Andy Abramowitz - Thank You, Goodnight

The girl rose. “I’ll go get some medicine.”

“That’s okay. I’m fine. Really.”

Ignoring me, she disappeared, leaving me alone with the Jolly Green Giant.

Heinz-Peter lumbered over to the couch and dropped himself into the chair vacated by his daughter, perilously close to me on the sofa.

I took in the monster. Yeah, he could kill me. Though it would’ve been a lot easier to finish me off while I was unconscious. Unless he planned on nursing me back to health and then killing me. It was really his call.

This, I realized, had been a monumental act of stupidity, a true breakdown of rational thought on my part. Why hadn’t I thought to bring the other Faded Glory losers along with me? We could have come as a mob of salty has-beens intent on taking back our dignity. That would’ve been the stronger tactical move.

Heinz-Peter’s moon face hung over me, grinning with an impenetrable blend of menace and pity. “You are comfortable?”

I nodded cautiously.

“Tereza get you medicines.” Then his face twisted, as if he’d suddenly recalled how it came to be that I, a virtual stranger from thousands of miles away, was lying on his sofa one tooth shy of a full set. “Why you hit me?”

Before I had the opportunity to point out the obvious, Tereza glided back into the room and presented me with an oblong white capsule and a glass of water. I inspected the pill. It didn’t look familiar, nor did it have any word printed on it, much less a reassuringly familiar one such as Tylenol, Advil, Aleve.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Medicines,” Heinz-Peter replied.

“Aspirin,” Tereza said.

It was significantly larger than any pill I’d ever seen, prescription or over-the-counter, and, in fact, resembled a small lightbulb. I considered asking to see the bottle.

“Is good,” Heinz-Peter encouraged. “Eat.”

The pain was nearly unbearable, an unacceptable alternative to death, so I popped the thing into my mouth and chased it with a swig of water. It hardly mattered at that point that it was probably cyanide.

“I’m sorry I beat you up,” the photographer said. “It is big honor to have you in my house.”

“It really is,” Tereza echoed. “We’re big fans.” Then she pointed at my mouth and conferred with her father in their native tongue. Whatever information was passed, it clearly upset the man, for he issued some emphatic grunt of surprise— Boonsk?! —and looked at me with grave concern.

“Let me see mouth,” he urged.

Feeling foolish, I opened wide—there’s no unfoolish way to pre-sent your throat to total strangers—and after a brisk inspection, the man’s arms shot up over his head in a cartoonish show of frustration. Then he stormed out the front door in a fit of yapping and baying.

“He went to look for your tooth,” Tereza translated.

“Are you serious?” I noticed it was easier to sit up now, what with some alpine analgesic whipping through my bloodstream.

“Let him look,” she said, sitting down and crossing her legs.

“Stop him, would you?”

Even if the mad photographer poked around in the boot-stomped mulch and somehow came bursting back in with a dirty dislodged bicuspid between his fingers, I wasn’t likely to put the thing back in my mouth.

Tereza looked at me lying lamely on her sofa, and an apple of a smile absorbed every feature on her cherubic face. “I love your music. I really do.”

My eyebrows dropped into a skeptical furrow. “That’s nice.”

“I’m a huge fan. Seriously. I know everything you’ve done.”

“You’re funny,” I said, meaning You’re insane .

“I’m not joking.”

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“You shouldn’t even know who I am.” I struggled to my feet and staggered toward the front door to call Heinz-Peter off the case. It now looked as if I had an outside shot at getting out of there alive and saw no reason to squander the miracle.

“I listen to all kinds of music,” she went on.

“You should listen to many kinds of music. No need to listen to all kinds.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, clearly amused.

“I mean, sometimes old music is just old music.”

“Is there something wrong with listening to old music?”

“It depends,” I said, readjusting to the sensation of walking. “If it’s Led Zeppelin or Nick Drake, then no. If it’s Missing Persons or the Osmonds, then quite possibly yes.”

“I listen to Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd and U2 and Black Sabbath. I also listen to Tremble.”

“You should probably go easy on the Black Sabbath. As for Tremble, your time would be better spent with Boy George solo albums.” I paused in my tracks to massage a boulder of pain out of my temples. “Look, you’re young now, but trust me, that won’t always be the case. Don’t piss away your listening years on music that’s just not good. My point is—do you know what the word myopic means?”

Tereza stared at me with scientific wonder. “You’re not what I expected.”

“Well, we’re all having new experiences today.”

She gave me a once-over that was just probing enough to be insulting. “You’re shorter, more pale.”

As I hobbled through the house, I took note of the photographs covering every wall. I was struck by their mastery, the thought and skill rendered in each composition—experiments in angle, distance, and color saturation. “Your old man has some talent,” I mused. “Although obviously I wish he’d never been born.”

Upon reaching the foyer, I peered through the screen and observed my tormentor crouched apelike as he scoured the grass for my lost tooth. It was a noisy exercise, with snorts and grumbles of disgust. I pushed the door open. “Uh, friend?”

“I will find,” he called without looking up. His thick fingers brushed through the grass. “I knock out, I put back.”

“I don’t think it works that way.”

The man suddenly bounded to his feet, pointed at my mouth, and, as if it had just occurred to him, declared, “You need dentist.”

I spun toward Tereza. “There’s a dentist around here?”

The offense she took at my surprise was a few paces from playful. “Where do you think you are?”

“Lost,” I replied. “Hopelessly lost.”

Heinz-Peter drove at the speed of a camera shutter on the burst setting, flinging us along slender streets and charmingly precarious bridges. I bounced around the passenger seat, ice held to my lip, suffering steep penance for picking the wrong fight. My driver grinned and patted my knee like I was his date. “Mr. Teddy Tremble in my car,” he boasted, showing precious little interest in the road. “This is big thrill for me.”

I pointed at the windshield. “Focus.”

He steered at a nauseating clip over a hill that dropped into a small town center with narrow cobblestone streets, shops that had no doubt thrived for centuries. An old gray woman with a cane crept up the walkway of a stone house. Children in school uniforms strolled alongside the road with boisterous chatter. All these people looked busy and happy. We’d probably ride over some of them.

“You don’t like picture in museum?” Heinz-Peter asked, resuming our conversation.

“No, I’m afraid I don’t. But hey, my drummer loved it, so don’t feel too bad.”

“Why you don’t like it?”

“Well, let’s see. It makes me look like a dipshit—that’s certainly a big part of it. And you hung it up alongside pictures of other dipshits and you called the exhibit Let’s Laugh at the Losers or something. Those are probably the main reasons I didn’t love it. Would you like to hear others?”