Andy Abramowitz: Thank You, Goodnight

“What’s with the text?” I asked, my voice raised against the breeze.

“Is that like, ‘Hey, I miss you, how are you?’ ”

“It’s just like that. What’s with the text?”

“There’s my Teddy,” she said. “So, you want to laugh?” The question was rhetorical—who doesn’t want to laugh?—and yet it’s usually a prelude to something manifestly unfunny. “Warren called.”

“Warren who?”

“Warren Warren.”

My eyebrows furrowed. I hadn’t heard from the man in years.

“And he said—get this—you need to go to the Tate Modern so you can see your legacy .”

“He what?”

“He said you should go to the Tate Modern. In London.”

“I know where the Tate Modern is. I’m not following you.”

“His exact words were that your legacy is hanging in the Tate Modern, second floor. If you’re interested in your legacy, there’s an exhibit you absolutely must see.”

“An art exhibit?”

“Seems like a sensible guess, it being an art museum and all.”

As I stood there with rigid confusion, I had a vision of Warren, my drummer once upon a time. He was watching me receive this information and cackling like a fool, his neck snapping back, his mouth open as if to drink the rain.

“Sara,” I said, trying to remain calm, “did you happen to ask him what the fuck he was talking about?”

“I’m just telling you what he said.” I imagined her hunched forward with both elbows on her desk, one hand holding the phone to her ear, the other toying with strands of her long black hair.

“What kind of exhibit? And in fucking London? He wants me to go to London? Did you tell him I was in Dublin?”

“I told him nothing. It was a short conversation and I’m simply relaying it to you, as I promised I would.” I heard a slurp. Presumably coffee, though Malbec couldn’t be ruled out.

Clearly, some celestial eclipse had shifted and blanketed my memory. There had to be a recent incident, inaccessible to me now, that had caused our paths to cross, Warren and me. I was blocking it out for some reason, but something had happened that made Warren’s message make sense. Something that, since I was jet-lagged and buzzed on Guinness, was slipping my mind.

“So let me get this straight. Warren Warren calls me out of the fucking blue and tells me I have to go to London. He doesn’t know that I’m already in Europe, but he tells me I have to get to London, to the Tate Modern, to see some fucking exhibit on the—what?—­second floor. I have to do this if I give a fuck about my legacy.”

A short, gray-haired tour guide in a green vest led a cluster of families past me on the bridge. “And then the Vikings come and run amok,” I overheard him say. Roon amook through his thick Irish brogue.

Over the cellular airwaves and across the cold miles, Sara shipped me one of her patented sighs. “Teddy, you do know that using the word fuck six times in a single sentence makes you sound like an unhappy person.”

“Fuck,” I said thoughtfully. I lifted my hand through my windblown, airplane-oily hair and noticed I needed a shower. “You’re sure that’s all he said?”

“Yes,” she replied flatly. “It was a quick call, there was a lot of noise in the background. It sounded like he was in a crowd. Maybe a crowded museum. Maybe—oh, I don’t know—a crowded museum in London.”

I was standing on the bridge trying to process this acid trip of a phone call. One of the three of us—Sara, Warren, or me—had lost it. At least one.

“I don’t get it either,” Sara offered, “but the thing is, Warren isn’t God and you’re not Noah. You can ignore him. You actually have a knack for ignoring people.”

I didn’t see how that was possible. Something was slung up onto a wall in a gallery just across the Irish Sea, something so extraordinary that it prompted Warren to do something he hadn’t done in over a decade: make contact with me. I hadn’t spoken to anyone from that period in my life in years. In most instances, space between people grows like mold, neglected just long enough to be noticed. You intend to wipe it clean, but the more of it there is, the more daunting a task it becomes to erase it. Not so with me and the band. I’d discontinued those people as if they were a premium cable channel that I’d finally realized was broadcasting nothing I wanted to watch. With all there was between us, things my bandmates knew about and things they didn’t, it was better to just turn off the lights and lock myself out of that haunted house.

“I’ll just call the idiot. Do you have his number?”

“He didn’t leave it. I probably should’ve asked.”

“Caller ID?”

“Blocked.”

The pints of dark beer pooled with sleep deprivation made for a woozy goulash, and yet there was no time to rest. Even the bare minimum preparation for tomorrow’s deposition entailed a time investment.

“Fuck that guy. I don’t have time for this bullshit.”

Through all the clatter in my head, Sara’s weary goodbye barely registered.

I used to love record stores. Back when it was all undiscovered country, there was always the chance I might stumble upon Van Halen’s 1984 or the Cure’s Pornography and for a month or two I’d walk around on fire. These days, record stores were jungles of mockery and bad memories, given who I used to be. And now, fate—because fate is a bully—couldn’t resist depositing a record store directly in my path on my walk back to the hotel. Another time I might not have even taken note, but the return of Warren had me drifting uneasily into the past, bothering me with emotions I’d long thought dead and buried. I went in.

Bristling with disdain, I perused the racks of chartbusters near the door. This was the safe area, the place where the storefront neon showcased the music that the kids were buying, the prefab radio-ready pop acts fronted by slinky, nearly naked twenty-two-year-olds or boy bands with youths of indeterminate gender. None of these people had ever held an instrument.

Past the bunny slopes and into the belly of the beast I went, submitting to the store’s thumping electronica. I flipped through the T discs in Rock/Pop. Nothing. I wended my way over to Alternative, a section which used to house dark, unapproachable artists whose fans had scary tattoos and genital piercings but whose edges had eroded over time such that the moniker had evolved into a catchall of sorts. Basically, if you’re an artist that gives a fuck and you’re not jazz or country, you’re alternative. Again I scrolled through T . Again nothing.

I found the cheapies bin way back at the rear of the store, territory unlikely to have been trodden even by the store’s employees. The discount selection was downright offensive. Beck’s Odelay ? The Foo Fighters’ debut? Billy Joel’s Turnstiles ? Surely, these albums deserved a more dignified resting place. I wanted to speak to the manager.

And there it was. One copy. Pristine, sullied by neither fingerprint nor weight of an eye. I stared despairingly at it, noting how cheesy and dated the cover art looked. The Queen Kills the King . A brief swell of fond memories sparred with the raw indignity of the discount rack. I suffered a flash fantasy about crushing the thing under my heel.

Then I fled. I stormed out and stomped my way up Grafton, feeling myself sliding into that familiar chasm of obsession. This time, it was Warren’s oblique communiqué that took center stage. I wanted to know what his message was all about, but more than that, I wanted to waterboard the motherfucker for forcing himself back into my consciousness.

Streams of Guinness were still sailing through my veins when the hotel elevator door parted and I marched down the hall, past the ornate sconces, past the portraits of humorless men with monocles, every one of them looking a little bit like the Count from Sesame Street . I could track down Warren’s number and call him now, but I knew that would just be an even greater time suck. I needed to let this go for the time being, to calm myself, to put first things first. Work tomorrow, waterboard the day after.