Fight Song (21 page)

There’s a surrender of sorts inside of Bob as he feels the hands of rock and roll all over him—as 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 saying 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?