Fight Song A Novel

A couple of pickling rocket scientists


Bob Coffen’s been journeying toward intoxication and he’s arrived at it. He’s—as the bar’s name publicizes—empirely wasted.

Schumann and Tilda have been gone now for half an hour. The bar is filling up. French Kiss is due to perform soon. Bob is alone, feels dusted in fluorescent orange. Like the artificial stuff is contagious and everyone’s keeping their distance. Don’t shake his hand, keep clear when he coughs. Otherwise, you might 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, 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 f*cking 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 f*cking 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 one night as they sat in front of the pickling fridge.

“What?”

“We’re a couple of pickling rocket scientists.”

“What’s that?”

“Rocket scientists are probably the smartest people in the world. And no one knows more about pickling than us. So we’re a pair of pickling rocket scientists.”

“Cool.”

“What’s on the menu tonight, garÇon?” she asked.

“What did we have last night?”

“Cherries.”

“Then not cherries.”

“What will it be?”

“Nectarines?” Coffen said.

“A fine choice.”

She stayed slumped in her beach chair while he went to retrieve the nectarines from the pickling fridge. It was always Coffen’s job to grab whatever jar, which meant he had to get close to the plums, their likeness to human hearts always scary. Like they’d been cut from their chests and dropped into spicy brining solution, saltier than tears.

Coffen tried to open the jar but couldn’t. Brought it over to her and she cracked the seal. “Would you like to do the honors and taste the first bite?” she said and handed it back to him. “I’m not all that hungry tonight, garÇon.”

She only had four bites of cherries last night, and Coffen knew that without some prodding, she’d barely have any tonight, too. “You need to eat.”

“That’s what they say, but I haven’t been this skinny since high school,” she said. “We should tell the world about the pickled fruit diet. Get everyone in shape. Honestly, I’ve lost eleven pounds since he left.”

Coffen stuck a fork in the jar and impaled a nectarine, then took a bite off it. Vinegary juice dripped down his hand and wrist, which he licked off, running his tongue all over his forearm.

“Fancy manners,” she said.

“We’re out of paper towels.”

“Bon appétit, I guess.”

“Bon appétit,” he parroted back.

“Sorry I can’t cook right now.”

“These are good.”

“I’ll get it together soon.”

“Want some?” Coffen held his nectarine-on-a-fork out to her, offering it with a hopeful smile. And it was a sincere expression. He meant that smile. The American Medical Association might not have pimped this skewered nectarine dinner as a rounded meal, but Coffen could not have cared less: These were happy memories, the two of them together on the beach chairs in the garage.

Happy memories don’t have to be of happy times.

Bob’s mom took the forked nectarine back from him and bit a small bite, mostly nibbling skin. “Bon appétit,” she said again. “The chef highly recommends it. The chef has guests from all over the country come to dine on this delicacy.”

“You already said that.”

“Oh.”

“Will I see Dad again?”

“Now I remember saying that. Sorry.”

“Will I see him soon?”

“My mind is jumpy right now.”

“When?”

“He’ll come to his senses. You don’t leave your family. He knows that. Everyone knows that.” Coffen’s mom smiled at him without much conviction. Then she added, “For our next course, can we have a plum? I’m in the mood for something sweeter. I didn’t already tell you that, did I? I’d hate to think I’m retreading all my material tonight.” She handed the stabbed nectarine back to Bob.

Obviously, he didn’t want to go to the fridge and fetch a jarred plum, the fruit that reminded him of harvested hearts. But the idea of getting his mom what she wanted was more important to him. She needed to eat. Eleven pounds was too much weight to lose. A bite of cherries and a nibble on nectarine skin was no way for her to take care of herself.

Coffen peeked in and grabbed the jar. He was able to open this one on his own, the seal popping. Then he lodged a fork in the heart and handed it to her.

“He could come back soon,” she said and took a bite of it, which made him feel great, seeing her eat something.

“He could come back tomorrow,” Coffen said.

She nodded.

“He could come back tonight,” Coffen said.

“You never know,” she said, handing the plum to him, but he didn’t dig in; he was too excited.

“He might be parking the car right now out front,” Coffen said. “Right?”

She slunk down a bit in her beach chair.

“What do you think, Mom? Couldn’t he be parking?”

“I doubt it.”

“Maybe I’ll go out front and look. Do you think he’s out there?”

“Anything’s possible,” she said.

“Can I go check?”

“If you want.”

“I hope he’s out there,” Bob Coffen said, holding and finally eating the heart.

Now, sitting with the mop bucket, sitting miles away from his wife and kids, it’s hard for Coffen not to think that this is rock bottom. Maybe his mother-in-law had been right when she called Bob an anchor around Jane’s neck. Maybe he was dragging the whole family under. Maybe they’ll all drown because how can they be expected to keep their heads above water with him contributing nothing? He’s still crying and kicks the mop bucket. It doesn’t tip over, only travels a few feet away.

He has to fight, he thinks. There’s still time. But how? Maybe it’s a choice to live your life tarred and feathered in fluorescent orange. Maybe Bob Coffen can shower it off.





No matter how the room smells


It’s not long before the bandmates, sans Javier, clamber backstage, along with Kat and her kid. It appears as if Javier’s threat had legs and he’s flown the coop, leaving French Kiss no choice but to cancel the gig. The remaining members are incensed. They are speaking in terms of vengeance. It’s Ace who spearheads these violent delusions. He advocates for immediate retribution and has been expressing these prerogatives via a manifesto on the high points of wanton carnage: “There will be justice,” he filibusters while pacing, the rest of them forced to soak up his venom like bored sponges, “and I’m not talking about that judge-and-jury justice. Nothing civilized. Nope, there will be some extracurricular justice. Let’s say that Acey isn’t afraid to haunt the dark shadows of the law. I won’t shy away from menace. It’s in my blood. My granddaddy was a bootlegger, and his granddaddy was a bootlegger. I come from a lineage of those unafraid of an eclipse of conscience, if you know what I mean. I’ll make sure Kathleen and me have an alibi. We’ll go out of town for a weekend. We’ve been talking about Vegas or maybe something more relaxing. Catalina is supposed to be stunning. Who knows? It might be something as simple as the mud baths up in Calistoga. And while we’re safely out of the area, Mr. Javier Torres will be the victim of”—Ace uses air quotes for the next two words—“‘random violence.’ I won’t rest until I’m wearing that bastard’s Adam’s apple like it’s an ascot.”

“Let’s get bloody!” Bob says, using the signature line from Disemboweler IV as a way to commiserate with Ace.

“I knew I dug your style,” Ace says and rubs Bob on the shoulder.

“It’s only one show,” Kat says. “I know you’re disappointed, baby, but it’s not your fault.”

The other bandmates attempt to console Ace with low-grade clichés:

“We’ll come back better than ever once we dial in a new bassist.”

“We can be even greater than the great band we already are.”

“French Kiss will climb higher on the throne of rock and roll.”

“Tonight was supposed to be special!” Ace blurts, his voice getting really agitated. “I’d planned something really special and Mr. Javier Torres bastardized my special evening.”

“You can’t bastardize a time of day, bro,” the French singer corrects again.

“I can’t believe he did this to us,” says Ace. “Tonight was going to be a really important night.”

The room goes quiet.

Coffen is in a unique position to understand why Ace is so upset. Certainly, Kat’s kid knows, too, but he doesn’t seem to be locked into what’s bothering Ace right now. Bob empathizes. He knows how deadly it can feel when you envision how something will play out, much like reading the signs at Björn’s show: He and Jane were supposed to take in the information and use it as a way to better their marriage, but somehow Bob messed it up, made her so mad she walked out. Bob felt that sting so viscerally, watching Jane leave him in the ballroom, and he doesn’t want Ace to endure something similar. He wants Ace to be saved from it. “Do it anyway,” Bob says.

“What?”

“You know what,” Coffen says. “Do it now.”

“Do it backstage here?”

Bob nods and smiles. He’s stopped crying. “Why not? Why wait one second longer?”

“Yeah?”

“Live a little,” Coffen says.

Ace’s eyes bounce between all present—the remaining members of French Kiss, Coffen, the boy, and finally, Kat. He fumbles through his pocket for something and kneels in front of her, still in his Kiss makeup and leather ensemble. “I meant to do this onstage in front of our legions of loyal fans. I wanted to make this something really special for you, my queen, but alas, there’s nothing I can do about that now. And maybe it’s better for Acey to do it like this. Because we’ll never have a fancy life. Ours will be a modest existence. I’m not rich or famous and I never will be. I’m just a janitor.”

“My dad has a better job than you,” the boy says.

Ace only smiles at him and continues: “I’m another person getting by who’s trying to do my best. But I’ve done hard living, which has taught me that when something makes you smile, that’s what really matters. Like they say, life is short and life can be hard, but you and me, we make the world better for each other. I promise to always try to do that. I’ll never quit trying to make you happy, and I’ll always try to provide for you. I love your son.”

“I’m not calling you dad,” says the boy.

“Shhh,” Kat says to him.

“Never call me dad, dude,” Ace says. “But let’s be friends, okay?”

The boy looks away.

“I love this band,” Ace says. “I’m even starting to love my new friend, Bob. So here we all are in a room that stinks like puke, but that’s the way the world is, right? No matter how happy you are, things are never ideal. There’s always a catch. At least there always is for normal people. Maybe millionaires have it better. Who knows? But we’re the normal people, and normal people make do with what the world gives them. We are happy no matter how the room smells.”

“Oh, Ace,” she says.

“I’m serious, my queen. No matter how the room smells we’ll be happy. I know without any doubt that I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Let’s go mano a mano versus the world together. I will love you and your son for all time. Will you make me the happiest Ace in the whole deck?”

“My dad’s condo has a huge deck,” the boy says.

“Stop it,” Kat says to him. “This is what I want.”

“What about what I want?” the boy asks.

“I hope you can be happy for me,” she says. “I love you. Your dad loves you. Ace loves you. All of that makes you a lucky boy.”

He doesn’t say anything.

Kat looks at kneeling Ace, who says, “Will you please marry me before the rest of my hair falls out?”

“I can’t wait to marry you.”

He slides the ring on her finger.

He stands.

They smooch, hug each other.

To Bob, the boy sort of looks happy, whether he wants to or not.

French Kiss starts clapping and howling. Each member pushes in and hugs Ace and Kat and the boy.

There Bob Coffen is, humbled and alive and speechless. This is what he wants; this is what he needs—to answer his wife’s dental bib. For if a motivating force is what she requires to swim against the sweeping, raging current of their complicated life, isn’t the best thing Coffen can offer her what Ace has said to Kat: to be happy no matter how the room smells?

“Aren’t you going to tell us congratulations, Bobby-boy?” Ace is asking.

“Can I hug, too?” Coffen asks.

“Get in here,” Ace says.

Bob shuts his eyes and feels their bodies in his wide arms.

“We are happy as clams,” Ace says.

“You got that right,” Kat says.

“My man?” Ace says to the boy.

The kid nods—no small victory.

“Sorry you didn’t get to gig tonight,” Kat says to the whole band, but mostly to her newly anointed fiancé. “I know you were excited.”

“It’s more than fine,” Ace says to her. “Especially since we might still be able to salvage the gig.”

“How?” the French singer asks.

Ace looks at Coffen, all of them still tangled in a hug.





Picking fights with sorcerers


Who’s to say that Javier actually needs to be Javier? The band only needs someone to stand there like a fool and pretend to play the bass, amp never getting turned on. They dress Coffen like an official member, make him up as an exact replica. He likes the face paint a lot. Then they mount the stage and Bob embarks upon his world premiere, a quasi-Javier, a bassist roaming the limelight.

When he first hits the stage, his feet begin to tingle, then his hands. His vision gets all spotty around the edges and Bob thinks he’s going to pass out from nerves. He makes eye contact with Ace, who must see the panic in his eyes because, like a savvy veteran, he saunters over to Bob and says, “For the next forty-five minutes, we are rock gods.” Coffen keeps his eyes shut for the whole first song, pretty much staying in one place, not getting into the performance too much. But when he hears the audience scream, when he hears all the heads present clap and whistle and hoot, Coffen opens his eyes and smiles.

Slowly, he test-drives the give in his hips.

By the time the set is half over, he whips his wig around in heavy metal spasms.

He waggles his tongue at pretty girls in the crowd and notices their welcoming flair as they flirt back with salacious gestures, one even baring her breasts for Coffen to appreciate.

Pelvic thrusts—à la Bob’s pitch for Scroo Dat Pooch—haven’t seemed so hopeless and clunky and arrhythmic in the history of rock and roll, but the music, the stage, the fancy lighting, all these aid his thrusts mightily.

He’s getting even sweatier than he had been when riding the bike and he’s having the time of his life. Feels wonderfully winded. Feels light-headed and loves every second of being live entertainment. Live! There’s no computer screen. There’s no streaming. No tape delay. No buffering. Bob Coffen is a human standing and sweating onstage in front of a roomful of other humans.

There’s a surrender of sorts inside of Bob as he feels the hands of rock and roll all over him—as his adrenaline bucks. And if “surrender” is too strong a word, well, at least he’s deciding something. F*ck his job. F*ck building one more game he doesn’t believe in. F*ck security. F*ck steady paychecks if he hates the life he’s secure in. Coffen is good at building games and if DG isn’t satisfying him creatively, he can find another job. It might be the Kiss makeup, might be the javelin, could be the fact that he’s been towing the line of his life and it isn’t working. And right when French Kiss is in the middle of playing “Rock and Roll All Nite,” Bob makes a decision onstage: This will be his fight song. Jane loves this one, too. Coffen closes his eyes and gets the tongue waggle working again, his hips doing an awful hula.

The set is a smash hit. They play two encores. Afterward, Ace says, “You saved our hind parts, Chump Change. If there’s anything French Kiss can do to return the favor, you let us know.”

“I need to win my wife back,” Coffen says. “Will you guys help me?”



After the gig, there’s nobody for Coffen to be with. His family is at home and his presence is forbidden. Ace and Kat have gone on their way. Schumann and Tilda—and unfortunately Björn—have peeled off in the SUV to who knows where. That leaves Bob all by his lonesome, back at the office after the concert. A man and his plock. He decides to take a page from Schumann’s book, who found comfort and inspiration in putting on his old football uni. Coffen hasn’t washed off his French Kiss makeup, hoping it will make him feel better, or at least a part of something, while he sits around the office.

This onstage surrender that Coffen felt while performing with French Kiss now jostles him into doing something sort of naughty with Scroo Dat Pooch. See, all he’d told Dumper and the rest of his team was that an avatar would run around town having sex with all these dogs, but he never said squat about who the avatar might be, who the avatar might be based on, who might be the inspiration for said avatar’s likeness.

Bob, sitting at his desk in full French Kiss makeup, knows who shall have the starring role in Scroo Dat Pooch and continues coding with a renewed sense of adventure.

The plock strikes midnight.

Again.

Always.

It strikes twelve and Robert writes subversive code.



Noise. Noise at DG at what time? 4:00 AM? Coffen had passed out at his computer, head down on his desk, after making great headway on Scroo Dat Pooch.

The noise is music, and it’s coming from a room nearby. LapLand—the place with the endless pools—also known as the place Ace liked to bathe while he squatted here. Coffen moseys over carefully, feeling as if he should have some kind of weapon in case there’s an escaped convict or recently fired employee hunkered down to pluck off his old coworkers one by one with an automatic weapon. Bob picks up a stapler to defend himself, then puts it back down on the desk. Grabs a travel mug instead, takes a couple practice punches holding it, decides against this option, too. It’s probably someone from the clean team getting an early start on his duties.

Bob pushes open the door and there’s a young guy sitting in the lifeguard chair, listening to Johnny Cash.

“I thought you guys were only here during normal business hours,” Bob says.

“We used to be. Starting today, Dumper put us on round-the-clock duty. Apparently, there was a lawsuit at a company in Copenhagen. An exec drowned swimming off-hours after drinking too much Aquavit.”

“Do you think anybody will ever swim here at this hour?”

“Hope not.”

“I feel like I’m having a dream right now and this is probably supposed to mean something symbolically.”

“My name’s Randy,” the lifeguard says. “I have $50,000 worth of student loans and live with my mom. How could this be either of our dreams?”



Coffen brews some coffee in the kitchen and goes back to his desk, leaving Randy to his music and woes. Bob gets a text from Schumann: Just came again. Tilda’s incredible.

Coffen: What about your wife?

She never understood the quarterback dormant inside me.

Little Schu?

Leave him out of this!

Where’s Björn?

We let him go.

WTF!!??

Tilda thought it was the right thing to do.

This is bad, Coffen writes.

He promised not to hold any grudges.

You believed him?

I give people the benefit of the doubt.

He’s going to kill us.

Tilda’s horny. Ciao, Coffen!



The lack of grudge-holding from Björn doesn’t last long. Forty-five minutes later, Björn is suddenly standing next to Coffen’s desk. Björn is there holding a wee mouse by the tail. And the mouse happens to be wearing a wee football helmet and a wee lil’ football uniform.

“How did you get in here?” Coffen asks.

“I’m holding this,” Björn says, swinging the mouse some, “and your first question is how I got in here?”

“What’s with the mouse?”

“Meet Schumann,” says Björn.

“Give me a break.”

“Here’s the thing about picking fights with a sorcerer,” Björn says. “Wouldn’t you assume the sorcerer’s coming out on top? And this guy didn’t expect any consequences? What, he thought I’d simply let it go and shake his hand and buff his hubcaps and buy him a candied ham like all’s forgiven? I’m not that mature. Ask my ex-wife. When I feel wronged, I fight dirty.”

“What about Tilda?”

“She’s fine. I might make her win the lottery. She’s the one who convinced this maniac”—he points at wee swinging Schumann—“to let me go.”

Schumann makes a series of some chirpy, peeping, mouse-type noises.

Björn shakes his head and says, “More lip service.”

“You understand him?” Coffen asks.

“He keeps trying to apologize,” Björn says, “as if there’s an appropriate way to say sorry for violating my civil liberties and kneeing me in the testicles.”

Bob takes a deep breath. He was caught off guard with Björn appearing out of thin air and waving the rodent around. But now Bob’s pragmatism gets going: There is no such thing as magic. This is merely a mouse, a decoy, a dupe. Stay calm. Everything in life has a rational explanation.

Coffen’s occupation lends itself to such a practical mind-set. In a sense, Bob is a magician when building a game—when he writes code, anything his imagination can dream up, he can make happen in the game. Say the character gets his foot run over by a magical lawn mower, and then the wound bleeds root beer dribbles from the toes, and if you drink the root beer you time-travel to Civil War–era Gettysburg. Nothing is impossible.

This, however, is real life and lots of things are impossible, so Bob says to Björn, “There’s no way that mouse is Schumann.”

“Call him if you don’t believe me.”

Coffen calls Schumann’s cell. Björn continues to swing the mouse by the tail. The voicemail kicks in and there’s a similar series of peeping mouse-type noises. Bob decides not to leave a message.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Coffen says. “You’re a tough audience.”

It dawns on Bob that the magician might be here to exact revenge on him, too. Not the mouse-type vengeance that Bob doesn’t believe in, but the tried-and-true vengeance of alerting the proper authorities that Coffen was an accessory to the first kidnapping. “Björn,” Bob starts pleading, nervously futzing with the plock’s hands, changing the time to 5:15, then to 9:45, finally settling it back at midnight, “I didn’t know what he was doing … I didn’t ask him to kidnap you … I never put him up to this and actually tried to stop him from doing anything crazy. Please don’t turn us over to the cops.”

“I know, I know,” he says. “We of the dark arts can look deep into a man’s mind and appraise the truth. This isn’t on you, which is why he’s a mouse and you’re still sitting there wearing some kind of clown makeup.”

Bob can’t tell Björn the truth, feels too stupid saying it out loud, but likes wearing the makeup because it reminds him of the action. They mounted the stage. The crowd cheered them on. Everybody was alive.

“Why are you here?” Bob asks Björn, now that it seems he’s not about to fling any kind of terrible magical punishment Coffen’s way.

“To say there are no hard feelings. And that I hope you and your wife still come to the show tonight.”

“I’m trying to get her there. She’s going for a world record tomorrow morning and her coach doesn’t want her to go. But I’m currently hatching a master plan to win her back before the show. I’m getting a dental bib of my own soon. Say, do you have any dental bibs I can borrow?”

“Sure, in the trunk,” he says.

“Thanks.”

“Mostly I’m here to give you your rodent ally,” Björn says, still holding Schumann up by his wee tail. “He’s probably safer in your custody than mine.”

Ethically, Coffen is supposed to say yes to this. But why on god’s curdling earth would Bob want to be in charge of mousy Schumann? What if he loses him, squashes him, forgets to pay attention and a rogue kitty-cat enjoys an appetizer? Can Coffen handle any added pressure on his plate right now?

“Is he going to be like that forever?” asks Bob.

“Jury’s still out.”

“He has a wife and son.”

“And the jury got kneed in the junk and thrown in the trunk. Hey, that rhymed.”

Coffen sighs and sticks out his palm, and the magician places wee Schumann upon it to scamper. Bob thinks, You are not Schumann, but on the slim chance you are, I don’t want your disappearance on my conscience. I can board you for a bit. This might be good practice anyway, caring for an animal. Once I’m a weekend dad, I’ll have to get some gloomy pet to keep me company. An iguana that sits in the corner on a log, barely ever moving, like me.

It compels Bob to blurt, “I really need that dental bib.”

“Then let’s get you one,” Björn says.