Joshua Mohr - Fight Song

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.

“One more peep and you’re going in the glove box,” Coffen says to Schumann, who will not shut up with his squeaks. Björn’s given Bob a dental bib and now Coffen sits in his car, contemplating what to write on it. Or trying to contemplate, if the damn mouse would shut up.

Bob’s threat seems to work because the rodent immediately goes silent.