After I picked my driver and wheels, the game dropped me into the lobby, and I hung out there until his current race finished and other avatars dropped in with me. Cartoon bubbles popped up around them, but all the chat phrases were preset. It was frustrating, but there was no way to actually trash talk the other players. Probably for the best. For all I knew, Parzival was actually eight years old. It would explain his avatar. He’d intentionally chosen the ugliest features from the Mii options. His nose was nothing more than two holes in his face. His eyes were a pair of dots, but his eyebrows took up most of his forehead in a Nike swoosh. He’d given himself a receding hairline. The mouth was the most disturbing feature, stretched out and revealing overly defined teeth, like a jail cell. His stupid face always made me laugh. What kind of lunatic would go to so much trouble to trash their Mii?
Mine, in contrast, was fairly nondescript. Only the blue pigtails made it stand out.
Parzival’s arm raised in a wave, as his avatar said, “Go easy on me.” I laughed and selected from the options available. My avatar waved and said, “I’m a little nervous.” I was given an option to vote on the game I wanted to play, and then all the other choices appeared above our heads. The dial scrolled over our picks, roulette style, highlighting each as it passed. At last, it slowed and landed on someone’s choice. And then we found ourselves in our cars at the start of Rainbow Road.
Fuck. I sucked at Rainbow Road.
I pressed the button to make my engine rev as I waited for the traffic light to go from red to green.
Parzival and I each took off like a shot, side by side, and swapped places several times, but he nudged me out in the end.
Back into the lobby, I chose the preset dialog “So unfair!”
Parzival said, “What a shame!”
We played Bowser’s Castle, Moo Moo Meadows, and Toad’s Turnpike, which was usually my best race, but I was off my game, and Parzival won every time.
Consistent losing wasn’t much fun, so I figured it was time to throw in the towel. I chose “This is my last game” from the prompts before choosing the track. Parzival waved, and his avatar said, “I’ll get you next time.”
Somehow Parzival and I had managed to become stranger-buddies. Maybe he was just a kid, but I liked to picture him as someone like me: a shy twenty-something who found it easier to flirt over a gaming system than an actual dating app. And yet, these limitations were a virtual cock block preventing me from ever having a real conversation with anyone I raced. Maybe that was how I played it safe.
Maybe life would be easier if it came with prewritten dialog.
The town house was quiet as a tomb as I made my way downstairs. Aida and Marco would be up in a few hours, with the sun, but they slept like the dead all night. Someone had to be alert for any vampire invasions.
I stretched and checked my phone one last time, mainly to swipe off any notifications to stop the green light from blinking. There were only a few, and the text message icon stood out. I scratched my side and stretched, wondering who might have gone to the trouble to send me a message in the middle of the night. I started to throw my phone onto my nightstand, but the curiosity gnawed at me, and I knew I wouldn’t sleep trying to puzzle it out, so I unlocked my screen.
The message was from Tristan. It was fun hanging out.
At least it hadn’t said, You up?
I stared at the message, trying to formulate a proper response. I wished I could choose from a preset and write back Go easy on me or I’m a little nervous. I had nothing, and besides he couldn’t expect me to see his message at three in the morning. I set the phone down and flopped into bed, finally drifting off for good.
* * *
Monday afternoon, I took a break from fixing defects to get some free coffee in the break room and walked in on an argument between Marco and Aida. I started to back out, but my need for caffeine prevailed.
Aida pounded her fist on the counter. “There ought to be an option to play Link in female form, is all.”
Trying to avoid being pulled into the politics of games I hadn’t designed, I maneuvered around them and slid a mug into the coffeemaker, changing the default setting to espresso so I could double up on the coffee packets. It was that kind of day.
While Marco deferred to Aida most of the time out of self-preservation, he never backed down from a pointless gaming argument. “Do you really think girls are out there all, Oh, no, I’m a helpless princess, because Link’s a boy?”
I urged the coffeemaker to hurry up.
Aida said, “Yes. Yes, I do. You can’t call a game Zelda and then make the entire game about a boy named Link who runs around saving Zelda from the destruction of the world. It’s the very definition of patriarchy. And what’s worse, girls have to identify with the boy, so they internalize a male-centric worldview. Would it hurt men to have to play from a female point of view every once in a while?”
I poured two creams into my mug and scurried toward the door when she said, “Right, Sierra?”
Fuck.
It was hard enough being a girl in the gaming community. I tended to tread lightly around politics. Aida was of the belief we had to burn it all to the ground and take what was ours. I respected her courage, but I had a team of developers who were for the most part men, and I’d earned their respect by being twice as good as any of them. I kind of liked to think I was changing the world one guy at a time by showing them I wasn’t any different from them. In fact, I was better.
I stopped in the doorway and turned long enough to say, “It would be a nice option, but I grew up on Zelda, as did you, and neither of us took the helpless princess route.”
Marco flashed a smile, and Aida’s eyebrows rose, so I knew I should clear out before she lobbed a word bomb at me. It wasn’t that I disagreed with her. It was just that confrontation made my heart race in a bad way. Forced to take a side, I’d usually find some mealy-mouthed middle ground and then hide until the argument blew over.
On my way down the hall, I was surprised to hear Aida say, “Damn straight.”
Once upon a time, Aida and I had been a couple of helpless princesses, expecting life to turn out as we hoped if we just waited for it. Then my salaried job went poof along with the company I’d worked at, and nobody came to save us. People sometimes assumed Aida and I got our jobs at this company based on some kind of affirmative action, when the truth was there were no jobs like ours to be had anywhere, so we created them. Yes, I was fortunate to hold my dream job, but it hadn’t landed in my lap.
I stole back to my office and swung my chair around to my desk to dig into my defect queue, but my phone began to ring, which made me jump. Nobody ever called me.
Although the area code indicated an Atlanta phone number, I suspected the call would be spam and nearly swiped the red X to dismiss it, but I figured I ought to be sure, so I answered but didn’t say hello, waiting to see if a robot voice would kick in.
Silence.
And then a man said, “Hello? Sierra?”
“Yes?”
“Hey, it’s Alfie. From the bar?”
I froze, fearing he was calling about the contest. I tapped my fingers on the side of the phone, nervous. “Of course! Hi. What’s up?”
My voice had gone up an octave.
“Well, I just wanted to check in with you and see how you were feeling about the next round. I know you had some qualms.”