by Joshua Mohr
The lights go dark again.
The prerecorded heartbeat thumps from the speakers.
Everybody attaches their dental bibs.
Björn the Bereft says, “Abracadabra … Abracadabra … Abracadabra!”
Everything becomes clear as the room is lit once more.
Thin ice
Here’s what comes clear as the room is lit once more: First, Bob and Jane are no longer standing on the red X on the carpeted floor. They, like Sputtering Husband and Zombie Wife, are now standing on thin ice. Bob Coffen taps his foot on it, leans down to touch it, verifying that this isn’t some kind of optical illusion. It is not. Coffen looks around at the other couples whose feet he can see, and they, too, are all perfectly framed in their own small circles of ice.
A slap!
A woman slugs a man whose sign says ASIAN FETISH and WIFE’S NOT ASIAN. He falls flat on his ass on the ice. It shatters and both husband and wife crash through it, flailing around helplessly in the freezing water, panting for air.
Another couple bickers close by the Coffens. The guy says, “So that’s how you really feel?” and she says, “Yeah, that’s how I feel all right,” and he says, “I knew you didn’t forgive me,” and she says, “You don’t deserve forgiveness,” and the bottom falls out and down they fall through the ice.
Other couples crash through their small frozen ponds, too. Ice explodes all around. These couples are in the midst of arguments, spats, screaming matches that Coffen can’t quite hear, but it’s easy to transcribe the sentiments: They are embarrassed and brokenhearted and enraged at what’s written on their partners’ dental bibs, and they can’t control their ire, can’t see that there might be truth written on the dangling signs: All they see are profane accusations.
More ice smashes.
More couples coughing and wading in the water.
Coffen sees one couple holding their ground nicely. They are nodding, hugging, kissing. Their ice appears stable.
It’s all such an overwhelming scene that Coffen hasn’t yet read Jane’s sign, but now his eyes move toward her dental bib. He’s so scared. Petrified that her sign will say SUCKING GOTTHORM COMPLETES ME. Or: NOBODY PILLAGES LIKE GOTTHORM! Or worse yet: I’M IN LOVE WITH GOTTHORM. Or it might not have anything to do with her water-treading coach. She might not be having an affair at all. Coffen is in no direct way suspicious of infidelity, but he frankly can’t believe that Jane is satisfied with their sex life. A woman has certain needs, after all. So does her husband, if anybody’s asking.
His eyes finally find her sign and here’s what it says: NEEDS REASON TO KEEP TRYING.
Immediately, Coffen’s psyche starts thrashing—instantaneously the severity of this evening slams into him like a drunk driver. Jane, his steady Jane, his practically minded Jane—she took time off her training schedule to come here tonight. Under normal circumstances, Jane would mock this. Mock Schumann’s bagpipes. Roll her eyes at Björn. She’d call the members of his audience livestock searching for the easiest answers money can buy. But that’s not what she did at all. In fact, she insisted that the Coffens come. It’s dawning on Bob that NEEDS REASON TO KEEP TRYING isn’t an early warning. It’s a final notice. It’s a death rattle.
The other thing that concerns Bob is reading Jane’s sign identifies a weakness in his own. Jane’s bib documents something that has to do with them both, their relationship, and Coffen thought only of himself on his sign, which says SMEARED IN THE OLEANDERS.
Jane’s eyes train on Bob’s bib. She tilts her head at it, looking perplexed, probably trying to work out its meaning.
Coffen hears their thin ice cracking.
“Are you making fun of this?” Jane asks.
“Let’s talk about it later, sweetie,” Bob says, worrying about falling through the ice.
“Are you making fun of me?”
“Let’s kiss and hug now and then we can really talk about it all later when we get home.”
“There is no guarantee of later,” she says. “That’s why we’re here.”
The volume of ice cracking gets louder.
“Shhhh,” Bob says to her.
“Do you know how hard it was for me to be honest?”
“Shhhh. Stop arguing with me or we’ll fall.”
“You mock all this right to my fucking face?”
“Let me explain what I mean by my sign.”
“If you have to explain your sign, then it’s a shitty sign.”
“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.
Seriously going loco
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 ar
e 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?”
“What are you talking about?” Björn asks, wiping some tears from his cheeks.
Dip his haunches in honey mustard
All Bob Coffen can think is this: Life coaches are not supposed to kidnap magicians. It must be some kind of unwritten life-coach rule—do not creep up and head-butt the magician. Do not give him the fireman carry and toss him in the backseat of your SUV.
Psycho Schumann’s not interested in any industry standards; he makes up his own rules as the night goes on. While they drive away, Coffen’s eyeballs Ping-Pong between Schumann and Björn, who’s starting to come to.
“I see you’re taking a very literal interpretation of capturing the magic,” Björn says in the SUV, mindlessly scratching at his moustache. “It’s a metaphor, you retards.”
“Is that any way to ingratiate yourself to your captors?” says Schumann. “You come into our stadium and start calling us retarded?”
“What stadium?” Björn says.
“We have to let him out of the car,” Bob says.
“We’ll all get out together at your house,” Schumann says.
“Schumann, let’s be reasonable,” Bob says.
“I’d drink the blood of a Notre Dame lineman right now,” Schumann says.
“I will put a curse something fierce on your asses if you don’t let me out right now,” says Björn.
Bob giggles and says, “A curse? Really?”
“I’d dip that lineman’s haunches in honey mustard and gorge like a king.”
“You saw what I did in the ballroom,” Björn says to Bob. “I’m assuming your soaked bib and wet head means you went in the water tank. Sorry about that. But what you’re doing right now, you’re going to regret forever.”
“This isn’t my idea,” Coffen says. “He’s acting on his own accord.”
“Tell that to the police,” Björn says.
“I feel totally alive again, Coffen,” Schumann says. “Our kidnapping has awoken the sleeping gladiator in me. All I see around me are football games.”
“I’m talking the kind of curse that ancient civilizations wrote about,” Björn says. “You two retards will be immortalized in an allegory about what happens when you tempt fate and have to suffer the dire consequences of the dark arts.”
“If it were up to me, I’d let you go right now,” Coffen says.
“You’re on the hook for this, too. Are you sure you want to mess with me?” Björn says.
“He doesn’t listen to me,” Coffen says, pointing at Schumann.
“Try harder to convince him.”
“He wants to take you to my house, so you can help me and my wife. I think she’s going to divorce me.”
“I’ve been there. You heard my story from the show. But think, man: You’re going to get arrested,” Björn says. “You’ll go to prison. But if you let me out now, I won’t call the cops or anything. Honest. I promise. A magician’s word is a two-ton brick of gold.”
“Hike the ball!” Schumann yells in the driver’s seat. “Hike the ball and let the fur fly! Let’s scrap like junkyard dogs!”
“Think about it,” Björn says. “You’re doing this for your wife? Do you have children, too?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what good will you do them once you’re in the clink?”
Reflexively, Bob begins to answer—begins a fumbling phrase, a polluted cluster of nonsense—because the truth is he can’t defend himself, or Schumann, or any of this. It’s wrong. He’s wrong. And even if this whole ordeal is Schumann’s idea, won’t the police assume Coffen i
s guilty by association?
Bob feels a throb in his guts and barely rolls the SUV’s window down in time before he throws up everywhere.
“Don’t worry about that,” says Schumann. “I tossed my cookies before we went for the state title in high school. Nerves are good. They mean you’re starving for victory. But if the puke damages my paint job, you’re footing the bill.”
“Stop the SUV,” Coffen says to Schumann.
“Why?”
“Stop it.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Pull over.”
“We’re driving the ball. We’re almost to the end zone. Soon we’ll celebrate victory with dances of ecstasy. Back flips. Ceremonial chants. Cheerleaders flipping their tiny skirts up.”
“We have to let him go,” Bob says.
“We’re almost the champions,” Schumann says.
“The champions of what?” Björn says.
“The kidnapping champions.”
“Stop the SUV!” shouts Bob.
“No,” Schumann says. “I’m calling an audible.”
“What’s that even mean?” Coffen says.
“It means I’ve come to the line of scrimmage. I’ve looked over the defensive formation. And at the last second, I’m changing the play. You’re telling me the play is to pull over and let this magician go scot-free. And I’m telling you that I won’t run that play. I’m calling something different.”
Coffen says, “Listen to me, Schumann. This isn’t a game. This is real. We are committing a crime. We will get arrested. Snap out of it.”
“Feels too good to be competing in a game again.”
It’s that mention of the word “game”—Coffen and Schumann have totally different definitions of gaming. Bob controls his avatar. Bob competes in a controlled environment. Yet for Schumann, the stakes are real. His adrenaline is like gasoline and Bob thinks that he has to appeal to Schumann’s sense of family: The only way Schumann will come to his senses, snap out of this trance, is if he’s going to lose much more than a game, much more than blowing out a knee, his career over—he’s going to lose his status quo. His wife. His child. And hopefully, he won’t squander all that for an orgasm of endorphins.