Fight Song A Novel

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 the confidence to ask her out.

He waited a long time for that mysterious confidence to swell, but it never did. He was too much of a p-ssy. The other guys on his team happily reminded him that he should let it go, no chance in hell he’d ever ask, and even if he did, what was the probability of Jane wanting to date Bob? In the end, he decided to build her something, knew that if he had a shot with her it would be in a different world than this one. He worked round the clock for three days building it and then emailed her the zipped files with instructions for how to install the HTML on her system to get into this new world he’d constructed for them.

The email only said: Jane, please meet me in here tonight at 10:30.

He sat at home, slugging Coke from a two-liter, and waiting like an antsy child who needs to take a leak but is stuck in the backseat of the family sedan. Waiting and feeling stupid for doing all this. She wasn’t going to show. Why would she show? No doubt she could do better than a bloated coder.

It was 10:33.

On his computer screen, Bob’s avatar stood alone in the world he’d built. He designed the avatar to look like himself, save for a smaller waistline. The avatar was on the left-hand side of the screen, standing next to an elaborate maze. There was an Italian restaurant on the other side of it.

At 10:35 Coffen finished the two-liter of soda, which means he consumed the whole thing in a little over twenty minutes. His kidneys were not thrilled with the carbonated poison pumping through them.

I’ll wait until 10:45, Bob thought. And if that’s not enough time for her, I’ll wait until five in the morning, but not a minute longer!

It didn’t come to that.

At 10:39, Jane’s avatar popped onto the screen: It was a spitting image of her. The braids on her head. The yellow cardigan she always wore to the office. The black-rimmed glasses.

I’m here! her avatar said in a chat bubble. Sorry I’m late. Traffic on the highway was out of hand! Bumper to bumper.

Was there an overturned big rig blocking your path?

Toxic chemical spill.

I hope its noxious fumes didn’t infect you with a secret government-cultivated disease.

That’s a sweet thing to say.

I’m a gentleman.

Where are we?

We’re on a date. Are you hungry?

Starved!

Let’s go dig in.

Their avatars entered the maze. It took about ten minutes for them to stumble through it, making small talk the whole time, finally arriving at the restaurant. Once their avatars touched the shape of the restaurant’s exterior, the background changed. Now they were inside the restaurant, sitting at a table.

Do you like grilled calamari? Bob’s avatar said. The chef here is known for it.

When I was a little girl, a two-ton squid escaped from the zoo. It crawled in my window and hid under my bed. I kept it alive on saltwater taffy.

That squid is lucky it found you.

It’s a blessing and a curse, though. Now every single squid that escapes the ocean tries to track me down. It’s a headache.

LOL!

A robust, tan, mustachioed man came and took their order. Soon steaming piles of food appeared on their table. The avatars ate everything up.

After the meal, they sat at the table smoking cigarettes.

Jane said, I like how these cigarettes don’t make my breath bad.

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.

Meanwhile, Jane, thirsty, awakened, and wondering why Coffen hadn’t come to bed, burst into his office and observed the scene for herself—Bob yanking sadly, his prick bright orange.

Shame rained on him immediately. Coffen thought: Two people can know each other so well and yet there are always new ways to disappoint your partner, disappoint yourself.

He quickly pulled up his pants and pushed his fluorescent orange penis inside.

“Those chips are supposed to be for the kids,” Jane said, and walked out.

Now Bob says, “It’s a different kind of embarrassing, but I’ll tell you if that’s what you want.” Coffen tells her another pared-down version of the truth, one that contains more of the crucial plot points than the first iteration he’d shared, yet it still isn’t entirely true: In this new remix, Coffen and Schumann were having a good-humored competition, a couple blokes fooling around on their way home, horseplay between subdivision friends that unfortunately didn’t end the way either had hoped or expected or wanted.

“Why would you agree to race a car on a bicycle?” she asks with the same judgmental look she’d given Bob after seeing him fluorescent orange. It’s as though he’s covered in the artificial dust as they sit in the café.

“Boys will be boys,” Bob says.

“Your gender is ridiculous.”

“Yes, we are.”

“But I’m glad you’re okay.”

It’s the closest thing to affection she’s said to him lately, and it makes Bob happy to hear her express gladness that he’s all right. (Last night, after returning from the ER, Jane seemed like the whole episode was inconvenient, didn’t express any worry for Bob at all.) He’ll take what he can get, stares down at the lacquered King Kong, frozen there, stuck in mid-swat. “Tell me about your morning tread. Are you all ready to go for the world record? Does Gotthorm think you’re ready?”

“Well, that’s actually what I want to talk with you about,” she says.

Gotthorm is her water-treading coach. He played goalie on the Norwegian water polo team in the 1984 Olympics, and to see him today, you’d think he could still leap in the pool and tussle with the youngsters. Or hop over to the next fjord and burn and steal whatever tickles his plundering fancy.

Gotthorm always stands by the pool in only his red Speedo, encouraging Jane, his cock and balls like assistant coaches poking through the flimsy suit. Coffen himself can’t help but stare at Gotthorm’s bulge on the days he stops by Jane’s training sessions to show his support. It’s not the size of the bulge. No obscene mound distends the Speedo. It’s the nakedness, the proximity of the bulge. How from Jane’s vantage point in the pool, she has to stare up at it for hours at a time, treading water there—a bulge on a pedestal, if you will. In fact, Coffen sometimes can’t help but assume the worst: Gotthorm, Jane, and his bulge, the three of them someday riding off into the sunset together.

“Talk to me about what?” Bob asks, slurping his coffee.

“We think that maybe the reason I cramped up the last time I went for the record is that my mind was too heavy. I was literally weighed down by my mind.”

“Your mind literally weighed more?”

“We were thinking that this time my mind needs to be free. Totally lithe. It has to weigh less than a single scale from a fish.”

“How does one diet her brain weight?” Bob asks, feeling the threat of laughter. This is classic Gotthorm. He talks about treading water in a new age way that makes Coffen want to puke. Her brain is literally too heavy with thoughts, weighs her down, drags her to the bottom. Yup, that’s obviously the problem.

“We’re not sure you should be there this time. I psychically weigh more with you around.”

“Thanks.”

“That’s not meant as a criticism.”

“Sucker punch is more like it.”

“Bob, you know how much this record means to me. Please. Don’t blow this out of proportion. I want to set myself up to succeed. I’m asking for you to help me in a different way this time out. Help me by not being there. I really want the record.”

“I mean, there’s nothing I can really say. The kids and I will keep our distance.”

“Oh, the kids can be there,” says Jane. “We think it’s best if I see them through the travails of treading for so many hours, so I remember why I’m working so hard. They bring out the best in me. Gotthorm says motherhood is very primal and I’ll push myself even harder if I see my children present.”

“Is there anyone else besides me who has to stay away?”

“Don’t turn this into a ‘poor me’ thing, Mister Grumbles. Don’t do that thing where you feel sorry for yourself and I have to comfort you.”

“I will cheer from a distance,” Coffen says, simply because there’s nothing else he can say. Going over the top with some fuming tirade won’t change her mind. He needs to be mature. He knows—or thinks he knows—that she’s not trying to hurt his feelings. If this is what gives her the best chance to break the world record, so be it.

Bob had stood by the pool the whole time during her last attempt, only breaking away to use the bathroom. The kids were there for some of the time, too, cheering her on. But it’s hard for children to understand the immense achievement of treading water for so long. To them, it’s boring. It’s hard to watch. But Coffen understood Jane’s dedication. He knew how hard she’d worked at it, how she had cramped up, her head spending more and more time under the water, until finally the record attempt had to be called off in the name of safety—it was Bob, not Gotthorm, who held her as she cried that night.

“The world record is eighty-five hours,” Jane says. “That’s three and a half days. It doesn’t sound like such a long time to tread until you’re the one bobbing in the pool. Then it feels like your whole life.”

“Tell Gotthorm how I used to train with you, treading water as long as I could last. I’ve always been supportive. He doesn’t like me.”

“He doesn’t understand guys like you. He’s like Schumann. They are built to use their bodies. You’re not.”

Coffen needs to change the subject before, like Kong, he takes one bullet too many and falls to his death. He tries to get it out of his head that Jane wants Gotthorm, tries but it’s not working. Why would she choose Bob over a modern-day Viking? He goes with, “Are you excited for Björn the Bereft’s magic show on Friday?”

“I hear he’s a miracle worker,” she says. “But it’s more marriage counseling than magic show.”

“What made you want to do this in the first place?” Bob asks.

“We made me want to do this,” she says.

Coffen retreats to his coffee. He was lying earlier to the barista—he can’t smell or taste any grapefruit in the brew. Nirvana’s dirge is over. A new song he doesn’t recognize starts up. King Kong is frozen for all time. And Bob is covered in fluorescent orange, like a crop duster had targeted him and spackled him in the artificial film. A visual marker for all that he’s done wrong, so many mistakes that Jane doesn’t want him to cheer her on as she goes for the record. Everybody else on planet earth is welcome, just not Bob.

The Muzak feels like it’s getting louder as they sit there in silence.