Andy Abramowitz - Thank You, Goodnight

“I told you to keep your mouth shut. It’s way too early to let people know what we’re up to. At this point, we’ll just look like a couple of delusional dimwits. I’m sure the hard liquor and ganja have killed your memory, but we did not exactly leave the business on our own terms.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We got dropped by our label.”

“Sales don’t mean anything.”

“Attendance at our shows was paltry.”

“What do you mean? Like there were chickens there?”

“We have to handle this delicately. Don’t you get that? How could you go and announce that we’re back in business? We’re still a punch line on VH1.”

“I don’t care what people think, Mingus. You know that about me.”

“I hate that about you. I always have.” I was suddenly aware that I was yelling. We were two guys in their late thirties bickering on a suburban driveway. “I’m out of here, man. I’ll be in touch.”

He followed me to the curb. “Dude, I got news for you. The whole point of making music is to get people to pay attention. If they don’t pay attention, they can’t very well listen, can they? Think about that.”

“There’s nothing to pay attention to. We haven’t made any music yet. Think about that .”

I reached for the car door. I needed to be away from this mess—a mess I’d made, unmade, and then moronically remade ten years later.

“So, what next?” Jumbo asked.

“Here’s what’s next,” I said, struggling for composure. “I’m going to think about whether I still want to go through with this after being reacquainted with your unshuttable mouth. But assuming a cooler head prevails, I’m going to get in touch with Warren and Mack and . . . continue the process of eating my pride.”

“Mack, huh?” Jumbo was grinning now.

“Yeah, Mack.”

Jumbo just stood there with a stupid smile on his mug.

I glared at him. “Is there something you want to say?”

“Nope. Just that I wouldn’t mind being a fly on the wall at that meeting.”

“Frankly, James, I would’ve preferred it if you’d been a fly on the wall at this meeting.”

I gave the door a fervent yank and enclosed myself in the pleasant hollow of a vacuum. Jumbo leaned down and tapped the glass. The big meatball wasn’t quite done with me.

I rolled down the window. “What?”

With a guilty glance up and down the street, he said, “Want to drive out to the beach and shroom?”

“My answer to that question is the same as when you asked it in 1995.” I raised the window and let out a towering sigh. Idiot. And what beach was he even talking about?

I sped away, forgetting that Jumbo’s envelope of weed was still squirreled in my glove compartment.

I could barely keep myself conscious. The huge yawns that swelled forth must have looked like silent, anguished screams to the night owls driving past me on the highway. Leaning against the cold frame of my car, I stared vacantly at the gasoline nozzle. It was getting late and I’d decided against another ration of caffeine. After the day I’d had, you’re either awake or you’re not, and more coffee just meant more time staring into a rest stop urinal.

The deep growl of a bus overtook the station, and the enormous vehicle hissed to a stop at the next fueling island. The door cleaved open and a man and woman staggered down the steps toward the mini-mart. He wore a mugger’s skullcap, boots, and a jacket of oily leather. She was a leggy platinum blonde in a skintight tube top, click-clacking precariously in hooker’s heels. Given the glam cargo, it was not out of the realm of possibility that this was some type of tour bus making its way up the Eastern Seaboard. I remembered how those coaches were like living rooms and motels to us. There would be rowdy chatter and self-congratulation as we pulled away from the venue. Soon, the mostly empty bus would become a mobile pew of peaceful seclusion. Warren would crossword puzzle his way over the miles, his tray table down, his hand snooping automatically around his family-size bag of trail mix. Mackenzie would curl up against the window with a paperback, her canvas sneakers jutting into the aisle. Jumbo would be conked out somewhere, invisible until we arrived at wherever the tour was taking us next, at which point he’d pop up from the back, disoriented and parched, reminding us all of his existence. I might stretch my legs and park myself across the aisle from Mack, coaxing her into a game of backgammon or enticing her to put on a movie with me. We’d watch Airplane! and laugh—too loud, because of the headphones—at every stupidly hilarious gag we’d seen a thousand times, or The Deer Hunter , which, according to Mack, was back when Christopher Walken was “pretty.” Sometimes, late at night, she’d pass out on my shoulder.

If she could be talked back onto the bus, talked down from all the resentment that she may well have been hauling through the years, I would enjoy more travels with Mackenzie Highsider.

With the steady rush of gasoline flooding into my car’s tank, I texted Sara. “On my way. Be home in an hour or so.”

She immediately wrote me back. “I’m still up. How’d it go?”

I decided to call. The highway was a lonely place, lonelier still at this refueling oasis. I found myself wanting to hear Sara’s voice.

“What are you doing up?” I asked.

“I’m not tired,” she complained with soft frustration. She wasn’t lacking for things to invade her sleep.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Fine. How’d it go today?”

“It went. Jumbo hasn’t changed a lick.”

“I guess that’s good in some ways and bad in others?”

“It’s bad in every conceivable way. But he’s on board.”

“You weren’t really concerned about that though.”

“No,” I said. “I have a great many concerns about Jumbo, but his availability for harebrained schemes on a moment’s notice is not one of them.”

Instead of laughing in allegiance, Sara went quiet. “I saw Billy today,” she said.

I swallowed. “You saw him?”

“Yeah. We met for coffee. On a bench in Rittenhouse Square.”

“Oh.”

Though Billy had shown up from the past, he hadn’t actually shown up yet—to my knowledge anyway. Until now, he’d been a voice on the phone.

“How was it seeing him?”

I heard the crackle of a slow breath being blown through pursed lips. “Difficult. It’s been a long time. He’s not a kid anymore, and I’m clearly not either. We’ve lived a quarter of our lives since we last saw each other.”

As she said it, the thought seemed to mystify her, as if she was wondering, How could so much time have passed? Shouldn’t I be getting better? Is this what better feels like?

“I don’t know what to say, Sara. That must have been hard. You should’ve told me.”

“I guess I didn’t want to talk about it.”

This wasn’t how I’d imagined the reunion. I’d envisioned the inevitable meeting between Sara and Billy taking place in some lawyer’s narcoleptically sleek conference room. They’d be separated by a table, a safe expanse of antique cherry or Madagascar rosewood. They’d meet at the head of the table, embrace in a way that felt so familiar and so weird that it would send them each back to their respective chairs.

“Did you talk about the divorce?”

“Yeah,” Sara said. “We talked about a lot of things.”

A lot of things could’ve meant a lot of things, and a protective impulse surged upward in me, a visceral reaction to my girlfriend of ten years meeting up with her estranged husband without so much as a heads-up. And yet this wasn’t some ex-boyfriend or office crush; it was the man she’d taken vows with, gotten pregnant with, shared the worst kind of tragedy with. I couldn’t be so selfish and petty as to take issue with a heart-to-heart so many years in the making. Especially when I was busy exhuming my own ancient history.