Andy Abramowitz - Thank You, Goodnight

It was an hour past the reservation time, and the three of us who had shown up so far had done no more than order from the bar and victimize the bread basket. Our waitress was nobly masking her ire at our monopolization of her table without running up much of a tab. After checking in with us for the tenth time, she politely suggested we wave her down when we were ready, and then carried her angular features, horselike ponytail, and mirthless smile away from our table.

Warren, Mack, and I were waiting for Alaina, who was off attending a late-afternoon meeting at MCA with Colin Stone and other senior execs, but she hadn’t been heard from in hours. Contentious meetings typically lasted longer than harmonious ones, and there was nothing encouraging about the thought of agent and label duking it out in a conference room over us. Alaina had insisted that I stay away. “Go eat gnocchi and let me do my job,” she’d said. “Shoo!”

The front door of the restaurant swung open and in sailed our guitar player aboard a big chunky grin.

“I’m with the band,” he majestically informed the hostess. In loose-fitting jeans and a navy sweatshirt that zippered up the middle, Jumbo circumnavigated the table and distributed high fives to each of us like he’d just hit a game-winning three-pointer. He was fresh from a birthing workshop in White Plains, some convention needed to maintain his midwifery certification.

Our stress level already in the red zone, Mack was the only one who could bear to make eye contact with him. “How was your seminar?” she asked.

Jumbo winked. “Kobe beef sliders.”

That was the sum of his ambition: the convention’s hors d’oeuvres.

“No Alaina yet?” he asked the table.

I shook my head.

Unconcerned, Jumbo grabbed the arm of a passing waitress and leaned in with a devious twinkle. “A little SoCo, if I may.”

The waitress stiffly regarded the hairy hand on her forearm. “Excuse me?”

“Southern Comfort. Please.”

“I’ll let your waitress know,” she said, and scooted away.

But not even a snappish server could dampen the beam on Jumbo’s face. His eyes feasted on every aspect of the room—the dusty light fixtures, the rich red carpeting pockmarked with food smudges, the ceiling stains that looked almost artistically rendered. “I’ve missed this place,” he gushed. Then, jostling me with an elbow, he proclaimed, “You really can go home again.”

I had no doubt that Jumbo could go home again, especially if home was synonymous with consuming a half-dozen glasses of hard liquor, then making a late-night snack run to a convenience store where he would mistake a box of tampons for a pack of Charleston Chews. But to his credit, since committing to this enterprise, Jumbo’s behavior had exceeded our pathetically low expectations. He hadn’t hitchhiked or stumbled through a glass window, and though he did put himself out of commission for one studio day through overuse of Tabasco sauce, he claimed to have recently begun working out again. (Although to Jumbo Jett, exercise could’ve meant beer pong or Skee-Ball at the local arcade.)

Edgy impatience flooded my limbs. Somewhere in the city the fate of my band was being debated and bargained over, and I was here, watching the focaccia grease twinkle on my drummer’s face.

“You’re caressing your temples again,” Warren informed me.

Mackenzie pointed to the side of my head. “It’s leaving a mark.”

Jumbo reached over to massage my neck. “Relax, Mingus.”

I locked eyes with him. “Don’t tell me to relax. And take your hands off me.”

“Colin will always do right by us,” Mack assured us. “Plus, he’s helpless against Alaina.”

I’d been trying to access a state of peace over these past weeks, and had occasionally attained it, sometimes even for as long as a quarter hour. But from where I sat, there was no shortage of concerns over which to stew. There was the highly suspect sellability of the band as a commodity. Our image, or lack thereof. The fact that in most circles, the mention of our name prompted distant chuckles. The fact that the new record offered nothing quite as catchy as “It Feels like a Lie,” even if, song for song, this was probably the best record of our career. (It was, to be fair, only the third record of our career, so the distinction was akin to being crowned the handsomest member of ZZ Top.)

“Why is Sonny at this meeting with Alaina and not us?” Jumbo wanted to know.

“Politics,” I said. “He’s Sonny. And Colin basically wants to fellate him.”

“Hey!” Mack snapped her napkin at my head. “You’re talking about my ex-husband!”

“Maybe that’s why he’s your ex-husband,” Warren suggested.

“Is fellate really a verb?” asked Jumbo.

“Ask the sex therapist.”

The muscles in Mack’s face tensed with sympathy. “Sorry, guys, but for men at your station in life, it’s pretty much a past-tense verb.”

At about ten fifteen, a pair of violet stilettos carried Alaina into the Plum like a bayonet and deposited her straight onto Mackenzie’s lap. She kissed Mack on the cheek and announced that she wouldn’t be needing her own chair tonight.

“Thanks for showing up,” Warren grunted, sponging up olive oil with yet another rosemary roll.

Alaina surveyed the scene. “You cats ate without me.”

By this point, the table was littered with plates: a battlefield of bloody red-sauce stains and chicken bones, ricotta cheese oozing out of sliced lasagna like the innards of the dead.

I was hoping our agent’s nonchalance foretold good things.

“So?” I asked impatiently.

Alaina looked past me as Charles, the Plum’s manager, appeared at the table and delivered a regal bow. “So nice to see everybody,” he said. “Miss Farber, you look radiant as always.”

“Sorry, Charlie. I think I’m gay tonight.”

“Of course.”

“Can you blame me?” Her fingers glided over Mackenzie’s cheek. “I hope you got a good look at this before she sat down. It’s the stuff of college dorms. The nerve at her age.”

Charlie struggled to not look uncomfortable. This was Alaina’s new thing around Mack. An over-the-top display of lust was her rather odd way of expressing concern. People go all sorts of crazy when there’s a terminal illness in the room. They sit around and speak of weighty themes in dirgelike tones. Hysterical laughter zaps into hysterical crying. Someone puts on the Righteous Brothers until someone else censures them—Really? At a time like this?—so they put on Squeeze and everybody starts telling stories. I’d have understood it if Mack’s condition was perilous. But Mack was as close to death as the rest of us—less so, in fact; her cells had just been given the Clorox treatment—which made Alaina’s hammy display of sham carnality uncalled-for and, frankly, weird.

“As always, dear friends, my staff and I are at your service.” Charlie offered a fussy dip and carried his Greenwich, Connecticut, coif to the next table.

Alaina said, “I know somebody ordered me an appletini.”

I looked sharply at her. “I’m going to start beating it out of you in two seconds.”

“Ooh. Promise?” She permitted a cruel little smirk to scheme its way over the southern hemisphere of her face, then, at last, she broke down. “Okay, kids, they love it. They came in their tacky houndstooth pants.”

“I knew it!” Jumbo hooted, pounding the table. “Did I not call this?”

The rest of us sat there with an idiot’s gape.

“Seriously?” I said.

“Are you really doubting me, sugar packet? That’s adorable. No lie—they love it.”

“Exactly how much do they love it?”