Fight Song A Novel - By Joshua Mohr Page 0,31

days. Not back until next week.”

Maybe Coffen and his kids can take in the aquarium together. Might be a nice outing, and it’s been a while since he’s taken them to do anything fun. Plus, picking them up from the house might give him a chance to do some recon, assess the damage.

“We’re basically without spouses this weekend,” says Schumann.

“Don’t remind me.”

“Remind you? This is how Coach would draw it up. This is how we can get our mojo back. It’s all about glory days, Coffen. We’ve stoked the renegade in my guts. He’s awake and ready to rumble. I can relive the past. I bet you never even had any glory days, did you?”

“I had glory days.”

“What happened in these alleged glory days of yours?”

“I stayed up pretty late. I drank my share of vanilla-flavored vodka.”

“Those are the kind of glory days that give real glory days a bad name. My glory days would punch yours in the face and give them a swirly in the closest toilet. I bet part of it is the prestigious uniform. Speaking of that … ”

“I also bowled a lot, and one time I stole the shoes,” Coffen says. “That’s a pretty crazy thing to do.”

Then Schumann blurts, “Would you like to see me in the cloth of my tribe?” He does another snarl, wild in the mirror.

“The what?”

“The cloth me and my fellow warriors wore at Purdue University.”

“I guess so.”

“He guesses so,” Schumann says. “This is the time to take what’s ours. Victory is there, but nobody’s going to give it to us on a shiny platter. We have to seize it! Are we going to seize the shiny platter of our rightful property of victory?”

“I still guess so,” Coffen says.

And Schumann tears up the stairs, stomping about. Sounds like an animal running loose, say a raccoon looting garbage cans. Things are being thrown about above Bob. Schumann had been the one to ram Coffen into the oleanders, but now it seems the events of the last week might have run Schumann into his own set of merciless bushes, jarring him down some kind of wormhole in which he can slip into skin that’s been dead for years.

It’s not long before he’s bounding down, taking the stairs three at a time, and jumping to the ground floor wearing his football getup—helmet, shoulder pads, cleats, the whole shebang—and he’s screaming, “Now, is this the day we seize our shiny platter of our rightful property of victory or what?”

Inadvertently, Schumann is telling Coffen what he wants to hear. Bob does want his shiny platter of victory, only in this context, that’s his family. “I need you to drive me to the pool.”

“Wait, how did you get to my house?”

“I drove, but I can’t drive my kids. I had some rum with breakfast.”

“Rum in the morning. Nice. Now that’s got glory days written all over it.”

“Will you drive?”

“I thought Jane didn’t want to see you,” Schumann says.

“She probably doesn’t. But I have the tickets Björn gave me to his next show. That should score me some points, even if she’s pissed at first.”

Schumann does one more growl and smacks himself on the shoulder pads, then the helmet. “Let’s hit the field,” he says.

Erma is obviously less than thrilled to see Bob, and says to him, “Didn’t I tell you to call first?”

Bob’s first thought: This is what being a weekend dad will be like. I’ll pick up the kids, take them on outings of phony camaraderie. They’ll have a stepfather they admire more than me. And I’ll eat hot dogs alone in an unfurnished apartment.

“Yeah, sorry, my phone is dead,” Coffen says to Erma. “I’m going to take the kids out for a while.”

“Fine by me.”

The kids, however, don’t want to go to the pool. Brent is gaming in his room. Margot is glued to her iPad, exploring a crevasse at the North Pole with Ro. It’s clear that bribery is the only arrow in Bob’s quiver if he’s to coax them to the pool this afternoon. Twenty bucks each, though he gets the sense that once Margot puts the pieces together—and she will; his daughter is whip-smart—she might change the stakes some, ask for her cut to be heightened in exchange for compliance, or she’ll narc him out. The constant onslaught of Hollywood films has made children incredible negotiators.

It’s a warm day. Seventy-one degrees. No wind to speak of. A meteorologist might call the conditions suburban delight.

Schumann takes the main drag across town. The