Fight Song A Novel - By Joshua Mohr Page 0,43
and French Kiss does not cancel. Grandness, grandeur, whatever—don’t make us flake on the show. Don’t make us out to be liars to our legions of loyal fans.”
“Adios, you who fail to recognize talent when it’s waved right in your faces,” Javier says and stomps out of the room.
The other bandmates follow after him, leaving only Coffen, Kat, and her son in the backstage dressing room.
At least for a few seconds …
Then Kat says, “I’m going to get a mop for that,” motioning at the vomit/coffee and walking out.
Just Bob and the boy …
He looks at Coffen, which makes Bob nervous, especially after the venomous things Bob heard him say to Ace back at the office. But Bob also heard what he said at Korean barbecue, something nice, something sweet, so he tries to talk with him. “How old are you?”
“Twelve.”
“So’s my daughter. My son is nine. I can’t go home this weekend.”
“I bet they think you’re a douche bag,” the boy says.
“You’re probably right.”
“I only met you awhile ago and I think you’re a douche bag.”
“I’m not big on you, either. You should be nicer to Ace.”
“Mind your own fucking business.”
“He’s only trying to make you guys happy.”
“Why can’t you go home?”
“Because I did some dumb stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Bob is me.”
“That’s a douche bag answer,” the boy says.
“I’d like to see you talk like that in front of your mom.”
“I’m not fucking afraid.”
“We’ll see.”
Kat wheels a mop bucket in, does the dirty work, slowly wiping the vomit/coffee up.
“I think your son wants to tell you something,” Bob says.
“What is it, baby?” she asks the boy.
“I love you,” he says.
“I love you too,” she says.
The boy flips Bob the bird while she keeps mopping.
“Did Javier leave?” Coffen says to her.
“They’re out there begging him to stay. He needs to go to rehab. Plain and simple. He’s always doing things like this for attention. Did you drink your water? You should finish that water. What were you two talking about while I was gone?”
“He did something dumb,” the boy says.
Satisfied that she’s swabbed the decks clean, Kat puts the mop back in the bucket. “What did you do?” she says.
“I embarrassed myself in front of my wife,” he says and starts crying. “She kicked me out of the house.”
The boy laughs. “Look at the crybaby.”
“Shh,” Kat says to him. Then to Bob: “You shouldn’t drink alcohol when you’re in a bad place. It only makes things worse. I’m sure she’ll take you back. Ace speaks very highly of you.”
“Why should she take me back? I mean, what do I offer her? When was the last time I was actually interesting?” Bob says, and his sobs really get cranking.
“Please don’t cry.”
Despite Kat’s pleas for him to stop, the booze and the agony have slithered themselves into a kind of astonishing knot and now that Coffen has given in, there’s no stopping it—the liquor is a lubricant to tease out what had previously been dammed.
“We’ll give you your privacy,” she says.
“I’d love it if you stayed.”
“That’s okay.”
“Please?” he says.
“We need to check on Ace,” Kat says and ushers the boy out.
Bob is left alone with the mop bucket. Left alone with his memories, not just of this weekend but everything: all the bundled up personal experiences, labeled and ignored like cardboard boxes in a garage. Jane is sick of him. His kids barely notice him. It reminds Bob of his own childhood, the divorce he observed. Coffen can’t allow himself to be the same absent father.
When he was a kid, Coffen’s mom made the world’s best fermented dills. Not that she only pickled cucumbers. No, she did all kinds of fruits—peaches and cherries and plums and nectarines. In the few months after Bob’s dad first left, Coffen’s mom didn’t much feel like cooking meals that emphasized all four food groups and so she and Bob hunkered in the garage in beach chairs in front of her pickling fridge and ate whatever vinegary fruit tickled their fancy.
Across the back wall of the garage were the boxed-up memories. Not the stuff that belonged to Bob’s dad. No, in the first days after he left, Bob’s mom swerved around the house, throwing everything that reminded her of her husband into boxes and stacking them in the garage. By the time she was finished, their house had been pared down severely. Even the television had been boxed up, though Bob was able to convince her to get it back out again.
“Do you know what we are?” she said