Fight Song

by Joshua Mohr

  “Let’s get bloody!” Bob says, using the signature line from Disemboweler IV as a way to commiserate with Ace.

  “I knew I dug your style,” Ace says and rubs Bob on the shoulder.

  “It’s only one show,” Kat says. “I know you’re disappointed, baby, but it’s not your fault.”

  The other bandmates attempt to console Ace with low-grade clichés:

  “We’ll come back better than ever once we dial in a new bassist.”

  “We can be even greater than the great band we already are.”

  “French Kiss will climb higher on the throne of rock and roll.”

  “Tonight was supposed to be special!” Ace blurts, his voice getting really agitated. “I’d planned something really special and Mr. Javier Torres bastardized my special evening.”

  “You can’t bastardize a time of day, bro,” the French singer corrects again.

  “I can’t believe he did this to us,” says Ace. “Tonight was going to be a really important night.”

  The room goes quiet.

  Coffen is in a unique position to understand why Ace is so upset. Certainly, Kat’s kid knows, too, but he doesn’t seem to be locked into what’s bothering Ace right now. Bob empathizes. He knows how deadly it can feel when you envision how something will play out, much like reading the signs at Björn’s show: He and Jane were supposed to take in the information and use it as a way to better their marriage, but somehow Bob messed it up, made her so mad she walked out. Bob felt that sting so viscerally, watching Jane leave him in the ballroom, and he doesn’t want Ace to endure something similar. He wants Ace to be saved from it. “Do it anyway,” Bob says.

  “What?”

  “You know what,” Coffen says. “Do it now.”

  “Do it backstage here?”

  Bob nods and smiles. He’s stopped crying. “Why not? Why wait one second longer?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Live a little,” Coffen says.

  Ace’s eyes bounce between all present—the remaining members of French Kiss, Coffen, the boy, and finally, Kat. He fumbles through his pocket for something and kneels in front of her, still in his Kiss makeup and leather ensemble. “I meant to do this onstage in front of our legions of loyal fans. I wanted to make this something really special for you, my queen, but alas, there’s nothing I can do about that now. And maybe it’s better for Acey to do it like this. Because we’ll never have a fancy life. Ours will be a modest existence. I’m not rich or famous and I never will be. I’m just a janitor.”

  “My dad has a better job than you,” the boy says.

  Ace only smiles at him and continues: “I’m another person getting by who’s trying to do my best. But I’ve done hard living, which has taught me that when something makes you smile, that’s what really matters. Like they say, life is short and life can be hard, but you and me, we make the world better for each other. I promise to always try to do that. I’ll never quit trying to make you happy, and I’ll always try to provide for you. I love your son.”

  “I’m not calling you dad,” says the boy.

  “Shhh,” Kat says to him.

  “Never call me dad, dude,” Ace says. “But let’s be friends, okay?”

  The boy looks away.

  “I love this band,” Ace says. “I’m even starting to love my new friend, Bob. So here we all are in a room that stinks like puke, but that’s the way the world is, right? No matter how happy you are, things are never ideal. There’s always a catch. At least there always is for normal people. Maybe millionaires have it better. Who knows? But we’re the normal people, and normal people make do with what the world gives them. We are happy no matter how the room smells.”

  “Oh, Ace,” she says.

  “I’m serious, my queen. No matter how the room smells we’ll be happy. I know without any doubt that I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Let’s go mano a mano versus the world together. I will love you and your son for all time. Will you make me the happiest Ace in the whole deck?”

  “My dad’s condo has a huge deck,” the boy says.

  “Stop it,” Kat says to him. “This is what I want.”

  “What about what I want?” the boy asks.

  “I hope you can be happy for me,” she says. “I love you. Your dad loves you. Ace loves you. All of that makes you a lucky boy.”

  He doesn’t say anything.

  Kat looks at kneeling Ace, who says, “Will you please marry me before the rest of my hair falls out?”

  “I can’t wait to marry you.”

  He slides the ring on her finger.

  He stands.

  They smooch, hug each other.

  To Bob, the boy sort of looks happy, whether he wants to or not.

  French Kiss starts clapping and howling. Each member pushes in and hugs Ace and Kat and the boy.

  There Bob Coffen is, humbled and alive and speechless. This is what he wants; this is what he needs—to answer his wife’s dental bib. For if a motivating force is what she requires to swim against the sweeping, raging current of their complicated life, isn’t the best thing Coffen can offer her what Ace has said to Kat: to be happy no matter how the room smells?

  “Aren’t you going to tell us congratulations, Bobby-boy?” Ace is asking.

  “Can I hug, too?” Coffen asks.

  “Get in here,” Ace says.

  Bob shuts his eyes and feels their bodies in his wide arms.

  “We are happy as clams,” Ace says.

  “You got that right,” Kat says.

  “My man?” Ace says to the boy.

  The kid nods—no small victory.

  “Sorry you didn’t get to gig tonight,” Kat says to the whole band, but mostly to her newly anointed fiancé. “I know you were excited.”

  “It’s more than fine,” Ace says to her. “Especially since we might still be able to salvage the gig.”

  “How?” the French singer asks.

  Ace looks at Coffen, all of them still tangled in a hug.

  Picking fights with sorcerers

  Who’s to say that Javier actually needs to be Javier? The band only needs someone to stand there like a fool and pretend to play the bass, amp never getting turned on. They dress Coffen like an official member, make him up as an exact replica. He likes the face paint a lot. Then they mount the stage and Bob embarks upon his world premiere, a quasi-Javier, a bassist roaming the limelight.

  When he first hits the stage, his feet begin to tingle, then his hands. His vision gets all spotty around the edges and Bob thinks he’s going to pass out from nerves. He makes eye contact with Ace, who must see the panic in his eyes because, like a savvy veteran, he saunters over to Bob and says, “For the next forty-five minutes, we are rock gods.” Coffen keeps his eyes shut for the whole first song, pretty much staying in one place, not getting into the performance too much. But when he hears the audience scream, when he hears all the heads present clap and whistle and hoot, Coffen opens his eyes and smiles.

  Slowly, he test-drives the give in his hips.

  By the time the set is half over, he whips his wig around in heavy metal spasms.

  He waggles his tongue at pretty girls in the crowd and notices their welcoming flair as they flirt back with salacious gestures, one even baring her breasts for Coffen to appreciate.

  Pelvic thrusts—à la Bob’s pitch for Scroo Dat Pooch—haven’t seemed so hopeless and clunky and arrhythmic in the history of rock and roll, but the music, the stage, the fancy lighting, all these aid his thrusts mightily.

  He’s getting even sweatier than he had been when riding the bike and he’s having the time of his life. Feels wonderfully winded. Feels light-headed and loves every second of being live entertainment. Live! There’s no computer screen. There’s no streaming. No tape delay. No buffering. Bob Coffen is a human standing and sweating onstage in front of a roomful of other humans.

  There’s a surrender of sorts inside of Bob as he feels the hands of rock and roll all over him—a
s his adrenaline bucks. And if “surrender” is too strong a word, well, at least he’s deciding something. Fuck his job. Fuck building one more game he doesn’t believe in. Fuck security. Fuck steady paychecks if he hates the life he’s secure in. Coffen is good at building games and if DG isn’t satisfying him creatively, he can find another job. It might be the Kiss makeup, might be the javelin, could be the fact that he’s been towing the line of his life and it isn’t working. And right when French Kiss is in the middle of playing “Rock and Roll All Nite,” Bob makes a decision onstage: This will be his fight song. Jane loves this one, too. Coffen closes his eyes and gets the tongue waggle working again, his hips doing an awful hula.

  The set is a smash hit. They play two encores. Afterward, Ace says, “You saved our hind parts, Chump Change. If there’s anything French Kiss can do to return the favor, you let us know.”

  “I need to win my wife back,” Coffen says. “Will you guys help me?”

  After the gig, there’s nobody for Coffen to be with. His family is at home and his presence is forbidden. Ace and Kat have gone on their way. Schumann and Tilda—and unfortunately Björn—have peeled off in the SUV to who knows where. That leaves Bob all by his lonesome, back at the office after the concert. A man and his plock. He decides to take a page from Schumann’s book, who found comfort and inspiration in putting on his old football uni. Coffen hasn’t washed off his French Kiss makeup, hoping it will make him feel better, or at least a part of something, while he sits around the office.

  This onstage surrender that Coffen felt while performing with French Kiss now jostles him into doing something sort of naughty with Scroo Dat Pooch. See, all he’d told Dumper and the rest of his team was that an avatar would run around town having sex with all these dogs, but he never said squat about who the avatar might be, who the avatar might be based on, who might be the inspiration for said avatar’s likeness.

  Bob, sitting at his desk in full French Kiss makeup, knows who shall have the starring role in Scroo Dat Pooch and continues coding with a renewed sense of adventure.

  The plock strikes midnight.

  Again.

  Always.

  It strikes twelve and Robert writes subversive code.

  Noise. Noise at DG at what time? 4:00 AM? Coffen had passed out at his computer, head down on his desk, after making great headway on Scroo Dat Pooch.

  The noise is music, and it’s coming from a room nearby. LapLand—the place with the endless pools—also known as the place Ace liked to bathe while he squatted here. Coffen moseys over carefully, feeling as if he should have some kind of weapon in case there’s an escaped convict or recently fired employee hunkered down to pluck off his old coworkers one by one with an automatic weapon. Bob picks up a stapler to defend himself, then puts it back down on the desk. Grabs a travel mug instead, takes a couple practice punches holding it, decides against this option, too. It’s probably someone from the clean team getting an early start on his duties.

  Bob pushes open the door and there’s a young guy sitting in the lifeguard chair, listening to Johnny Cash.

  “I thought you guys were only here during normal business hours,” Bob says.

  “We used to be. Starting today, Dumper put us on round-the-clock duty. Apparently, there was a lawsuit at a company in Copenhagen. An exec drowned swimming off-hours after drinking too much Aquavit.”

  “Do you think anybody will ever swim here at this hour?”

  “Hope not.”

  “I feel like I’m having a dream right now and this is probably supposed to mean something symbolically.”

  “My name’s Randy,” the lifeguard says. “I have $50,000 worth of student loans and live with my mom. How could this be either of our dreams?”

  Coffen brews some coffee in the kitchen and goes back to his desk, leaving Randy to his music and woes. Bob gets a text from Schumann: Just came again. Tilda’s incredible.

  Coffen: What about your wife?

  She never understood the quarterback dormant inside me.

  Little Schu?

  Leave him out of this!

  Where’s Björn?

  We let him go.

  WTF!!??

  Tilda thought it was the right thing to do.

  This is bad, Coffen writes.

  He promised not to hold any grudges.

  You believed him?

  I give people the benefit of the doubt.

  He’s going to kill us.

  Tilda’s horny. Ciao, Coffen!

  The lack of grudge-holding from Björn doesn’t last long. Forty-five minutes later, Björn is suddenly standing next to Coffen’s desk. Björn is there holding a wee mouse by the tail. And the mouse happens to be wearing a wee football helmet and a wee lil’ football uniform.

  “How did you get in here?” Coffen asks.

  “I’m holding this,” Björn says, swinging the mouse some, “and your first question is how I got in here?”

  “What’s with the mouse?”

  “Meet Schumann,” says Björn.

  “Give me a break.”

  “Here’s the thing about picking fights with a sorcerer,” Björn says. “Wouldn’t you assume the sorcerer’s coming out on top? And this guy didn’t expect any consequences? What, he thought I’d simply let it go and shake his hand and buff his hubcaps and buy him a candied ham like all’s forgiven? I’m not that mature. Ask my ex-wife. When I feel wronged, I fight dirty.”

  “What about Tilda?”

  “She’s fine. I might make her win the lottery. She’s the one who convinced this maniac”—he points at wee swinging Schumann—“to let me go.”

  Schumann makes a series of some chirpy, peeping, mouse-type noises.

  Björn shakes his head and says, “More lip service.”

  “You understand him?” Coffen asks.

  “He keeps trying to apologize,” Björn says, “as if there’s an appropriate way to say sorry for violating my civil liberties and kneeing me in the testicles.”

  Bob takes a deep breath. He was caught off guard with Björn appearing out of thin air and waving the rodent around. But now Bob’s pragmatism gets going: There is no such thing as magic. This is merely a mouse, a decoy, a dupe. Stay calm. Everything in life has a rational explanation.

  Coffen’s occupation lends itself to such a practical mind-set. In a sense, Bob is a magician when building a game—when he writes code, anything his imagination can dream up, he can make happen in the game. Say the character gets his foot run over by a magical lawn mower, and then the wound bleeds root beer dribbles from the toes, and if you drink the root beer you time-travel to Civil War–era Gettysburg. Nothing is impossible.

  This, however, is real life and lots of things are impossible, so Bob says to Björn, “There’s no way that mouse is Schumann.”

  “Call him if you don’t believe me.”

  Coffen calls Schumann’s cell. Björn continues to swing the mouse by the tail. The voicemail kicks in and there’s a similar series of peeping mouse-type noises. Bob decides not to leave a message.

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” Coffen says. “You’re a tough audience.”

  It dawns on Bob that the magician might be here to exact revenge on him, too. Not the mouse-type vengeance that Bob doesn’t believe in, but the tried-and-true vengeance of alerting the proper authorities that Coffen was an accessory to the first kidnapping. “Björn,” Bob starts pleading, nervously futzing with the plock’s hands, changing the time to 5:15, then to 9:45, finally settling it back at midnight, “I didn’t know what he was doing … I didn’t ask him to kidnap you … I never put him up to this and actually tried to stop him from doing anything crazy. Please don’t turn us over to the cops.”

  “I know, I know,” he says. “We of the dark arts can look deep into a man’s mind and appraise the truth. This isn’t on you, which is why he’s a mouse and you’re still sitting there wearing some kind of clown makeup.”

  Bob can’t tell Björn the truth, feels too stupid say
ing it out loud, but likes wearing the makeup because it reminds him of the action. They mounted the stage. The crowd cheered them on. Everybody was alive.

  “Why are you here?” Bob asks Björn, now that it seems he’s not about to fling any kind of terrible magical punishment Coffen’s way.

  “To say there are no hard feelings. And that I hope you and your wife still come to the show tonight.”

  “I’m trying to get her there. She’s going for a world record tomorrow morning and her coach doesn’t want her to go. But I’m currently hatching a master plan to win her back before the show. I’m getting a dental bib of my own soon. Say, do you have any dental bibs I can borrow?”

  “Sure, in the trunk,” he says.

  “Thanks.”

  “Mostly I’m here to give you your rodent ally,” Björn says, still holding Schumann up by his wee tail. “He’s probably safer in your custody than mine.”

  Ethically, Coffen is supposed to say yes to this. But why on god’s curdling earth would Bob want to be in charge of mousy Schumann? What if he loses him, squashes him, forgets to pay attention and a rogue kitty-cat enjoys an appetizer? Can Coffen handle any added pressure on his plate right now?

  “Is he going to be like that forever?” asks Bob.

  “Jury’s still out.”

  “He has a wife and son.”

  “And the jury got kneed in the junk and thrown in the trunk. Hey, that rhymed.”

  Coffen sighs and sticks out his palm, and the magician places wee Schumann upon it to scamper. Bob thinks, You are not Schumann, but on the slim chance you are, I don’t want your disappearance on my conscience. I can board you for a bit. This might be good practice anyway, caring for an animal. Once I’m a weekend dad, I’ll have to get some gloomy pet to keep me company. An iguana that sits in the corner on a log, barely ever moving, like me.