Joshua Mohr - Fight Song

“I think we’re going in the drink,” Coffen says, solely focused on the thin ice .

“Forget it,” she says. She pulls off her dental bib, sets it on the table. “I need to be away from you right now.”

“The oleanders are from the other night with Schumann. Let me tell you the whole story of what happened there.”

“No more stories.”

“Jane, I’m a little lost right now, okay? I’m turned around. I don’t know who I am. I want to know who I am again.”

“You’re Bob,” she says, turning to leave.

“Yes, Bob is me.”

“You have a wife and two kids. You shouldn’t work so many hours. You’re compulsively online. And you’re acting like a total asshole tonight.”

With that, the ice buckles, but Jane has already moved off of their small circle, walking toward the ballroom’s exit. Coffen falls through the ice and into the water. He splashes around all by himself.

“I am Bob! Bob is me!” he calls to her, choking, treading water. “I want to try!” He gasps for air. Coughs. “There are reasons to keep trying!”

But she doesn’t stop. Coffen watches her leave and thinks of Schumann’s taillights moving away, the night he was smeared in the oleanders.

Interns with poles help the fallen couples out of the icy water. Not every couple falls, and those who are still nice and dry now hug ravenously. This experience has bonded them in a way that makes all the wet/no-bonders despise these public shows of affection.

Coffen treads water until an acned intern helps him get out of the cold water.

“Where’s your wife, bro?”

“She left.”

“That sucks.”

Bob runs out of the ballroom. He is dripping wet. He is running and he is dripping wet and he is yelling, “Jane! Jane! We have reasons to keep trying! Honest! We have good reasons to keep it up! I want to try!”

He runs past the hotel’s restaurant, past a sports bar adjacent to the lobby. He asks the concierge if he’s seen Jane, gives him a description of her, emphasizing the braids.

“Would you like a towel, sir?”

“I’d like my wife.”

“Right, of course. No doubt. But in the meantime, what do you think of drying off with a towel?”

Bob sees public restrooms on the other side of the lobby, sprints over and holds the door open to the ladies’ room, and says, “Jane! Let’s talk it out! I’m ready to try if you’re ready to try!”

“Get out of here, you Peeping Tom,” a lady’s voice says.

“Is there anyone else in here who happens to be named Jane?” Bob asks.

Nothing for a few seconds.

“I’m texting my nephew who’s a cop,” the lady says.

Coffen goes sprinting outside, sees the SUV.

“So?” Schumann says, waiting in the hotel’s side lot, holding his bagpipes, maybe practicing before Bob got there. “How did it go?”

“Where’s Jane?”

“I haven’t seen her.”

“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?”