bob grins, plunges aimlessly into the invisible pet. “Scroo Dat Pooch,” he calls out, and the juniors clap.
One of them says, “Dude is a genius.”
“He was just hibernatin’ since Disemboweler.”
Another: “It’s like watching da Vinci paint a masterpiece.”
“The bestiality Mona Lisa!”
“Jesus, stop gyrating like that,” Dumper says to Bob.
Bob concludes his coital parade, sags back down into his beanbag. His head hurts. It feels good to make a mockery of this, good to suggest something so far over the line that despite the enthusiasm of the juniors, Dumper has no choice but to say no chance in hell. Edgy’s one thing, but this idea is too taboo.
But apparently, there is chance in hell.
Apparently, Coffen hasn’t been making a mockery of anything, at least not to the only person whose opinion on the subject matters: the Great One. Dumper reels his tongue back in his mouth, says, “Build a test level, Bob. I want to see how it plays.”
“Are you sure?” Coffen says.
“I’m not sure. But I’m window-shopping, snooping in the store. Now grab the bull by the horns and make the final sale. Can you do that for me?”
“I can try.”
“DG needs this. Our doors are getting itchy trigger fingers for some closage. Don’t let that happen. Now say it with some enthusiasm: Can you make the final sale to this window-shopper and appease our moody doors?”
“Bob is me,” Bob says, dejected—he can’t even sabotage his job correctly.
“Scroo Dat Pooch,” Dumper says. “Now that’s funny. Sick, but funny. No guarantees we’ll continue with it, but I’d like to see what it looks like. This might be a new direction not only for DG, but your titles, Coffen. You’ve never done anything comic before. This might be your renaissance.”
“That’s a reasonable suggestion,” says Bob.
“Get something rough together for next Monday’s status meeting.”
“That’s not much time.”
“It’s not. But you’re a pro’s pro. Make it happen.”
Dumper and the juniors skedaddle from the conference room, leaving Bob alone on his beanbag. He stays like that for some time.
Fluorescent orange
Bob’s time of beanbag contemplation is interrupted when he sees his wife’s face pressed up against the glass of the conference room. Jane’s braids are wet; she must have come here straight from the high-priced gym where she trains. She’s working toward breaking the world record for treading water, which is currently at eighty-five hours. Her personal best is fifty-nine hours straight.
She eyeballs Bob through the glass. There’s something unusual about her expression that Coffen can’t exactly get a bead on. He assumes it’s a face much like the Native Americans must have worn toward the early Pilgrims: curiosity and apprehension and pity.
Seeing Jane in an office environment reminds Bob of where they’d first met. He worked at a company building web-platform games, ones to be downloaded and installed locally on users’ hard drives. She worked in the customer service department. Bob made up all kinds of asinine reasons to trundle over to CS and bug her. He’d feign interest in the customers’ problems solely to talk to her, hoping to grow