Fight Song (15 page)

“I have something for Jane that’s none of your business.”

“Until we go for the record, everything is my business.”

“I’m leaving these tickets with the Cro-Magnon, Jane,”
Coffen says, handing over the tickets to Björn’s next gig to Gotthorm. “It’s the magician’s intermediate show. You were right. He can help us. I really want to go back and see. I want to fix us.”

Jane doesn’t open her eyes or answer.

“Did you hear me?” Bob asks.

“An eel can’t hear a fool bellow from the shore,” Gotthorm says. “A mollusk has no use for your codes of language.” Then Gotthorm tucks the tickets in the front of his Speedo, dangerously close to the bulge, leaving only a short tongue of the tickets hanging out the top, like they’re a couple of dollar bills wedged in a G-string at a strip club.

“Can you not get your genital warts all over those?” Coffen asks.

Gotthorm turns his back on Bob, focusing his attention on the pool, on Jane. Her eyes are still closed and she puckers her lips as she exhales big breaths.

“The show is on Sunday night,” Bob says. “It will only take a couple of hours. It won’t affect you going for the record on Monday. It might help. It might make you feel even mentally lighter if we’re in a really good place as a couple.”

Her eyes snap open, but she doesn’t say anything.

Coffen tries to take that as a sign, but what does it mean?

Jane’s lips still puckering as she breathes out.

Bob stands and watches for a few seconds, wordless.

She is beautiful, treading water there.

Fro-yo hell

The fro-yo shop is a swarming mess of children and unhappy parents. It’s crammed with the aftermath of Saturday-afternoon soccer games; screaming teammates and rabid enemies now congregate here high on endorphins. They’re either ecstatic with winning—
To the victors go the fro-yo spoils!
—or surly, grass-stained losers in need of sugary consolations to salve their suburban wounds of defeat.

There’s a line of people out the door, waiting to order. The crowd is getting restless, collectively unimpressed with the amount of staff present to dispense this frozen elixir. Only one teenage girl toils behind the counter and she’s overwhelmed. Surely, this isn’t the first Saturday, post-soccer frenzy, so where are her coworkers? She’s back there in a frothy fit, wearing a pink polo shirt and pink visor. Coffen can tell she’s doing her best; he can clearly see that, and her effort makes him patient. He decides right then to stuff $5 in her tip jar.

“My manager had to go home early,” the girl says to Bob, after he asks about her lone presence on such a popular shift. “She says she can’t be nice to people today because Mercury is in major retrograde.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Coffen says.

Margot wants boysenberry swirled with French vanilla. Brent wants Dutch chocolate with gummy bears and crumbled Oreos as toppings. They seem intimidated by their soccer-clad colleagues. Neither has said a word since entering this congested fro-yo hell, both buried in their online lives. Maybe Bob should suggest organized team activities to them, see if they like getting grass stains all their own.

Schumann says he wants nothing except the chance to once more prove himself on the battlefield with the magician. Kids and parents alike stare at his football uniform.

“Let it go,” Bob says to him.

“I hate losing.”

“We didn’t lose.”

“Coach would tell me I lost. He’d say, ‘You let me down, boy.’ He’d say, ‘How are you going to redeem your lackluster effort?’”

“And what would you say?”

“I would speak with ruthless actions,” says Schumann.

They drop Margot and Brent off at home. Coffen guides them inside the house. Erma sees him and motors over to block his path in the foyer. “That’s far enough,” she says.

“Jane’s not back?”

“They’re strategizing,” says Erma. “We did a very low-impact tread today, then the rest of the afternoon is working on mind-set.”

Bob sighs and says, “’Bye, kids. Maybe we can go to the aquarium tomorrow. There’s a sea horse show.”

“Ro and I swam with sea horses last week.”

“Where?”

“The Great Barrier Reef.”

“These are real sea horses, though.”

“They look exactly the same. I see them through glass here”—she shakes her iPad—“and we’ll see them through glass at the aquarium.”

“That’s completely different, Margot.”

“It is and it isn’t.”

“Real sea horses will be in real aquariums.”

“My real phone contains real images of real sea horses really swimming. It’s six of one, half dozen of the other.”

Bob turns his attention to his youngest, asking, “Buddy? Aquarium tomorrow?”

Brent furrows. There’s brown fro-yo smudged on his cheek. He says, “Only if I get past level seven before then.”

“Okay, I’ll call you in the morning.”

“Text,” he says.

“I’ll text.”

Bob walks back out of his light gray house. He notices the front lawn is getting a little shaggy—better get the gardener in line or the HOA will no doubt pelt him with belligerent emails. They pounced quickly when Coffen hung that bird-feeder a few months back without proper consent. How might his neighbors feel about the decorative contraption? wondered a passive-aggressive note sent from the HOA’s commander-in-chief. What if everybody wanted to hang an unapproved birdfeeder out in front of their homes? Should such a slippery-sloped precedent be employed? One day, it might simply be birdfeeders, but what eyesores lurked around the corner? Pornographic statues? Could such a gamble possibly benefit the subdivision’s greater good? A zero-tolerance policy had to be maintained.

A meteorologist might call the conditions
getting windier
.

Coffen’s phone rings. The caller ID does not identify anyone he knows. Normally, he doesn’t answer these mysterious numbers because rarely are they anything but veiled hassles, but he needs a friend—even a pesky solicitor, or a receptionist reminding him of an impending appointment, or a local delegate hoping to win his vote, whatever. He picks up on the second ring and says, “Bob is me?” not intending for it to sound like a question, but it does.

“What are you doing?” says some guy.

“Who is this?”

“This is a handsome member of the clean team.”

“Ace? How’d you get this number?”

“You people have to remember that the clean team has access to everything. We don’t only dump the trash. We have keys, alarm codes. We can get into every cranny. We know where you bozos hide your passwords and who has the best snacks tucked in desk drawers.”

“What can I do for you?”

“I’m gonna go back to the office to hang out before the big gig,” Ace says, “if you want to meet me there.”

“Okay,” Coffen says, excited to spend some time away from Schumann.

“If you’re still feeling the effects of the rum, drive slow,” he says. “Drunk drivers usually get popped for speeding.”

“I’m not drunk driving.”

“Exactly. No way would you. Remember to go slow. Before Acey settled down and joined the clean team, he might have wriggled on the wrong side of the law occasionally.”

“Your glory days.”

“Boy, were they.”

“Right now my life feels like the opposite of glory days.”

“We’ll see what some rock and roll has to say about that later tonight,” says Ace.

Bob has Schumann swing them by Taco Shed for an afternoon Mexican lasagna. They pull into the drive-through and Coffen almost tells him about Tilda’s shady business venture, but he decides to keep her secret safe. She seems like a good person, and Bob wants her to make all the extra money she needs.

He does not, however, expect Tilda to be working the day shift, but he recognizes her voice right off. Apparently, one of the other workers is on maternity leave and the extra shifts have been disseminated amongst the remaining Shedheads.

“Hi, Tilda, it’s Bob Coffen,” he says from the passenger seat.

“Bob who?”

“Last night. With Otis.”

“It’s not ringing a bell.”

“The cop.”

“Still no.”

“The
capitán
of Mexican lasagnas.”

“Ah, yes,” she says. “How many would you like?”

“Three.” Coffen feels the urge to talk to her alone. He wants a couple minutes without Schumann here to chat. Bob truly enjoyed their time together last night, chomping Mexican lasagnas in the parking lot. He whispers to Schumann, “Give me a minute.”

“Why?”

“I need to talk to her.”

“Hark the herald angel likes to watch TV in his birthday suit,” Schumann says, smiling, parroting the magic words to get into Tilda’s erotic speakeasy.

“Who’s that?” Tilda asks.

“It’s Schumann.”

“Howdy, big fella,” she says.

“You guys know each other?” Bob says.

Schumann only shrugs. Tilda says, “Don’t be a prude,
capitán
.”

“Can I talk to Tilda privately, Schumann?” Bob says. “Will you give me a minute?”

“Teammates can say anything in front of each other,” Schumann says.

“Now, Schu, play nice. Give me and Bob a moment alone,” Tilda says through the intercom.

Schumann makes a face like this is truly an inconvenience for him, but quickly exits the driver’s seat in a huff, slamming the door. Bob crawls over the center console.

“You okay?” Tilda asks.

“Never better,” he says. “Except that’s a lie.”

“I’ve been better, too. Found out one of my exes is getting lethally injected soon. Turns out he’s a serial killer.”

Nothing from Coffen.

“Did you hear me?” Tilda asks.

“Why did you sleep with a serial killer?”

“It was an accident,” she says. “He wasn’t wearing any kind of identifying badge.”

“Cops and monsters.”

“Now you’re catching on. Plus, he wrote poetry.”

“What were they about?” Coffen asks.

“Mostly they were whiny anecdotes about how he needed more love in his life. He had a crappy father.”

“Me, too,” Bob says.

“Me, too,” says Tilda. “The Mexican lasagnas are ready. Please pull up to the window.”

“Before I pull up, can I ask you something?”

“Ask away.”

“Do you ever want to get out of your box?”