Andy Abramowitz: Thank You, Goodnight

And yet, in my sleekly decorated room, all burgundies and beiges, the smell of recently vacuumed carpet in the air, I neglected the manila folders and redwells that Metcalf, my sweaty associate, had dutifully prepared for me. Instead, I googled “Tate Modern.” With the deep, dull haze that comes from thirty-six consecutive sleepless hours, I surfed the museum’s web page, darting in and out of the links to permanent collections and featured exhibits. The hours vanished and brought me no closer to a clue.

If only he hadn’t used that word.

Legacy .

I wondered how long that CD had been tucked away back there in the darkest corner of the record store. That’s what they do with music nobody cares about anymore. They can’t just throw it away—that would be bad for the environment or something. So it just sits there, fading further into irrelevance with every passing moment. Just like the lead singers of those bands. Guys like me. Guys who once had it all, but now have what everybody else has. Nothing.

The night stretched on. Sleep remained elusive, as though I were still crammed into the middle seat on that 777. It was with almost desperate relief that I finally watched the sun tickle the windows of my room.

I’d have to wing the deposition.

Probably would’ve done that anyway.

Some lawyers will say that, unlike being shelved in an office all day, staring at a computer screen and feeling your ass widen, depositions are “where the action is.” This is only true if your idea of action is eight hours of watching ice melt in a water glass. The bank dweeb took an oath to tell the truth, but it was the most dry, monotonous truth you could imagine. His lawyer, an irritating little goober in his own right, sat next to him and did little more than look smug.

I was also never one for protocol, and what scant decorum I have tends to spoil in the oppressive pit of boredom.

“I’m handing you an exhibit—” I began, passing around a document I’d barely reviewed, when I noticed a short, squiggly hair dangling over the top page. “I’m handing you an exhibit that appears to have a pube on it.”

Gags of horrified laughter filled the room. I blew a short breath at the hair. It sailed off in the direction of the witness, who gasped and shifted out of the way.

“Objection,” said his lawyer.

That kind of thing might get someone else complained about or fired, but people at my shop tended to cut me a little slack, given who I am. Or who I was.

When my work with the witness was done, I handed him off to another lawyer with her own battery of questions. I could now sit back, zone out, mentally leave the building. I could scarf down twenty sugar cookies and fifteen cups of coffee.

I perused the Irish Times . There was a story about a member of the British Parliament charged with groping a young woman. A photo depicted him on the courthouse steps hand in hand with a sturdy, matronly lady. “Throughout all of this,” the disgraced politician was quoted as saying, “my wife has been an absolute brick.” What every woman yearns to be called.

The witness droned on about credit default swaps. I read the sticker on my banana.

He sermonized about political risk insurance. I tried to fantasize about the hottest person in the room. It was me. By a mile.

My thoughts kept returning to Warren’s message like a tongue to a mouth ulcer. There was a time when I was accustomed to his good-­natured shenanigans. This was, after all, a guy who used to amuse himself by pretending he was his own identical twin. But last I heard, he was now a teacher, a legitimate member of the community. If inciting me to drop everything and rush to an art exhibit on another continent was his idea of a practical joke after a decade of radio silence, it seemed out of proportion. Was he kidding? Was he drunk? Was he sending a coded message from a hostage situation?

I decided I’d try to call him at the end of the day, even though I suspected he would be disinclined to divulge details. He didn’t seem to want to tell me about the Tate; he just wanted me to go there. And if he found out that I was actually in Dublin, a temptingly short trip from London, he’d be even less forthcoming. What a hilarious little caper he’d constructed.

The fact was, I could go. My firm was hardly holding its breath for the return of its favorite malcontent. Morris & Roberts would be there for me whenever I got back, with its bloated files and its nimrods down the hall, like Don Yoshida and his riveting tales of his dog’s escapades.

Sara too would survive a few extra nights on her own. She’d trudge into the condo, splash some Spanish wine into a glass, and concoct an unnecessarily elaborate dinner. Langostinos in a red sauce, or a chickpea curry with spinach. Afterward, she’d drape herself in a T-shirt three sizes too large and sink into the couch for the guilty displeasure of reality TV—the selection of a wedding dress by someone too ugly to get married, the perusal of a new house by a couple who’d only end up divorcing and fighting over it. She’d eventually lose interest, her eyes would drift down to the book in her lap, and she’d fade into worlds puppeteered by Jhumpa Lahiri or Meg Wolitzer. She’d get through a dozen or so pages before passing out, waking up an hour later, and shuffling into the bedroom. If I were there with her, the scene would unfold almost exactly the same, except my legs might be crisscrossed with hers on the sofa or she’d talk me into a few rounds of Boggle or her sister in Sacramento would call and Sara would wave frantically at me while mouthing I’m in the shower, I’m in the shower .

Sara might actually applaud my absconding to London under the circumstances. For her, any day spent in the company of paintings, etchings, sculptures, or mundanely arranged soup cans was a good one. She bought in to the whole art racket with an uncharacteristic lack of cynicism. At how many galleries and museums had I watched her standing there, nodding in accord with the voice in the headset, her long, wispy limbs ideally suited for poses of artistic engagement?

Sara was more than an interested spectator in that word; she was something of a covert art hobbyist herself. For years now, she’d been scurrying up to her friend Josie’s studio in Northern Liberties to let the hours float by in the service of her medium of choice: mosaic mirrors. This studio was a place where she and other mosaicists, both professional and aspiring, would—and this is just an outsider’s perspective here—basically break shit up into little pieces and arrange them in weird patterns. Josie’s commune was inhabited by a pack of breezy yet intimidating women who sipped wine, spoke caustically about everything, and set out to push the boundaries of expression. (If they failed at that, they at least succeeded at pushing the boundaries of fashion.) They accepted Sara as one of their own even though she’s not gay, has the gumption to let her hair grow beyond her ears, and has a job that doesn’t begin with the word freelance . But they took her in, Sara, their stray cat.

I, by loud contrast, had spent a lifetime nurturing a deep suspicion of art as an enterprise. An odd trait for a musician, I admit. I accompanied Sara to all the latest openings, but once there, I had a tendency to retch over the pontification about an artist’s ability to transform the ordin’ry into the exquisite. Notice the eyelash. There’s something slightly audacious, scandalous perhaps, about the way in which the paint is applied. In that one simple brushstroke, Akerblom subverts everything we know about contemporary portraiture. While Sara pursed her lips at a canvas smothered corner to corner in bronze paint and curiously titled Three Trees , I stared mistrustfully at it and thought to myself, I don’t see trees, I don’t feel trees, nothing about this painting is bringing a tree to my senses, much less three of them.