Andy Abramowitz - Thank You, Goodnight

“I admit that seeing that photo pissed me off. But there’s more to it.” Somehow, a retelling of my escapades in Switzerland seemed unlikely to convince him I was of sound mind. “If it makes any difference, I happen to know we’re still popular in Europe. Small, grotesque parts of Europe.”

He grunted. “My royalty checks don’t reflect that. Maybe you and the rest of the gang negotiated better deals. Speaking of which, what’s up with the other misfit toys? You talk to them?”

“I haven’t spoken to Mackenzie in years.”

“Well, that stands to reason.”

“What does that mean?”

He laid a knowing gaze on me. “Teddy. Come on, man.”

“So I slept with her. Big deal. People in bands sleep with each other all the time. I’m surprised you and I never hooked up.”

“You’re talking about sex, and that’s a convenient oversimplification,” Warren said.

“Give me a break.”

“Teddy, please. When you’re in a band with the same people for many years, you get to know them. You see how they interact with one another, whether they like or hate or are annoyed by one another. Like right now. Can’t you tell that I’m annoyed with you? You can tell whether they have private feelings that they keep under wraps because maybe they’re married or they’re chickenshit or some other reason.”

“I loved Mack, but not like that. She was like a little sister to me.”

“The little sister you slept with.”

I huffed with vast exasperation.

“Listen, man, I don’t care,” he said. “You can remember it however you choose. I’m not going to argue with you.”

“Thank you. As for Jumbo, yes, I’ve been in touch with him.”

Warren was offended. “You didn’t come to me first?”

“No, but I did come to you second.”

“That hurts. What did he say?”

“He’s in. I knew he would be, and that’s why I started with him.”

“Well, that seals it. You know I’ve had way more than my share of Dumbo for one lifetime.”

“And so have we all, but—”

“Let me guess. He’s changed, he’s reformed, he’s a disciplined guy now. Spin it for me. Jumbo’s a totally different person.”

“Jumbo is exactly the same.”

“Of course he is. You go play rock star with that clown. Leave me out of your midlife crisis.”

Silently we twisted down the dark, empty corridors toward the lobby. I hadn’t been inside a high school since I graduated from one, and I felt the unsteady teenager I used to be urging toward the surface, fighting for breath. I’d worked hard to bury him under layers of artificiality that, over time, cemented; I’d become what I pretended to be, as the saying goes. I didn’t want to be that seventeen-year-old kid anymore, just as lost and lonely as everyone else, though perhaps a little more deft at concealing it. I’d had a group of friends I spent a lot of time with but never felt truly a part of. I’d pile into the car with them in search of a party on a Saturday night, but I was the one secretly hoping we wouldn’t find it.

They don’t tell you that about high school. How a place can leave you just as suddenly as you leave it. Just when that itch on your skin finally gives, when the mud hardens, that’s when it kicks you out. The place that made you who you are closes its doors to you forever, and the rest of your life is lived in exile.

“When’s the big performance?” I asked, as Warren and I passed the auditorium double doors.

“Two weeks from yesterday.”

“You’re fucked.”

“Oh, I’m fucked all right. But it doesn’t matter. That Julie girl will make her fiddle sound like a dying animal, and her mommy and daddy will still give her a standing O like she’s Itzhak Perlman. But here’s the thing. I guarantee you that in every class there’s one kid who gets jazzed about what we’re doing. A circuit breaker flips in that kid’s head and—boom!—that’s it. He or she is one of us for life.”

“Listen to yourself. One of us. For life. That’s why you can’t say no. That’s why you have to accept my proposition.”

“Wrong,” he sighed. “That’s why I’m here, Teddy, and it’s why I’m not going to leave.”

We pushed open the doors and ambled out into the chilled evening air, our heels tapping out an echo under the high canopy of the front walkway.

When we reached the flagpole, I pointed to the student lot and said, “Well, I’m over there.”

He dipped his head toward the teachers’ lot. “And I’m over there.”

The symbolism was not lost on me.

“I’m sorry you came all this way for nothing.”

“It wasn’t nothing to me.”

He started to walk away, then stopped. “I’m glad you sought me out. Look, maybe you’re going through something strange in your life or maybe you’re still trying to find your way. I don’t know. We’ve all been there. Whatever it is, we’re still buddies. You know that.”

Through the darkness, I watched his form blend into the dim shadows. Goddamn you, Square. Goddamn you for pitying me.

Soon, I was rolling swiftly down 95. The lanes of the highway were thick with cars, each one driven by some poor son of a bitch doing very little other than growing older. I jacked up the stereo and sought cover in a college radio station. It was playing a song I’d never heard before, a melody high, earthy, and sad. There was something about the night, the air, the music, the high-speed forward motion, the recent reconnections with lost things and lost people. Tonight it hung around my neck like a judge’s decree.

“I want to talk to you.” It was my dad on the phone.

“You do, huh. What about?”

“Meet me at the gym. We’ll talk there.” The gym was shorthand for the posh Sporting Club, an aristocratic spa where the well-bred of Philadelphia overpaid to perspire—certainly not sweat—in their Lululemon and Under Armour.

“What do you want to talk to me about?” I hate surprises. After college, there are very few good surprises.

“We’ll talk there.”

I didn’t relish being summoned like a lapdog, but my day was rather open and a little exercise wouldn’t kill me. On top of that, it is an axiom of magical thinking that the one day a son declines his father’s invitation is the day the old man up and dies. Like I needed that.

With the tart taste of passive obedience in my mouth and the dread of an impending lecture, I tossed on my most threadbare T-shirt and walked across town.

At the club’s front desk, a synthetically buff guy with feathered hair and spandex shorts told me to sign the guest book. Behind him, stacks of vitamin-enriched bottled water, Gatorade of all hues, amino shakes, and powdered whey towered over us. He handed me a towel and said, “Enjoy your workout.” An oxymoronic benediction, if ever there was one.

Through the glistening crowd of midday workout fanatics, I saw Lou Tremble climbing off a treadmill. He spotted me and pulled the earphones out of his ears, winding the little wire as he walked in my direction. I wondered what type of music got my father pumped up for a workout. Growing up, I would comb through his record collection and imagine a hipper past for the man. I’d finger through the cardboard sleeves with the psychedelic designs of Stevie Wonder, Cream, Spyro Gyra, and think, When exactly was this man cool? Somewhere along the line he must’ve gotten lost, his eight-tracks and cassettes sprouting overnight the names Manilow, Sedaka, Anne fucking Murray. Old, edgeless music seemed to pursue people throughout their lives, finally catching up with them when they were too slow and tired to outrun it. You grew up on Smokey Robinson and Dizzy Gillespie. Through your daughter’s bedroom door you overheard Springsteen, his voice filling you with a forgotten wildness. Somewhere in the nineties you hummed “Unskinny Bop” on your way to the office. And then you woke up at age sixty-five and found yourself singing “Ding ding ding goes the trolley.” The house always wins.