Joshua Mohr - Fight Song

“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.

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. Fuck his job. Fuck building one more game he doesn’t believe in. Fuck security. Fuck 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.