Fight Song A Novel - By Joshua Mohr Page 0,24
life? Jane is the only person he’s confided in since they’ve been married. He has old friends, sure, but nobody he feels comfortable calling up out of the blue. He’s on his own, he guesses. On his own to figure out how to clean all this fluorescent orange off him.
Bob’s first stop is Taco Shed. It’s after midnight and he’s never been here so late, though this is his favorite fast food, a lunchtime staple. He turns into the drive-through, only one car in front of him up at the intercom.
A couple storefronts down in the strip mall, he sees two people polishing a statue of the Buddha out front of a temple that used to be a SportsZone. Why they’re doing this task so late, he’ll never know, but give them credit: Even at this time of night, the shine they’re whipping up on the deity is impressive.
Waiting patiently …
But two minutes becomes three …
Becomes five.
And five minutes waiting behind one vehicle in a Taco Shed drive-through is unheard of, especially because Bob is steeped in this particular drive-through’s traffic patterns as only a top-notch connoisseur can be. His enthusiasm for Mexican lasagnas makes Coffen conspicuous around Taco Shed—he sometimes goes there more than once a day. He gets self-conscious when he doubles-up his greasy treks, which makes him bashful around the employees, assuming that once he motors off they all gossip about the sad man with a tapeworm that can only be sated on a steady diet of Mexican lasagnas.
He toots the horn, which gets a whole heap of nothing as a response. He rolls down his window and says, “What are you doing up there?”
Another horn toot produces zilch, and Coffen sees nary another option but to do some reconnaissance work.
Throw the car in park.
Wing open the door.
Approach the inexplicably idling vehicle.
Coffen sees a guy in the driver’s seat passed out cold, sleeping with a whiskey bottle wedged in his crotch and $20 bills scattered about. What he hears, however, is a woman’s scratchy voice coming from the drive-through intercom, saying, “Well, Otis, I got my panties down at my ankles and I’m ready to be mounted. Mount me, Otis! Mount me something fierce!”
Safe to say this stops Coffen dead in his famished tracks.
More from the scratchy raw lady voice coming sexily from the intercom: “Otis, I like my men to yank my hair a bit when they come up from behind. You gonna yank my hair and drive me crazy, Otis, you old goat?”
Bob shakes Otis, who isn’t big on answering or moving, but is sleeping soundly with some spittle dripping from his mouth. Shakes him once more for good measure and the scratchy raw lady voice says, “Otis, I’m waiting for your hard taco meat to slide in my wet taco shell!”
“Hello?” Coffen says to her.
“Who the hell’s that?” says the lady without much friskiness behind these words.
“A paying customer who’s hungry.”
Then the voice pauses, makes some phony computer beeping noises, and finally says in a robot voice, “We are experiencing some technical difficulties with this intercom system. For example, unofficial messages totally unaffiliated with this fine establishment have been mysteriously beamed here from places unknown, maybe outer space, and please keep in mind that the words currently reaching your eardrums from this malfunctioning intercom system have not been approved by any sanctioning body. We hope to have this situation remedied quickly and are so sorry for the inconvenience.”
More phony computer beeping noises.
“You’re not fooling anybody,” Coffen says.
A dramatic exhale from her and then, “Otis, you know the rules. You can’t bring any friends along.”
“Pardon me,” Coffen says to her. “I can’t order because this drunk is asleep in his car.”
The scratchy lady voice sighs. “Not again.”
“Not again?”
“Hold up a minute,” she says.
Coffen looks at Otis, poor guy grabbing some shut-eye at the drive-through intercom. Life could be worse, right? At least Bob doesn’t binge-drink and go dead to the world getting intercom hanky-panky at Taco Shed.
He says to Otis, “Looks like you’re going to have to jerk it the old-fashioned way tonight, my friend.”
Still nothing from the narcotized Casanova.
Then the back door opens and a woman with gargantuan muscles spilling from her official uniform storms out. Her nametag says Tilda. Coffen has seen this woman many times before and is always impressed with her many muscles, like a bodybuilder. She’s probably fifty years old and too tanned and Coffen feels thankful not to be Otis yanking Tilda’s hair and mounting her from behind.
“Hey, I