Andy Abramowitz - Thank You, Goodnight

“Man, it’s so great to see you,” he said, even as he seemed to be escorting me off the property. Then he produced a white envelope out of the front pocket of his jeans. “Dude, would you mind keeping this in your car for a little while?”

“What?” I looked at the little package. “What is that?”

“It’s nothing.”

“What sort of nothing?”

“It’s just some pot. No big deal. Sandy and Israel caught me smoking again. Personally, I don’t see the problem. The kids were at school. They know I’d never do it with them around. But they can be real tightasses—you know how it is. And it is their basement, after all. So, if you could just hang on to it for a little bit until this all blows over.”

I stopped walking. “Hold on a second. What the hell are you talking about?”

He looked at me as if everything that had just come pouring out of his mouth made perfect sense. Like this was an eminently reasonable way to greet each other after ten years.

“Start over,” I demanded. “Sandy and . . .”

“Israel.”

“Sandy and Israel. And who the fuck are these people?”

“Sandy’s my ex.”

“Ex what?”

“Ex-wife. Israel’s her husband. They’re not real big into the whole marijuana scene, even for medicinal needs—and I’ve got plenty of those—and moving out of the house isn’t really the best move for me right now, you know, financially. So, I gotta bite the bullet on this one. Their way or the highway. You know how it is.”

He stole a peek back at the house and continued ushering me down the driveway.

“I have a lot of questions,” I said. “But let’s start with this one: You live with your ex-wife and her husband?”

“And their two kids.”

“I see.”

“They’re good kids.” Somehow that was relevant. “They really like me.”

I was already sorry I’d come. “Jumbo, I don’t mean to be rude, but what the fuck?”

“I recognize it’s not all that common of an arrangement.”

We’d reached the end of the driveway and were standing next to my aging Lexus coupe. “Dude, unlock it. Nice car, by the way. Gray totally works for you. Mysterious.”

“It’s silver,” I said, clicking the doors unlocked.

I watched uncomfortably as Jumbo slid into the passenger seat and began rifling through my glove compartment. He removed a stack of CDs to make room for his envelope, which he concealed like a master spy inside the vehicle owner’s manual. We’d been together thirty seconds and Jumbo had already made me an accessory to a felony.

Slamming the glove box shut, he started flipping through the discs. “The new Oasis. Nice.” He turned it over and studied the track listing. “How is it?”

“Come out of there.”

He shimmied his ungainly frame out of the car and closed the door behind him. “Thanks, Mingus,” he said through an exhale of relief. “I owe you.”

“Don’t forget that that’s in there,” I said. Lecturing Jumbo was like riding a bike. “I’m not driving home with that in my car.” We were not off to a good start, Jumbo Jett and I.

Then, for the first time, I had a moment to take him in—the faded daddy jeans, the doughy physique, the lawless hair one frizz away from electric socket bedlam. There was something strangely heartening about Jumbo in chaos. He was just as I’d left him.

“It’s been a long time,” he said. “I’m super glad you called.”

Then, with an abrupt lurch forward, he locked a suffocating hug around my torso. It was like being absorbed into one of Maurice Sendak’s wild things. He held on for a while, too long actually, and when I detected a subtle rocking, I patted him twice on the back to indicate it was time for the hug to be over.

“I’ve missed you, man,” he said.

“Yeah. Listen, I was hoping there’d be somewhere we could talk, but I guess it’s not going to be the house.”

Jumbo frowned at the Pepsi-blue split-level perched atop the driveway in all its aluminum siding glory.

“Screw that,” Jumbo said defiantly. “I pay rent.”

The way Jumbo smuggled me into the basement made me feel like a truant twelve-year-old sneaking over for an afternoon of PlayStation. Unfinished and gloomy, the cellar was a dank, low-lit space with exposed cinder block everywhere except for the places where Jumbo had seen fit to hang a tapestry, a photograph, or a Tremble album jacket. There was a bed, in a way—two mattresses stacked on the cement floor. An ancient tan sofa with decomposing upholstery lined one of the walls, a generic wooden chair sat stranded in the middle of the room, and that about did it for furniture. Clothes hung like battle corpses over the sides of plastic college dorm crates, and a few cardboard boxes were put to work as nightstands. It smelled like basement down there, a mix of new car and wet dog. The most uplifting aspect of the place was the pounding of footsteps overhead, which signaled life of a mainstream variety somewhere close by.

“What do you think of my pad?”

How does one sugarcoat cinder block and cement? “It’s fine. Maybe a little too ‘It puts the lotion in the basket.’ ”

After warning me that the sofa was missing a leg, Jumbo lit a stick of incense on one of the highly flammable cardboard night tables and offered me a beer. I declined, it being ten o’clock on a Saturday morning.

Jumbo settled onto the bed and fixed me with an outsized smile. “Jeez, Mingus, look at us, together again.”

Jumbo always called me Mingus. I guess at one point I knew why.

“You and I were buddies, man,” he went on. “Since we were little kids. I never thought we’d go ten years without talking.”

It was the raw truth that, with the exception of the last decade—a respite I’d earned many times over—I’d been along for the whole bumpy ride that was Jumbo Jett’s life. I’d witnessed the good stuff: his ascent to revered yet volatile guitar god, the affable ruffian who chewed up the scenery onstage and who made for an entertaining if not always comprehensible interview. But I’d also had a front-row seat to a mélange of horrors I would’ve loved to unremember. The runny nose he sported K through 12. His unfortunate hobby of shaking people’s hands with a buzzer. His unbecoming sports illiteracy (the year the band was invited to the Super Bowl, he nagged me to leave at “intermission”).

“As you can see, I’m still playing.” He gestured proudly toward a squadron of guitars up against the wall.

That information was the first positive thing about my visit.

Whereas Warren, Mack, and I opted not to outstay our welcome in an industry that didn’t seem to want us anymore, Jumbo had pressed on, instrument in hand, albeit on a slightly smaller scale. Scaring up a few weekend warriors from the neighborhood and a shaggy high school student or two, he formed Jumbo Jett and His Ragtag Honey-suckle Band, which had since endured countless Menudo-like personnel changes but still loitered around the Mid-Atlantic, looking for love. Recent venues included the parking lot of Whole Foods, a harvest festival at a pumpkin patch, and an eight-year-old’s birthday party.

As for why he was doing all of this in Baltimore, he told me he’d relocated for Sandy, a social worker he met on a plane and to whom he gave permission to eat him should they happen to crash in the Andes. (Unlikely, as the flight was Philly to Atlanta.) “I fell head over heels, man,” he said wistfully. “She scratched me right where I itched.” But the love affair had clearly turned sour at some point, seeing as how Sandy was now scratching some other guy where he itched.

“As passionate as I am about my music, the band is actually more of a sideline at this point,” he explained bravely.