Fight Song (10 page)

“I’ve looked everywhere and can’t track her down,” says Coffen.

“Why are you all wet?”

“The magician sabotaged some of us. He threw us in an ice bath. I lost Jane in the melee.”

“Sounds like a cool show.”

Bob opens the SUV’s passenger door. “It was not a cool show at all.”

Schumann shuts the door. “Don’t climb in my car.”

“Why not?”

“My seats are leather and you’re soaked. You need to dry off properly before getting in.”

“There’s no time.”

“There’s still time on the game clock.”

“We have to find Jane.”

“Dry off. You can use my gym towel in the back. I’ll get it.”

“Schumann, I’m ordering you to drive!” Bob says.

But Schumann’s not having it: “Listen, your life coach
got leather seats last week and won’t have them ruined. Come on, I’m playing along, doing my part. Do you think this is easy for me to take orders from you? It’s not. I’ve been a QB since elementary school.”

Schumann hands Coffen the towel. “I’m playing out of position. Psycho Schumann is supposed to be the star. You can’t expect me to get it right away. I’m used to the limelight.”

“We have to get to my house right now. I need to talk to Jane.”

“I know a shortcut,” says Schumann, making a face like he’s scrutinizing Coffen’s technique with the towel.

Schumann speeds around the hotel’s back lot, and that’s when Coffen spies Björn the Bereft, loading some boxes into his trunk.

“It’s him,” says Bob.

“The magician?”

“The marriage ruiner.”

Schumann stops the SUV. “This is your opponent, huh?”

“Forget it,” Coffen says. “He sucks, but we need to get to Jane.”

“Not so fast.”

“We have to hurry.”

“This guy shall pay for throwing you into the ice bath.”

“Come on, let’s go,” Bob says, getting a bad feeling about the deranged look in Schumann’s eyes.

“As your life coach, I need to share an idea with you,” says Schumann. “You may not like it at first, but let it marinate before answering me.”

“What?”

“We need that magician to accompany us to your house.”

“What are you talking about?”

“For Jane,” Schumann says. “Jane wanted to go to the show tonight, right? You told me this was her idea. She respects that magician. You said so yourself that he’s the marriage ruiner. He needs to make it right. Jane needs to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.”

“He won’t help us.”

“He might help us against his will.”

“Let’s take off.”

“We could throw him in the back of the SUV and see what happens.”

“I don’t think so.”

“We could demand his presence on a trip to your house.”

“Kidnap him?”

“Kidnapping is a word streaked with evil,” Schumann says.

Coffen can’t believe his ears, can barely compute what’s coming out of Schumann’s mouth. It’s so ludicrous that Bob just isn’t taking the quarterback’s threats seriously—how can he? How can he ponder anything except getting to Jane and telling her the truth? He’s lost and he knows he’s lost and he wants to do something about it, wants to crawl out of his stupor and be a better man.

“You want to abduct a magician?”

Schumann breaks into a batch of slow, awestruck applause. “Do I have the look of someone seriously going loco, Coffen? Are you seeing my game face? Are you scared of the warrior thriving in my guts?”

“Please, Schumann, let’s just go.”

“You want me to help you hijack this jag-off, don’t you? Is that what you’re saying?”

“That’s exactly what I’m not saying.”

“You want me to be the muscle of the operation? I say abso-fucking-lutely. I say let’s get loco. I haven’t done anything crazy since leaving Purdue. We used to leave a path of destruction in our wake.” Schumann’s voice is getting really loud: “And now, I shall quarterback a vessel of mayhem once more!”

He starts whistling the beginning bars of “Hail Purdue” to properly motivate himself.

“I’ll be right back,” he says to Coffen, who’s trying to formulate words, any words, but he sits there stupidly as Schumann exits the SUV. It’s like Bob’s witnessing somebody else’s hallucination—so surreal that all he can do is whisper, “Don’t, please,” but Schumann’s already outside the vehicle.

Schumann rolls his sleeves up to his elbows.

He ambles toward the magician, who’s still standing at his trunk, and asks him, “Have you ever seen a fourth-quarter comeback in which the underdog snatches victory from the rabid jaws of defeat?”

“What are you talking about?” Björn asks, wiping some tears from his cheeks.

Dip his haunches in honey mustard

All Bob Coffen can think is this:
Life coaches are not supposed to kidnap magicians
. It must be some kind of unwritten life-coach rule—do not creep up and head-butt the magician. Do not give him the fireman carry and toss him in the backseat of your SUV.

Psycho Schumann’s not interested in any industry standards; he makes up his own rules as the night goes on. While they drive away, Coffen’s eyeballs Ping-Pong between Schumann and Björn, who’s starting to come to.

“I see you’re taking a very literal interpretation of capturing the magic,” Björn says in the SUV, mindlessly scratching at his moustache. “It’s a metaphor, you retards.”

“Is that any way to ingratiate yourself to your captors?” says Schumann. “You come into our stadium and start calling us retarded?”

“What stadium?” Björn says.

“We have to let him out of the car,” Bob says.

“We’ll all get out together at your house,” Schumann says.

“Schumann, let’s be reasonable,” Bob says.

“I’d drink the blood of a Notre Dame lineman right now,” Schumann says.

“I will put a curse something fierce on your asses if you don’t let me out right now,” says Björn.

Bob giggles and says, “A curse? Really?”

“I’d dip that lineman’s haunches in honey mustard and gorge like a king.”

“You saw what I did in the ballroom,” Björn says to Bob. “I’m assuming your soaked bib and wet head means you went in the water tank. Sorry about that. But what you’re doing right now, you’re going to regret forever.”

“This isn’t my idea,” Coffen says. “He’s acting on his own accord.”

“Tell that to the police,” Björn says.

“I feel totally alive again, Coffen,” Schumann says. “Our kidnapping has awoken the sleeping gladiator in me. All I see around me are football games.”

“I’m talking the kind of curse that ancient civilizations wrote about,” Björn says. “You two retards will be immortalized in an allegory about what happens when you tempt fate and have to suffer the dire consequences of the dark arts.”

“If it were up to me, I’d let you go right now,” Coffen says.

“You’re on the hook for this, too. Are you sure you want to mess with me?” Björn says.

“He doesn’t listen to me,” Coffen says, pointing at Schumann.

“Try harder to convince him.”

“He wants to take you to my house, so you can help me and my wife. I think she’s going to divorce me.”

“I’ve been there. You heard my story from the show. But think, man: You’re going to get arrested,” Björn says. “You’ll go to prison. But if you let me out now, I won’t call the cops or anything. Honest. I promise. A magician’s word is a two-ton brick of gold.”

“Hike the ball!” Schumann yells in the driver’s seat.
“Hike the ball and let the fur fly! Let’s scrap like junkyard dogs!”

“Think about it,” Björn says. “You’re doing this for your wife? Do you have children, too?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what good will you do them once you’re in the clink?”

Reflexively, Bob begins to answer—begins a fumbling phrase, a polluted cluster of nonsense—because the truth is he can’t defend himself, or Schumann, or any of this. It’s wrong. He’s wrong. And even if this whole ordeal is Schumann’s idea, won’t the police assume Coffen is guilty by association?

Bob feels a throb in his guts and barely rolls the SUV’s window down in time before he throws up everywhere.

“Don’t worry about that,” says Schumann. “I tossed my cookies before we went for the state title in high school. Nerves are good. They mean you’re starving for victory. But if the puke damages my paint job, you’re footing the bill.”

“Stop the SUV,” Coffen says to Schumann.

“Why?”

“Stop it.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Pull over.”

“We’re driving the ball. We’re almost to the end zone. Soon we’ll celebrate victory with dances of ecstasy. Back flips. Ceremonial chants. Cheerleaders flipping their tiny skirts up.”

“We have to let him go,” Bob says.

“We’re almost the champions,” Schumann says.

“The champions of what?” Björn says.

“The kidnapping champions.”

“Stop the SUV!” shouts Bob.

“No,” Schumann says. “I’m calling an audible.”

“What’s that even mean?” Coffen says.

“It means I’ve come to the line of scrimmage. I’ve looked over the defensive formation. And at the last second, I’m changing the play. You’re telling me the play is to pull over and let this magician go scot-free. And I’m telling you that I won’t run that play. I’m calling something different.”

Coffen says, “Listen to me, Schumann. This isn’t a game. This is real. We are committing a crime. We will get arrested. Snap out of it.”

“Feels too good to be competing in a game again.”

It’s that mention of the word “game”—Coffen and Schumann have totally different definitions of gaming. Bob controls his avatar. Bob competes in a controlled environment. Yet for Schumann, the stakes are real. His adrenaline is like gasoline and Bob thinks that he has to appeal to Schumann’s sense of family: The only way Schumann will come to his senses, snap out of this trance, is if he’s going to lose much more than a game, much more than blowing out a knee, his career over—he’s going to lose his status quo. His wife. His child. And hopefully, he won’t squander all that for an orgasm of endorphins.

“Think of going to jail and never kissing your wife again,” Bob says.

“I’m a tiger breaking out of my cage with a laser cannon and a top-shelf vendetta.”

“Think of never spooning her.”

“I’m a king cobra poised to strike and my fangs have been coated in a tincture of nuclear waste and hot lava.”

Okay, so his missus isn’t the pressure point that Coffen needs to push. How can he get this game’s character to do what he wants? Last ditch effort: “Think of little Schu. Can you imagine little Schu without you?”

Suddenly, Schumann’s whole face changes. Trance shattered. His eyes fill with tears, though he’s able to choke them back.

“Little Schu?” Schumann says, almost in a whisper.

“Don’t deprive him of your loving guidance.”

“I never really had a father,” Schumann says.

“Me neither,” Coffen says.

“Neither did I,” says Björn from the backseat. “America is full of deadbeat dads. They’re like crabs in our country’s pubes.”

“Little Schu deserves a papa,” Schumann says, pulling the car over.

“I’m sorry,” Coffen says to the magician. “Please don’t call the cops.”

“I went a little crazy when my wife left me, too,” Björn says.

“Little Schu needs to know all my tricks of the trade. I have to pass on my secrets. Every rookie needs a cagey veteran to show him the ropes.”