Fight Song

by Joshua Mohr

  “I am your testeeeeez-hero,” Schumann says, sexy voice doused with aftershave and five o’clock shadow.

  “Maybe I’ll wait for you guys in the bar,” Coffen says, already sulking.

  “That’s a great idea,” Tilda says. “Maybe Reasons with His Fists would like to take me for a drive so we can get to know each other more intimately. What do you say, daddy?”

  “This will be like the glory days,” Schumann says. “Pillaging a coed to mark an important victory. Hail Purdue!”

  “Nobody’s called me a coed in years,” Tilda coos.

  “What about him?” Coffen asks and points at squirming Björn.

  “He’ll be fine,” she guarantees. “He might even enjoy the show.” Tilda winks at Bob and then walks over and gets in the SUV via the passenger’s side. Shrugging, Schumann hops back in, too, and starts the engine.

  Coffen traipses up to his window and says, “I think we should deal with the problem at hand.”

  “We’ll troubleshoot soon,” Tilda says.

  “I was talking to Schumann.”

  “Do you mean my new friend Reasons with His Fists here?” she asks.

  “Yes,” Schumann says, “who is this Schumann you keep referring to?”

  “Don’t encourage him,” Coffen says to her.

  “I’m a gal hoping to take a relaxing ride with a friend.”

  “He has a family.”

  “And I have a daughter, who’s partial to living in Roy’s car.”

  Making zero headway with Tilda, Bob turns his attention to Schumann, saying, “What about your wife?”

  He revs the engine.

  “You’re not seriously about to drive off,” Coffen says.

  Then Schumann seriously drives off with Tilda giddy in the passenger seat.

  A couple of pickling rocket scientists

  Bob Coffen’s been journeying toward intoxication and he’s arrived at it. He’s—as the bar’s name publicizes—empirely wasted.

  Schumann and Tilda have been gone now for half an hour. The bar is filling up. French Kiss is due to perform soon. Bob is alone, feels dusted in fluorescent orange. Like the artificial stuff is contagious and everyone’s keeping their distance. Don’t shake his hand, keep clear when he coughs. Otherwise, you might contract your own case, leaving you an estranged laughing stock. Too pitiful for pity. Too predictable for surprise.

  The evening’s mission to go out and live a little is turning out to be a failure. Maybe he’s best at building games, best sequestered from the rest of humankind. Best suited for weekend dad status. Best living in a condo in Memphis. Best letting Gotthorm train his children in preparation for adulthood. He thinks about Ace’s guitar string snapping, how things break if you’re not watching out. What did Bob expect? Who’d been making sure things weren’t about to snap in his family?

  Kat prances up to Coffen, places her hand on his elbow, a welcome steadying: “Ace wants to know if you’d like to be backstage with all of us.”

  “I’d love to.”

  “You don’t look so good. How drunk are you?”

  “You look good, too. Is your hair naturally curly?”

  “Have some water,” she says.

  The members of French Kiss are dressed like the real Kiss. Their makeup is very convincing. In fact, they are a very convincing lot, clad in black leather, platform boots. To a layman like Coffen, if they were lined up next to the original band, he wouldn’t be able to distinguish between them.

  Ace says to Bob, “Get ready, because French Kiss is about to rock your eyeballs loose from your heads. I’m telling you, we are fantastic. You won’t believe it.”

  “Dude,” the drummer says to Ace, “I get so inspired when you talk about rock and roll. You love it so much. I feel like I’m wearing some serious jealousy-cologne when you talk like that.”

  “Jealousy-cologne?” Ace asks.

  “The musk of envy,” the drummer says.

  Apparently, Coffen isn’t the only person whose bacchanalia has gotten the best of him, because now Ace says, “Keep drinking that coffee, Javier. Sober up. You hearing me? You can’t keep pulling this shit. I mean, feces. Stop with the feces, Javier. Let your feces go the way of the dodo.”

  No one answers, so presumably Javier is not hearing him.

  “Javier is more wasted than you are, Bob,” says Ace.

  “Who’s Javier?”

  “Him,” Ace says and nods toward a sleeping guy sitting in a folding chair and leaning his head against a wall, a coffee wedged between his legs. Despite his compromised sobriety, Javier’s Kiss makeup looks fantastic. “He’s our bassist. Showed up cooked out of his skull. Rock and roll can be a tiring mistress.”

  “Will he be able to play?” Kat asks Ace.

  “My queen,” Ace says, “they say that the show must go on, but I’ve never heard them say that Javier’s amp must go on. We’ll prop him up. We only need him to stand there. So we’ve got that loophole to exploit if his condition doesn’t drastically improve. We’ll make it work one way or another.”

  “I’ve missed you,” she says.

  “And I’ve missed you,” he says.

  They kiss. There’s a kinetic energy between them that Coffen is immediately envious of, resentful of. It’s an energy that he’s not sure he ever had with Jane.

  For ten minutes all is well.

  Then Javier wakes up. Then he throws up on the floor. Then he threatens to leave, spastically saying that he’s thinking about quitting French Kiss forever because they don’t respect his hot chops on the bass and maybe he’ll take his talents elsewhere unless his prowess gets a bit more recognition.

  “We recognize your prowess,” Ace answers on the band’s behalf, “but if I’m speaking honestly here, your chops are only lukewarm. You are proficient on your instrument, no doubt, but let’s keep it real. A genius you are not.”

  “You shouldn’t be under any delusions of grandness, bro,” says the drummer to Javier.

  “Grandeur,” corrects the French singer.

  “I’m a native English speaker, dude,” the drummer says, “and your ass is writing checks your mouth can’t cash.”

  “Respect my hot chops!” Javier screams, knocking his coffee over to mix with his vomit.

  Javier is probably not going about this the right way, Bob thinks, but doesn’t everyone want to have their hot chops recognized?

  Javier rants on, “I’m out of this hellhole. You guys try playing this gig without me. Let’s see how you fare without an artist of my magnitude. Let’s see if anybody even wants to hear this band without my hot chops highlighting the action.”

  He stands up to go, slips in his vomit/coffee.

  “Dude, we need you,” says the drummer. “Don’t do something you’re going to regret tomorrow.”

  “Javi, just relax, bro,” the French singer says.

  “We pride ourselves on bringing the rock to the people,” Ace reminds all. “If you leave now, we have to cancel the gig, and French Kiss does not cancel. Grandness, grandeur, whatever—don’t make us flake on the show. Don’t make us out to be liars to our legions of loyal fans.”

  “Adios, you who fail to recognize talent when it’s waved right in your faces,” Javier says and stomps out of the room.

  The other bandmates follow after him, leaving only Coffen, Kat, and her son in the backstage dressing room.

  At least for a few seconds …

  Then Kat says, “I’m going to get a mop for that,” motioning at the vomit/coffee and walking out.

  Just Bob and the boy …

  He looks at Coffen, which makes Bob nervous, especially after the venomous things Bob heard him say to Ace back at the office. But Bob also heard what he said at Korean barbecue, something nice, something sweet, so he tries to talk with him. “How old are you?”

  “Twelve.”

  “So’s my daughter. My son is nine. I can’t go home this weekend.”

  “I bet they think you’re a douche bag,” the boy say
s.

  “You’re probably right.”

  “I only met you awhile ago and I think you’re a douche bag.”

  “I’m not big on you, either. You should be nicer to Ace.”

  “Mind your own fucking business.”

  “He’s only trying to make you guys happy.”

  “Why can’t you go home?”

  “Because I did some dumb stuff.”

  “Like what?”

  “Bob is me.”

  “That’s a douche bag answer,” the boy says.

  “I’d like to see you talk like that in front of your mom.”

  “I’m not fucking afraid.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Kat wheels a mop bucket in, does the dirty work, slowly wiping the vomit/coffee up.

  “I think your son wants to tell you something,” Bob says.

  “What is it, baby?” she asks the boy.

  “I love you,” he says.

  “I love you too,” she says.

  The boy flips Bob the bird while she keeps mopping.

  “Did Javier leave?” Coffen says to her.

  “They’re out there begging him to stay. He needs to go to rehab. Plain and simple. He’s always doing things like this for attention. Did you drink your water? You should finish that water. What were you two talking about while I was gone?”

  “He did something dumb,” the boy says.

  Satisfied that she’s swabbed the decks clean, Kat puts the mop back in the bucket. “What did you do?” she says.

  “I embarrassed myself in front of my wife,” he says and starts crying. “She kicked me out of the house.”

  The boy laughs. “Look at the crybaby.”

  “Shh,” Kat says to him. Then to Bob: “You shouldn’t drink alcohol when you’re in a bad place. It only makes things worse. I’m sure she’ll take you back. Ace speaks very highly of you.”

  “Why should she take me back? I mean, what do I offer her? When was the last time I was actually interesting?” Bob says, and his sobs really get cranking.

  “Please don’t cry.”

  Despite Kat’s pleas for him to stop, the booze and the agony have slithered themselves into a kind of astonishing knot and now that Coffen has given in, there’s no stopping it—the liquor is a lubricant to tease out what had previously been dammed.

  “We’ll give you your privacy,” she says.

  “I’d love it if you stayed.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “Please?” he says.

  “We need to check on Ace,” Kat says and ushers the boy out.

  Bob is left alone with the mop bucket. Left alone with his memories, not just of this weekend but everything: all the bundled up personal experiences, labeled and ignored like cardboard boxes in a garage. Jane is sick of him. His kids barely notice him. It reminds Bob of his own childhood, the divorce he observed. Coffen can’t allow himself to be the same absent father.

  When he was a kid, Coffen’s mom made the world’s best fermented dills. Not that she only pickled cucumbers. No, she did all kinds of fruits—peaches and cherries and plums and nectarines. In the few months after Bob’s dad first left, Coffen’s mom didn’t much feel like cooking meals that emphasized all four food groups and so she and Bob hunkered in the garage in beach chairs in front of her pickling fridge and ate whatever vinegary fruit tickled their fancy.

  Across the back wall of the garage were the boxed-up memories. Not the stuff that belonged to Bob’s dad. No, in the first days after he left, Bob’s mom swerved around the house, throwing everything that reminded her of her husband into boxes and stacking them in the garage. By the time she was finished, their house had been pared down severely. Even the television had been boxed up, though Bob was able to convince her to get it back out again.

  “Do you know what we are?” she said one night as they sat in front of the pickling fridge.

  “What?”

  “We’re a couple of pickling rocket scientists.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Rocket scientists are probably the smartest people in the world. And no one knows more about pickling than us. So we’re a pair of pickling rocket scientists.”

  “Cool.”

  “What’s on the menu tonight, garÇon?” she asked.

  “What did we have last night?”

  “Cherries.”

  “Then not cherries.”

  “What will it be?”

  “Nectarines?” Coffen said.

  “A fine choice.”

  She stayed slumped in her beach chair while he went to retrieve the nectarines from the pickling fridge. It was always Coffen’s job to grab whatever jar, which meant he had to get close to the plums, their likeness to human hearts always scary. Like they’d been cut from their chests and dropped into spicy brining solution, saltier than tears.

  Coffen tried to open the jar but couldn’t. Brought it over to her and she cracked the seal. “Would you like to do the honors and taste the first bite?” she said and handed it back to him. “I’m not all that hungry tonight, garÇon.”

  She only had four bites of cherries last night, and Coffen knew that without some prodding, she’d barely have any tonight, too. “You need to eat.”

  “That’s what they say, but I haven’t been this skinny since high school,” she said. “We should tell the world about the pickled fruit diet. Get everyone in shape. Honestly, I’ve lost eleven pounds since he left.”

  Coffen stuck a fork in the jar and impaled a nectarine, then took a bite off it. Vinegary juice dripped down his hand and wrist, which he licked off, running his tongue all over his forearm.

  “Fancy manners,” she said.

  “We’re out of paper towels.”

  “Bon appétit, I guess.”

  “Bon appétit,” he parroted back.

  “Sorry I can’t cook right now.”

  “These are good.”

  “I’ll get it together soon.”

  “Want some?” Coffen held his nectarine-on-a-fork out to her, offering it with a hopeful smile. And it was a sincere expression. He meant that smile. The American Medical Association might not have pimped this skewered nectarine dinner as a rounded meal, but Coffen could not have cared less: These were happy memories, the two of them together on the beach chairs in the garage.

  Happy memories don’t have to be of happy times.

  Bob’s mom took the forked nectarine back from him and bit a small bite, mostly nibbling skin. “Bon appétit,” she said again. “The chef highly recommends it. The chef has guests from all over the country come to dine on this delicacy.”

  “You already said that.”

  “Oh.”

  “Will I see Dad again?”

  “Now I remember saying that. Sorry.”

  “Will I see him soon?”

  “My mind is jumpy right now.”

  “When?”

  “He’ll come to his senses. You don’t leave your family. He knows that. Everyone knows that.” Coffen’s mom smiled at him without much conviction. Then she added, “For our next course, can we have a plum? I’m in the mood for something sweeter. I didn’t already tell you that, did I? I’d hate to think I’m retreading all my material tonight.” She handed the stabbed nectarine back to Bob.

  Obviously, he didn’t want to go to the fridge and fetch a jarred plum, the fruit that reminded him of harvested hearts. But the idea of getting his mom what she wanted was more important to him. She needed to eat. Eleven pounds was too much weight to lose. A bite of cherries and a nibble on nectarine skin was no way for her to take care of herself.

  Coffen peeked in and grabbed the jar. He was able to open this one on his own, the seal popping. Then he lodged a fork in the heart and handed it to her.

  “He could come back soon,” she said and took a bite of it, which made him feel great, seeing her eat something.

  “He could come back tomorrow,” Coffen said.

  She nodded.

  “He could come back tonight,
” Coffen said.

  “You never know,” she said, handing the plum to him, but he didn’t dig in; he was too excited.

  “He might be parking the car right now out front,” Coffen said. “Right?”

  She slunk down a bit in her beach chair.

  “What do you think, Mom? Couldn’t he be parking?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Maybe I’ll go out front and look. Do you think he’s out there?”

  “Anything’s possible,” she said.

  “Can I go check?”

  “If you want.”

  “I hope he’s out there,” Bob Coffen said, holding and finally eating the heart.

  Now, sitting with the mop bucket, sitting miles away from his wife and kids, it’s hard for Coffen not to think that this is rock bottom. Maybe his mother-in-law had been right when she called Bob an anchor around Jane’s neck. Maybe he was dragging the whole family under. Maybe they’ll all drown because how can they be expected to keep their heads above water with him contributing nothing? He’s still crying and kicks the mop bucket. It doesn’t tip over, only travels a few feet away.

  He has to fight, he thinks. There’s still time. But how? Maybe it’s a choice to live your life tarred and feathered in fluorescent orange. Maybe Bob Coffen can shower it off.

  No matter how the room smells

  It’s not long before the bandmates, sans Javier, clamber backstage, along with Kat and her kid. It appears as if Javier’s threat had legs and he’s flown the coop, leaving French Kiss no choice but to cancel the gig. The remaining members are incensed. They are speaking in terms of vengeance. It’s Ace who spearheads these violent delusions. He advocates for immediate retribution and has been expressing these prerogatives via a manifesto on the high points of wanton carnage: “There will be justice,” he filibusters while pacing, the rest of them forced to soak up his venom like bored sponges, “and I’m not talking about that judge-and-jury justice. Nothing civilized. Nope, there will be some extracurricular justice. Let’s say that Acey isn’t afraid to haunt the dark shadows of the law. I won’t shy away from menace. It’s in my blood. My granddaddy was a bootlegger, and his granddaddy was a bootlegger. I come from a lineage of those unafraid of an eclipse of conscience, if you know what I mean. I’ll make sure Kathleen and me have an alibi. We’ll go out of town for a weekend. We’ve been talking about Vegas or maybe something more relaxing. Catalina is supposed to be stunning. Who knows? It might be something as simple as the mud baths up in Calistoga. And while we’re safely out of the area, Mr. Javier Torres will be the victim of”—Ace uses air quotes for the next two words—“‘random violence.’ I won’t rest until I’m wearing that bastard’s Adam’s apple like it’s an ascot.”