Andy Abramowitz - Thank You, Goodnight

“I don’t think you really believe that your music deserves to be forgotten,” she said. “If you do, then you’re not the artist everyone here thinks you are. You’re certainly not the artist that my father is.”

Of course I wasn’t the artist that all these delusional castoffs took me for. They had no idea how utterly bizarre it was to have moved on with your life, to have changed directions in everything you did, and then randomly discover a lunatic fringe on the other side of some lost mountain that was still grooving to your music years after the rest of civilization had wised up.

Maybe every band was awarded some little time-warp town that remained forever loyal, perennially committed to the notion that the group for which it pined would one day rise from the ashes. Perhaps there was a village in Tibet where everyone wore a Men Without Hats shirt and sang “The Safety Dance” all day. Maybe a town in Cameroon woke up every morning breathless with sunny hope that Katrina would round up the rest of the Waves and launch a tour.

“You seem like a nice group of mountain people, but being cut off from the rest of humanity has messed with your minds,” I said.

Tereza’s eyes bore into me, her face beset by a disturbed crinkle crawling its way across her nose. “Is this how all Americans say thank you, or just you?”

I watched her plate a sausage for a hungry guest. She delivered the food with a warm, hospitable smile and a gentle pat on his shoulder. It struck me as a nurturing gesture, maternal even, and I found myself asking where her mother was.

“She died.”

“Oh.”

“Two years ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“We were boating on the river.” She jerked her chin to the side, signaling that the river in question was a neighbor, a familiar friend. “We flipped over in the rapids and she hit her head on a rock. Drowned before my father and I could pull her to shore.” I watched the light from the burning coals flickering across her face as she kept her distance from the memory. “It’s amazing how quickly things happen, you know? One minute we were a family in a boat, the next minute we were in the water, and then we were on the riverbank and she was gone forever. She still had her life vest on.”

“I’m sorry I brought that up.”

“It’s fine.”

“That must’ve been really hard on you and your dad.”

She gazed out at the lawn crackling with life, friends and relations fading into the falling night. “We’ve never been alone.” She said it as though it were a mixed blessing.

The back door of the house suddenly flew open and Heinz-Peter came lurching out. “Teddy!” he called merrily. He was carrying a long wooden object—an oar? an ax?—and slinging it in the air as he giant-stepped his way across the dark yard.

I squinted at the implement that this madman was waving over his head. The remaining pockets of light finally revealed its identity.

“Oh Jesus,” I groaned. “Is he fucking kidding me?”

“You don’t get it,” I yelled at the crowd. “You people have all lost your minds.” They didn’t seem to care that they’d lost their minds. Maybe that’s the beauty of losing your mind. “It’s out of the question. Go hassle Wang Chung.”

At the sight of the guitar being wielded by their host, everyone untangled themselves from their conversations and joined Heinz-Peter in beseeching me to do an impromptu gig right there on the lawn. And no matter how forcefully I rejected their ludicrous invitation, no matter how much disdain and hostility I showered upon these hill-town hicks, still they egged me on. An intimate backyard concert, they argued, would be an ideal coda to an evening they would cherish for the remainder of their lives. I told them to get a grip. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d picked up a guitar, and I’d long forgotten the chords and the words to all the Tremble songs. And anyway my mouth hurt like hell.

“I’d rather lick a train station toilet than play for you people,” I declared.

“You are with friends, yes? Play for us!” H-P cried out, holding the instrument out to me with the rallying charisma of a medieval ogre.

“You are not my friends,” I insisted.

“Play for us, Teddy Tremble!” he boomed.

“Listen to me carefully. You all need therapy. You’re embarrassing yourselves.”

The fucked-up chanting and screaming was growing louder and more fanatical. A real musician would’ve soaked up all this ego stroking, riled the crowd up louder like a shirtless stadium god, or bowed his head in a slushy sigh of false modesty. I, however, wanted only to take off down the driveway and never look back.

Tereza was now standing next to me, having managed to navigate her way through the crowd. Cupping one side of her mouth, she leaned into my ear and shouted above the fray. “Teddy, maybe you’re not the same person you used to be.”

“You’re finally realizing that?” I yelled back.

“It’s okay with me,” she said. “But if it’s not okay with you”—she turned an open palm to the crowd and offered up an innocent little shrug—“it looks like you’ve got a chance to go back, even for just one night.”

Go back where? I wanted to shake her. It isn’t there anymore!

“It doesn’t work that way, Tereza,” I shouted into the air between us.

She shook her head in bewilderment. “I don’t understand. You’re holding a guitar and there are people who want to hear a song. Are you really sure you don’t want to play?”

As we stared at each other, speakers of different languages on the Tower of Babel, something inside me suddenly began to shift. As I scanned this mad pack of misbegotten zombies, locked eyes with each and every one of them, it all became funny. They weren’t putting me on. Their hearts were in exactly the wrong place, but their hearts were there, beating up a storm. A bunch of kids clamoring with everything they had to see their favorite musician perform just for them, and they would not be refused. I remembered what that was like. Who didn’t?

A powerful silence reigned for a moment; they smelled surrender.

“Give me the goddamn guitar,” I snapped.

If these fools wanted to hear the feeble warbling of a middle-aged has-been, then tonight was their night. They would recoil in disgust and never listen to or speak of Tremble again. It was high time they were acquainted with what we in the real world called reality.

So—fuck if I didn’t find myself sitting on an aluminum folding chair, twisting the pegs until the strings were in tune. My fingers, uncallused and alien, moved sluggishly at first, without the speed or agility they once had. But then, as if from hardwired instinct, they placed themselves on the right strings, on the right frets, at the right time. The songs flooded back and I had the random sensation of being rocked on my grandmother’s shoulder like a child, back to where I started after a lifetime of being away. The music came. Chord flowed logically to chord. I didn’t need to go looking for them; they’d been there all this time.

My thoughts, however, were anything but harmonious. A disquiet gathered in my head, faint at first, like the distant rush of a car engine finding its way through the neighborhood. But then the car was outside, honking in the driveway, and the hinges of every closed door within me started to shake. My mind went wild and my thoughts became unbound and unstable, disobedient and carried by no current. Like jazz.

Then something completely unexpected happened, and it was like I never saw it coming.

I came back weird. On that first morning after the trip, I awakened, showered, and dressed feeling slightly off and a little jittery. It was more than the routine anxiety of not wanting to return to work. I sensed an invisible force telling me I wasn’t supposed to return to work.