Fight Song A Novel - By Joshua Mohr Page 0,42
contract your own case, leaving you an estranged laughing stock. Too pitiful for pity. Too predictable for surprise.
The evening’s mission to go out and live a little is turning out to be a failure. Maybe he’s best at building games, best sequestered from the rest of humankind. Best suited for weekend dad status. Best living in a condo in Memphis. Best letting Gotthorm train his children in preparation for adulthood. He thinks about Ace’s guitar string snapping, how things break if you’re not watching out. What did Bob expect? Who’d been making sure things weren’t about to snap in his family?
Kat prances up to Coffen, places her hand on his elbow, a welcome steadying: “Ace wants to know if you’d like to be backstage with all of us.”
“I’d love to.”
“You don’t look so good. How drunk are you?”
“You look good, too. Is your hair naturally curly?”
“Have some water,” she says.
The members of French Kiss are dressed like the real Kiss. Their makeup is very convincing. In fact, they are a very convincing lot, clad in black leather, platform boots. To a layman like Coffen, if they were lined up next to the original band, he wouldn’t be able to distinguish between them.
Ace says to Bob, “Get ready, because French Kiss is about to rock your eyeballs loose from your heads. I’m telling you, we are fantastic. You won’t believe it.”
“Dude,” the drummer says to Ace, “I get so inspired when you talk about rock and roll. You love it so much. I feel like I’m wearing some serious jealousy-cologne when you talk like that.”
“Jealousy-cologne?” Ace asks.
“The musk of envy,” the drummer says.
Apparently, Coffen isn’t the only person whose bacchanalia has gotten the best of him, because now Ace says, “Keep drinking that coffee, Javier. Sober up. You hearing me? You can’t keep pulling this shit. I mean, feces. Stop with the feces, Javier. Let your feces go the way of the dodo.”
No one answers, so presumably Javier is not hearing him.
“Javier is more wasted than you are, Bob,” says Ace.
“Who’s Javier?”
“Him,” Ace says and nods toward a sleeping guy sitting in a folding chair and leaning his head against a wall, a coffee wedged between his legs. Despite his compromised sobriety, Javier’s Kiss makeup looks fantastic. “He’s our bassist. Showed up cooked out of his skull. Rock and roll can be a tiring mistress.”
“Will he be able to play?” Kat asks Ace.
“My queen,” Ace says, “they say that the show must go on, but I’ve never heard them say that Javier’s amp must go on. We’ll prop him up. We only need him to stand there. So we’ve got that loophole to exploit if his condition doesn’t drastically improve. We’ll make it work one way or another.”
“I’ve missed you,” she says.
“And I’ve missed you,” he says.
They kiss. There’s a kinetic energy between them that Coffen is immediately envious of, resentful of. It’s an energy that he’s not sure he ever had with Jane.
For ten minutes all is well.
Then Javier wakes up. Then he throws up on the floor. Then he threatens to leave, spastically saying that he’s thinking about quitting French Kiss forever because they don’t respect his hot chops on the bass and maybe he’ll take his talents elsewhere unless his prowess gets a bit more recognition.
“We recognize your prowess,” Ace answers on the band’s behalf, “but if I’m speaking honestly here, your chops are only lukewarm. You are proficient on your instrument, no doubt, but let’s keep it real. A genius you are not.”
“You shouldn’t be under any delusions of grandness, bro,” says the drummer to Javier.
“Grandeur,” corrects the French singer.
“I’m a native English speaker, dude,” the drummer says, “and your ass is writing checks your mouth can’t cash.”
“Respect my hot chops!” Javier screams, knocking his coffee over to mix with his vomit.
Javier is probably not going about this the right way, Bob thinks, but doesn’t everyone want to have their hot chops recognized?
Javier rants on, “I’m out of this hellhole. You guys try playing this gig without me. Let’s see how you fare without an artist of my magnitude. Let’s see if anybody even wants to hear this band without my hot chops highlighting the action.”
He stands up to go, slips in his vomit/coffee.
“Dude, we need you,” says the drummer. “Don’t do something you’re going to regret tomorrow.”
“Javi, just relax, bro,” the French singer says.
“We pride ourselves on bringing the rock to the people,” Ace reminds all. “If you leave now, we have to cancel the gig,