“You hate mushrooms,” I say dryly. “What? I know you.”
She smiles. Because I do.
The guy behind the counter slides our slices onto paper plates without warming them up and hands us some cups. He glances at the slices. “They just came out,” he mumbles, heading for the back kitchen. “Should be hot enough.”
I grab our plates—which should be warm from this supposedly just-out-of-the-oven pizza, but are definitely cold—and we make our way over to the real reason we’re here.
The arcade machines.
I know all about the bar arcades here in Hoboken, back home in Jersey City, over in New York. I hear one opened in Philadelphia a few years ago. I know they’re spreading all over the place. Quarter Slice Crisis is the answer to that for those of us who are a little too young for sipping whiskey, and way too old to be going to Chuck E. Cheese’s. Well, I know there are plenty of people from my senior class who drink, but not me. And I’d rather not go through all the trouble to get a fake ID when I can just game in a place like this, or at home.
I idly wonder if Aaron is the sort who drinks.
While those other places might frequently be packed with drunk adults and screaming children, the only people in QSC today, on a Thursday afternoon, two hours after the lunch rush, are me, Rebekah, and the probably high guy making subpar pizza behind the counter. It was almost always just us and the arcade games, this time of day, this time of year.
Which is perfect. As much as I wanted to come here, I also wanted to avoid seeing anyone in person. Especially anyone from the gaming world.
“There you are,” I say, placing my plate of pizza down in between the first-and second-player spots of our favorite game, right above where I’ll soon be depositing massive quantities of quarters. I run my hand affectionately over the black steel frame of the arcade machine and pull the light gun out of the holster in front of my screen. Whatever bright orange luster the faux pistol used to have has been long since replaced by a dull melon color, the shade of a traffic cone that’s spent too much time outside in the rain.
Rebekah steps up next to me and pulls out the light pink gun.
“I fucking hate this color,” she grumbles, aiming it at her screen.
Time Crisis 4.
I drop a few quarters into the machine, listening to the perfect sound of them clinking against the bottom of the bin inside, likely against change I put in there last week, because hardly anyone plays this thing anymore. I know this, because right before the game starts, the high scores flash by, and I see D1V pop up from the top to the bottom, almost nonstop, with a few BEKs here and there, followed by one ASS right at the end. Rebekah claims it wasn’t her who put that high score in, but I’m not convinced. No one in this town is better than us at this game.
The intro begins playing, and I wince.
Oof, this game.
The plot is awful, the voice acting is terrible, even the music is completely over-the-top. It’s a trademark of any Time Crisis game—utterly cheesy and campy as hell.
I love it so much.
The action comes hard and fast, and Rebekah and I are quickly hopping up and down, pressing on the arcade machine’s physical pedals by our feet to make our characters hide behind rocks, under cars, around trees...whatever nearby prebuilt obstacle is available to shield us from the barrage of bullets, missiles, grenades, and all the other nonsense the villains throw at us. There are knives and swords sometimes, as ninjas occasionally appear for no reason. People shoot bazookas near one another, because why not. Some characters even throw dynamite now and again, because this is clearly the Wild West.
It’s so ridiculous. Yet here I am. Time and time again.
The door to the pizza place chimes, and I glance over quickly, spotting the same dudes we saw walking down the street on our way here. A bloom of panic bursts in my chest, and I push myself to focus on the game. It’s just a coincidence. There’s no way they followed us.
Right?
Right.
We’re about to clear the fourth chapter of the game, already several dollars’ worth of quarters in, when Rebekah takes a missile straight in the face. The Continue? prompt pops up on screen, the announcer loud and blaring through the speakers. It’s almost louder than the rest of the game, and I feel like they must do that on purpose.
“Shit, shit,” she growls as the countdown chimes away. The great thing about games like this is that they give you a hell of a lot of time to get more quarters. This isn’t a ten-second countdown like playing a fighting game at home, à la Street Fighter V or something. There’s a whole minute to kill. Gives you time to find your quarters or steal some from your partner-in-gaming.
I dig through my pockets and come up a few short, and Rebekah is tapped out. “I’ll hit the change machine—” I start.
“Don’t worry, I got you,” a voice says behind me.
My heart hammers, and I turn around to spot one of the guys from earlier. He’s wearing a gray T-shirt from Rebekah’s college. When he smiles, a dimple appears on his right cheek, and his green eyes light up.
I don’t trust him.
He pulls some change out of his massive hoodie pockets and plinks a few quarters into Rebekah’s side.
“No, you don’t have—” she protests.
“Don’t worry about it,” he says, his smile widening.
“READY!” shouts the announcer in the game.
“Walt!” one of the guys from his clique calls from across the pizzeria. “Come on, we’re gonna do X-Men.”
I look over my shoulder and see his friends waving him over, three of them huddled around the X-Men: Children of the Atom game, a massive arcade machine where four people can play the side-scrolling beat ’em up at once. It’s older than I am, and not really my first choice, but people seem to love that cabinet, no matter what arcade I’m in.
“Let me know if you need help with that level,” Walt says with a wink before hurrying to join his friends.
I roll my eyes and turn back to the screen. Rebekah smashes the start button and pulls her gun up, staring down the plastic barrel.
“Need help. Fucking men,” she grumbles as the game resumes, the momentarily flashed-out screen on her side coming back to life from the missile that got her. I glance over at her quickly and see her eye twitching a little. She’s breathing heavily, too, and not in the anxious-because-of-a-video-game-boss-battle sort of way.
“So how’s...you know, the sessions and all that?” I ask, ducking behind a cement barrier as a helicopter hovers onto our screen and starts firing at us.
“Really?” Rebekah asks, shooting madly. “Now? You want to ask about that stuff now?”