I’m going to do it this time?” she asks.
“I really do. Get all the rest you need. Break that record. And we’ll talk after you’re the world champion.” Coffen grips the crumpled and bloodied napkins in his pocket, in case he needs to retrieve them to swipe at a bleeding nose, but not one drip falls from his nose. “Now can we get back to enjoying the music?” Bob asks.
Jane smiles, nods, stares at him.
“Yeah!” says Brent.
Even Margot, who’s got her iPad out to record all this, says, “Let’s hear another one.”
Ace laughs and says, “We love the enthusiasm we’re seeing from the crowd on the Coffen front lawn! Music is about the fans, and we love each and every one of you. You never know what to expect at a new venue, but the Coffen front lawn is winning a huge place in our hearts!”
The four Coffens all clap.
Erma stands with her hands on her hips.
Hopefully, no soulless spies from the HOA observe this unauthorized performance or they’ll no doubt pop off a belligerent email to Bob, a threat cluttered with propaganda and rhetorical questions—shouldn’t the music being broadcast within our subdivision’s collective earshot represent the tastes of all the residents rather than a mere few? Isn’t every one of our ears entitled to tones that tickle its tastes?
“Excuse me,” Jane says. “Will you play ‘Rock and Roll All Nite’ again? That’s one of my favorites.”
“Your taste in rock and roll is rock solid,” Ace says.
French Kiss strikes up the song again.
Bob pats his bib and says to Jane, “Good luck.”
Shame-cave
If one thing is utterly obvious to Coffen once he leaves his family for the night and goes back to DG, it is he has to stop lying to himself. What an oddly timed revelation earlier in French Kiss’s van, realizing consciously for the first time that he didn’t really support his wife. And that makes him wonder what else he doesn’t know. He’s still dosed on Scout’sHonor!® so he walks toward the bathroom to ogle his face in the mirror while he finds out about himself, one nosebleed at a time.
On his way there, however, he hears more Johnny Cash coming from LapLand. He opens the door and walks in. There the lifeguard sits, perched high in his chair, guarding an empty pool.
“Oh, fantastic, it’s the guy who thinks this is all a dream.”
“I now know this is real,” Coffen says.
“I’m pretty busy, so do you mind?”
“Will you play a game with me?”
“No thanks,” the lifeguard says.
“Is my nose bleeding?”
“Is that part of the game? Because I’m pretty sure I said that I didn’t want to play.”
“Is my nose bleeding?”
“You’re going to keep badgering me until I answer you, right?”
“Yes.”
“Your nose is not bleeding.”
“I love my wife and I believe in her,” Bob says.
“Okay.”
“Is my nose bleeding?”
“Nope.”
“I love my kids and I believe in them, too.”
Bob pauses, shrugs.
“Still no blood,” the lifeguard says.
“I love my job,” Bob says, not even needing to ask about his nose this time because he feels it rupture. The blood gushes and Coffen doesn’t even wipe it, lets it soak the front of his new suit. “I have to quit this job.”
“You and me both,” the lifeguard says. “You give me the creeps.”
“I’ve worked here for ten years.”
“You poor son of a bitch.”
“How do you make any big changes to your life once you have all these responsibilities?” Bob asks, although he’s turning to walk out without giving the lifeguard any time to answer.
Bob hadn’t expected any additional hours to work on Scroo Dat Pooch, but with an empty Sunday night, why not polish this turd to an incredible sheen? The code he writes makes the game look better, graphics getting downright good, and the better it looks—he reasons—the greater the opportunity for tomorrow morning’s status meeting to be an incredible unveiling, a self-sabotage of extraordinary measures.
“What time is it, Robert?” he says to himself.
“The plock strikes twelve, Robert.”
“Does it, Robert my boy?”
“Indeed, it does, Robert.”
Coffen codes away and his phone rings about an hour later. “Bob is me,” he says.
“Somebody gives you a gift of free tickets and you spit in his fucking face of generosity?” a voice says, slurring his words dramatically.
“Björn?”
“I turned your colleague into a rodent, Bob. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were antagonizing me by flaking on my show. I’m a big deal, man. I’m famous. I have over three thousand fans on Facebook. I’m a true miracle worker and you spit in the face