Andy Abramowitz - Thank You, Goodnight

“That’s a terrible example, Square. Rousseau had the opposite problem. His legacy exceeded his experience. He had nothing to correct—­wouldn’t you say?”

“So what’s more important—the way you spend your days on this earth or the way posterity views it?” Warren posed. “Your life or your legacy?”

“One of them is around a lot longer.”

“They both die, dummy.”

I reclined and kicked my heel onto a neighboring chair. “See? You are trying to teach me something.”

“I couldn’t if I tried.”

Then one morning, with an unvarnished lack of ceremony, Sonny brought down the curtain. A prelunch sluggishness had set in. Warren and Mack had just returned from a bakery, and we were all milling about near the mushy banana of a sofa while Sonny frowned under his headphones, listening, concentrating, occasionally adjusting volume levels. Eventually, he stood and faced us.

“That’ll do it.”

“What’s next?” I asked.

“Nothing’s next.” He broke off a corner of Warren’s lemon poppy seed scone. “Pack up. We’re done.”

We all exchanged uneasy glances. Despite weeks of hard labor, abuse of both the verbal and physical varieties, I hadn’t quite arrived at a place where any of this felt complete.

“Done, as in finished?” Warren asked.

“You’re happy with it?” I ventured.

The producer shot me a cool look, as if the state of his happiness was any of my goddamn business.

The tracks still needed to be mixed, mastered, and otherwise tamed into something that sounded complete. But now it was Alaina’s show. Her long fingers tapping together in a Bond villain power triangle, she’d concoct the ultimate scheme for world domination, which, in this instance, entailed channeling our product into the crowded bay of musical relevancy. She would know the variables that dictated in whose lap to park the tapes—or park herself, if need be. She would know that signing with one record company meant that only the younger demographic would hear about us and that signing with another ensured that they never would. While examining her nails, Alaina would stoke her own fires of cunning invention. She’d first dangle the masterpiece in front of Colin Stone at MCA; he’d earned it, having cohabitated with the bassist. If Colin passed, there was George Glick, the big fat windbag at Interscope who hit on her at Bonnaroo last year and apparently thought her standards dropped whenever she entered Tennessee airspace. If George passed, there was the Weasel, Clay Hapgood, who was still at Capitol, still making mountains of misjudgments, and who would do anything Alaina asked because he still regretted passing on Regina Spektor.

That was for another day. For now, no further instruments or voices were required to realize the dozen or so songs that would become Tremble’s comeback album. Our anticlimactic ending was upon us. Mackenzie was the first to start gathering her gear.

“I’m sure going to miss this place,” Jumbo said mawkishly.

Sonny stared at him. “Not everything is worthy of sentimentality.”

Within a few hours, we’d sleeved our cables, committed our guitars and drums to their cases, and loaded up our cars. The afternoon was thick with all the promise and ambivalence of a college graduation.

Outside, I slammed Mack’s trunk shut and dusted off my hands. She was headed downtown to empty out her Old City sublet and hoped to be heading westward through a turnpike tollbooth by rush hour. As she squinted up at me, I suddenly felt that this was all over too soon.

“The next few months could be quiet, what with Alaina working her tawdry magic,” I said. “In the meantime, we’ll probably have to start thinking about our live show. I guess that means we’ll be seeing more of each other.”

Mack smiled down at her blue suede Adidases. “That was the idea, wasn’t it?”

“I’m really glad you were here.”

“I’m glad you asked me.”

I leaned in and hugged her, indulging my senses in the essence of her cheek and neck. The twitch of muscle memory bade me to hold on to her, this thing I’d craved for years of my life, for fear I’d never get close enough again to smell the notes of heather and jasmine in the tangle of her hair. Like the girl on the train station platform. The one who gets away. I didn’t know if I was ready.

I hauled my gear back to the condo and dropped it all in the living room. Standing there in the midday vacancy of the apartment, a commotion rose up inside me. My first thought was to call Sara.

“You did it,” she said, sounding just as surprised as the band members. “I’m proud of you.”

“It’s a strange feeling,” I said meditatively.

“You made an album. You made a fucking album!” Complications loomed—for me, for the band, for her—but they were not part of this moment, and the purity of Sara’s joy in this moment justified the profanity. “I can’t wait to hear it. Are you happy?”

I hadn’t moved a muscle. My knees were locked, my hand quaking around the phone. Happy hadn’t occurred to me. “I don’t know.”

“Please don’t do that Teddy thing you do where you go looking for woe. You know you can always find it. You made an album with Sonny Rivers, and you basically did it all on a dare.”

“I wouldn’t put it in quite those terms.”

“That photographer dared you to do this. He didn’t mean to, but he did. Right now, you should feel nothing but satisfaction. Worry about everything that warrants worrying tomorrow. Are you all going out to celebrate?”

Only Jumbo had proposed it, but his suggestion had been roundly ignored, and not just because it was he who had suggested it. The walls of East Side Studios had grown high and imposing, and the bodies and souls that had invaded it for the summer had grown increasingly in need of ventilation.

“I’ve had enough of them for a while,” I said. “You and I are going to celebrate.”

She paused, taken aback perhaps at the invitation, probably raking through her Rolodex of excuses; they were never far out of reach, and they seemed to be multiplying of late.

Then she simply said, “Okay.” She even sounded pleased.

But later that afternoon, en route to Bristol & Bristol Interior Design, with thoughts of snatching Sara away for happy hour at the rooftop bar of a nearby hotel, I got a call from her. Something had come up.

“I’m so sorry, Teddy. I really can’t miss this meeting.”

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

“I’ll meet you at home later,” she said, and hung up.

Standing downwind of an abrupt ditch, I licked my wounds and remobilized. It was still today, the day without worries, the day on which Teddy did not do his Teddy thing where he went looking for woe.

Gripping my phone like a four-seam fastball, I pondered my next pitch. I didn’t like where my thoughts were leading me. Market Street foot traffic freewheeled past this once and future musician. Knowing I probably shouldn’t, I dialed.

“Have you left town yet?” I asked.

“Still loading up,” Mackenzie replied. “As much as I like to consider myself someone who packs light, I might not actually be that person.”

I offered to help, and she had no real reason to refuse. Twenty minutes later, I was knocking on an open door on the second story of a row house on Second Street, just north of Arch. There was exactly one piece of furniture in the center of the vast studio apartment—a bed—and Mackenzie was sitting on it, face in hands.

“You all right?” I asked.

She lifted her head and smiled heavily at me. “A little tired, I have to admit.”

“Yeah, you look pale. And wan.”

“You had to say wan, didn’t you? I couldn’t just be pale.”