Fight Song A Novel - By Joshua Mohr Page 0,39
they be considered four unhappy clams, their shells boxing them away from everything in the world, much like the subdivision’s electric fence?
Dumping salt in Coffen’s wound, Ace starts humming here comes the bride, here comes the bride …
The three of them roll into Empire Wasted before Schumann or Tilda arrive. Coffen dismisses this place, shaped like a big rectangle, as a dump. The walls are stacked cinder blocks, neither painted nor covered, only nude gray concrete. The stage is pretty low to the ground with an empty dance floor in front of it. No tables anywhere. There’s a bar at the back of the room. An old man behind it wearing a tank top. Bald on his head but not on his shoulders.
Bob helps Ace carry his amp in. Coffen is amped himself, paranoid-thinking about a kidnapped magician who’s probably mighty pissed and ready to cast some nasty curses or, worse, call the cops and rat them out, not solely for Schumann’s solo kidnapping tonight, but also for what he and Bob did to the magician last night.
Empire Wasted technically isn’t open yet. The only people there are the staff, the band—the rest of French Kiss’s chubby, bald members setting up gear—groupies, if you can call them that, and a few friends.
Coffen makes his way to the bar to order a beer and another text from Schumann comes through: The eagle has landed.
Which makes no sense to Bob, who responds simply with: ?
Code for I’m out front.
So Coffen gets going out front. Sure as sure can be, there’s crying Björn hog-tied in the back of the SUV, not pleased with the whole kidnapped situation that’s unfurling before his eyes.
“This can’t be good,” Coffen says. “We’re going to get shipped off to prison for round-the-clock sodomy sessions.”
“In the right hands, sodomy can be beautiful.”
“That’s not really what we’re talking about,” Bob says.
“I have made a breakthrough,” says Schumann, still wearing his football uniform, although thank god for small miracles, he’s not wearing the helmet.
“Breakthrough with what?”
“I know what my gladiator identity was missing. I needed to stop using my white man name.”
“You are white.”
“I was. Or maybe I am normally, but not right now. Not while I’m wearing the cloth of my tribe. I’m a Native American warrior.”
“I don’t think so,” Coffen says.
“From this moment on, I’ll only answer to the name Reasons with His Fists.”
“I refuse to call you that.”
It looks like Schumann might start arguing with Coffen, but Björn makes these really angry mumbling noises.
“How did you even do this to him?” Bob asks.
“That show you saw last night. He did the same one tonight. So I waited outside and then snuck up and cold-cocked him and tied him up and taped his mouth and here we are.”
“He’s going to kill us.”
“We scored a touchdown.”
Coffen, once worried about being a weekend dad, now is crippled by fear that he’ll be a prison dad, rotting away in a cell, scribbling letters that his children never respond to. They’ll certainly never visit him. Prison dad doesn’t spend holidays surrounded by loved ones. He spends them slow-dancing with his cell mate, resting his head on a muscled, tattooed shoulder.
“I’ll never see Margot’s graduation,” says Bob. “Somebody else will explain the birds and the bees to Brent.”
Schumann points at Björn: “We are the winners. I beat your ass, sucka!”
“I never asked you to do this,” Bob says.
“We went for the jugular and were handsomely rewarded,” Schumann says.
“What are you talking about?”
“The killer instinct of competition.”
“That’s exactly what I’m worried about, Schumann. What if he kills us once we let him go? What if he takes back his word about not calling the cops and he tells them everything?”
“I am Reasons with His Fists,” he says, “and I fear no man.”
“You are Schumann, and you should fear that man,” Coffen says, pointing at the wiggling magician, still making angry mumbling noises.
You are my testes-hero
Bob Coffen flees Schumann and goes back in Empire Wasted to figure out what to do about Björn. He decides a beer is in the cards, goes over toward the stage once he consumes it in four panicked swigs. Ace is talking with a woman, presumably his girlfriend. The boy is hugging her. She pats his back.
“Here he is,” says Ace and points at Coffen, by way of a weird introduction.
“Bob is me,” Bob says to the woman, shaking her hand, watching the other one still patting on the boy.
“I’m Kathleen. Call me Kat.”
“Very nice to meet you.”
“Told you he was