Andy Abramowitz - Thank You, Goodnight

“Did you get that?” I finally asked.

Without raising his eyes, he said, “Hang on a minute.” Then he got up and disappeared off camera.

I reached for my beer, warmer now and increasingly tasting of discouragement. Sonny had always been an enigma. He coaxed staggering performances from the fingers and mouths of artists of all genres, from hip-hop to country, and all talent levels, from as high as Stevie Wonder to as low as me, and unquestionably had one of the most respected ears in the industry. But an open book he was not. All told, I’d spent about four months holed up with the man in the confining quarters of a recording studio doing two albums with him on major label dime, and I knew next to nothing about him personally. But for all his mercurial moods and methods, you trusted him. Which was why he was the only option when I finally summoned the gumption to share. He would be blunt, just as he was when I played him that hideously ill-conceived, underwritten concept album years ago. He would tell me if I was no longer qualified even to sing “Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore” at a day camp. Maybe this time I’d even listen.

I sat there on my amp, waiting, wondering where in sweet hell he’d gone. I allowed my fingers to skate over the two-day indigent stubble on my cheeks. My skin felt particularly saggy that night, especially my chin and that unseemly upper part of the neck, all making me acutely aware of my physical deterioration at a time when it would’ve been helpful to forget it.

I glanced at all the wires and connections around me, momentarily comforted by such old companions. I’d fretted over the sound quality of this contraption—despite Sonny’s dismissive and perhaps telling assurances that it was “good enough for our purposes”—but webcam was my only option. The closest thing I had to recording equipment these days was a Dictaphone in my desk drawer at work.

I blew an impatient huff through pursed lips and checked the wall clock. Every passing moment edged me closer to an awkward rendezvous with Sara, who could walk in any second. There was, I’d noticed, something not quite right with her today. That morning, she’d mumbled something about a late night, dinner with a friend. But earlier this evening, as I was readying this makeshift teleconference, her office had called looking for her. Ravi Chatterjee and his prim subcontinental Queen’s English accosted me from the other end. Ravi, who shared an office with Sara but still somehow considered himself her mentor, was an okay guy, despite his penchant for pumpkin orange sport coats and a website photo in which he actually held a glass of white wine. It was unusual for Ravi to call our home number, but, he explained, Sara hadn’t answered her cell. Half listening, half plugging in cables, I absorbed Ravi’s griping about Sara’s having missed a meeting, and I promised to have her call when she surfaced. I’d been too busy to question why Sara would miss a work meeting for some dinner with a friend. And now that I thought about it, she hadn’t specified which friend she was to dine with. Sara had a solid, nonfluctuating cadre of friends, none of whom were really friends with one another. There was no roving cluster of “the Girls” who met for happy hour or giggled together through the new Matthew McConaughey flick, which meant that I couldn’t interrogate one of her gal pals about her whereabouts because, in all likelihood, the friend wouldn’t know. Unless Sara was up in North Philly at that studio with Josie and the artisans, she was basically off the grid.

Sonny reappeared on the monitor, sliding himself into his desk chair.

“Where the fuck did you go?” I huffed.

“Play something else.”

“Something else? Hold on—what did you think of the first one?”

He looked irritated. “What did I just say?”

I noticed that Sonny now had a laptop on his knee. This was the equivalent of making a phone call in the middle of a take, which, come to think of it, I’d seen him do.

“Are you surfing YouTube over there?” I asked.

“Never you mind what I’m doing. Concern yourself with what you’re doing. You got another bullet in the chamber or not?”

Annoyed but compliant, I launched into a tune called “Painless Days,” a fingerpicking lark of a song that beckoned a girl to come outside into a springtime afternoon. Tonally, it was a departure for me. Structurally, it had no chorus. But I’d never written a song before that made me want to build a tree house and sit in it all weekend, so there was that. I’d grown slightly more relaxed, but it was evening now and my voice wore the tatters and strains of a long day. Ten years of not singing a note will do that to you. The six-pack I’d gulped down to chase the nerves didn’t help either.

As I floundered through my performance, I knew that Sonny was either getting this or he wasn’t. It was that simple. There was nothing more I could do at this point. I’d been writing at a frantic clip for weeks, and it was time to wave a wet finger into the breeze and seek feedback from someone I trusted. I needed to know if there was anything to this recent shock of creativity or if it was just a death rattle.

When my fingers had plucked the last notes of the song, I looked directly into the unblinking red eye of the mini-camera perched atop the screen. On the far coast, Sonny was reclining casually, savoring his smoke, his eyes focused downward toward his laptop. A smirk schemed its way across his face as if he’d just read an amusing e-mail.

Sonny didn’t seem to notice I’d stopped playing. I let a moment pass before clearing my throat. He looked up and took a drag of his cigarette. “What are the others like?”

“Jesus, man.”

“I asked you a question.”

My hand lurched plaintively into the air. “I don’t know. The others are in the same vein, I suppose. ‘Whereabouts’ is probably the most commercial, I guess. I don’t really fucking know what that means anymore, but yeah, I’d call it commercial. There are a few others that feel edgier to me. I hear most of these with very sparse production. Raw, stripped down, like what Rick Rubin did with Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond. Though Neil Diamond isn’t at all what I’m shooting for. I’m rambling—I should just shut up now.” I paused for a swig. “What are the others like? How do I answer that? They’re awesome, they suck, I don’t know. I guess there’s one that kind of rocks out—it’s called ‘America Eats Warhol’; that one I really like. And there are some that are darker thematically, not in the sense that they tell a story or any of that shit, but the imagery is sort of austere. I’m not saying I’ve written The Wall , just stuff that feels foreboding, brooding, Bonnie Prince Billy. But at the same time, I feel like even the darker songs still pull the listener in.” I’d descended into something beyond rambling. I was flat-out not making sense. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about, so I’m just going to shut up now. But one last thing—”

“Do me a favor,” he interrupted. “Quit telling me you’re going to shut up now. Just shut up now.”

I reached again for the beer, which was now piss warm. When I looked at the monitor, Sonny wore a cruel grin.

“You having a good time over there, asshole?” I said.

Then he leaned forward and frowned. “Look, you got some serious work to do.”

I let out a bruised snort. Then I shook my head with all the dejection I’d fully anticipated. Why had I even subjected myself to this in the first place? This was a bad idea. I should’ve been able to recognize bad ideas by now.

I lifted the guitar off my knee and slid it away across the carpet. “You know what? Fuck that. I’m not working on this anymore. I’m done. Fucking done, man.”