worried about you and Henry. Keep a close eye on this new virus, okay?
Owen stays in that evening, eats leftovers out of his fridge. When he gets a text from Edith, he ignores it for an hour before asking her again to send him a photo of her breasts. One of these days she’s going to give in and send one. But when she suggests meeting up instead, he jerks off and goes to sleep.
The next morning, he wakes up with the notion of the virus still vexing him, like a sentence left unfinished. He gets up, goes to the bathroom, then moves around his apartment without a clear sense of purpose. He feels the call of the water and the urge to lose himself in something rhythmic and mind-emptying, but the rowing club has been inhospitable of late.
He’d underestimated the women. The club is close-knit, its members all neighbours, friends, confidantes. He slept with one too many and now when he shows up he can sense a current of hostility thrumming like a transformer as soon as he walks through the door. Once women talk amongst themselves, there is not much room for someone like him to manoeuvre.
Opening the fridge, he takes out the orange juice and pours himself a glass. He ought to work on the new manuscript but knows he is too tense. Without his scull, he doesn’t know what to do for exercise. He doesn’t want to have to find someplace new to go.
After his split with Rachel, he’d tried to stay in Lansdowne. He was still teaching an advanced fiction workshop once a week and co-supervising an honours thesis, so he rented an apartment near campus. But most of their mutual friends had shunned him, either passively or actively, and after the ex-boyfriend of a student he’d slept with spoke to the Chair of the English department, there began to be rumblings that a spousal hire who was no longer technically a spouse might not belong on campus anymore. So he’d left, before more of the women started talking and before the bureaucratic bomb could blow up in his face. But it is an uneasy thought always lurking at the edge of his mind: that there is a whole town in America where Owen is persona non grata.
He quells the rowing urge with a few sets of push-ups, making a mental note to order some new weights. Then he finds himself sticking close to home, monitoring the news and the chatter on NextExtinction.com. As the only active forum member in NYC, he is the subject of more than a few unsolicited messages either asking how many weeks of non-cook food he has laid by or urging him to get out of town. When Owen goes silent on the thread, FLUDAD posts a notice asking people to lay off GRANTER and stand by for more information.
Once the message board quiets down and he gets into a good groove with one of his chapters, Owen tells himself this is why he’s staying in. To get some work done. He tells himself the same thing the next day. And the next.
* * *
The following Monday, Owen drives back to the gaming studio, braving horrific crosstown traffic and forking out an exorbitant sum to park in a lot three blocks away.
This time, the meeting feels like a pitch. There are more people in the room, most of them projecting a youthful vibe accentuated by jeans and pop-culture T-shirts. The blue-haired girl is nowhere to be seen. Owen keeps his hands in his pockets throughout the introductions, nodding at each new face, realizing that he is old enough to not even believe he was supposed to stay young. He takes a seat at the far end of the table and accepts a maple-flavoured soy meal-replacement drink, making a note to mention the product on the message board.
Curly-haired Josh starts the meeting and thanks Owen for his input to date. He takes him through a quick slideshow of some background artwork samples, then brings them back to a discussion of gameplay.
“So we were trying to think about what’s different with this IP in particular.”
“IP?” says Owen. There are a lot of acronyms flying by.
“Intellectual property. I mean, it’s not the first disease game, not by a long shot.” Josh nods towards the other end of the room, which has been cleared for a demonstration. “We’ve got something novel with the VR, but we want the goal to be more than just