Andy Abramowitz - Thank You, Goodnight

“Listen, there’s going to be a firestorm,” she continued, then stopped herself. “That was rather the wrong word. But the attention is going to be nuts. Do you have any idea what this is going to do to the public’s interest in the album?”

Mackenzie’s voice rang out. “Are you serious, Alaina?” She bolted up out of her chair. “If you’re saying what I think you’re saying, I’m literally going to be sick.”

“Mack,” I said calmly.

“No. If you guys want to have a marketing meeting to celebrate all the competitive advantages that have been gifted to you because a man’s life is over, find yourself another bass player.”

Alaina held up her open palms. “Chill, Mackenzie. That’s not what I was saying. And believe me, nobody wants another bass player. Sit down. Please. We’re all tense right now, we’re all shocked, and we’re all really fucking sad. All I was saying is that there has to be an official word from the band. I know you guys have been away for a while, but you remember how this works. We need a written statement. I can have someone here knock one out. Jesus, everybody on this floor has a canned eulogy on their laptop. But . . .” Her eyes glided across the room. “But that’s not our style, is it?”

“I’ll do it,” Jumbo blurted out. “I’m feeling so much right now—pain, confusion, a broken heart. Why him? Why now? It’s all so unfair! And we all know emotions are best expressed when you’re a little out of whack.”

“No, they aren’t,” I interrupted. “I’ll do it.”

The room went quiet. Nobody spoke up to object.

“Good, get on it,” Alaina finally directed. “You stay here. The rest of us will go down to the lounge.” She looked at Mackenzie, whose edgy eyes were pointed out the window, her fingernail tapping against her front tooth. “But we’re not going anywhere without Mack.”

Mack turned to Alaina and sighed. “I’m here.”

“Just give me something to write with,” I said. “A notepad, a pen, and a half hour on that brown sofa right there. It won’t be the unified theory of everything, but . . .” I shrugged. “I’ll try to do the man justice.”

The fact was, Sonny wouldn’t have given a rat’s ass about any kind of tribute. A tribute was all about what other people thought. That was never his concern. He made music the way he thought it should sound, music that was true to his own ears, his own soul. That’s why he carried himself like he owned the world. Because if you really were true to yourself and to your soul, then you did own the world.

Everyone filed out of the room, absently tipping the coffee pitcher into their cups as they passed. Only Alaina remained, stuck in the doorway, unable to leave.

“For once in your life, Theodore, try to be nice,” she said.

I grunted. Look who was talking.

She remained fixed under the door frame, smiling an oddly fragile smile.

“You okay?” I asked.

“No.” She pointed at the couch. “That sofa doesn’t like being called brown, because it’s purple.”

I regarded it. “Then why does it look brown?”

“Who the fuck knows?” she replied with a weary flip of her bangs. “Maybe it’s exhausted.”

I then noticed a new photo on the wall, a recent shot, the frame unmarred by dust. Sonny’s arm was slung around Alaina as they posed in front of the mixing board in East Side Studios during the Trans Am sessions. It was somewhat underexposed—there was no flash, and the shaft of light beaming down from the ceiling fan just missed them, as if they’d dodged a lightning strike. But as I looked hard at the picture, I could see Sonny’s eyes. I felt him staring back at me, holding me in his all-knowing countenance with those eyes that had seen everything. At that, I seized up in panic.

“Alaina,” I called out.

She reappeared at the door.

“You know what? I take it back. I don’t know if I can do this. I’ve never written a tribute in my life. Who am I to speak for Sonny Rivers anyway?” I stood there in my agent’s office, my head shaking under a stampede of insecurity. “No, I change my mind. I can’t do it.”

“Teddy,” she said matter-of-factly, “it’s the artist’s job to find beauty, and in beauty, there’s hope and optimism, no matter how tragic that beauty. So, for the sake of all of us, do your job. Be the artist you claim to be.”

I stared at her hard. “I don’t think I know what that means.”

“Well.” She let out a dark laugh. “You’d better start pretending you do.”

And she was gone.

I started adjusting to the aloneness of the room when Jumbo poked his head back in, a warrior’s thirst all over his face. “Mingus, I’m right here if you need me, bro!” He was holding up his fist in a show of brotherly solidarity.

I expressed my appreciation by telling him to get out and shut the door.

I sat on the brownish-purple sofa and thought. I put myself in the records Sonny made as a young man. I put myself in his house with his wife and kids as a man full-on in his prime. I set myself on fire. Nothing came that seemed worth saying.

What happens to a man when he dies? Does the physical world take note? What happens to the things he loved when he’s no longer in the world to love them? Do his favorite songs play with slightly less radiance because the adoration quotient has diminished? Do the places he always wanted to visit brim with less joy for his never having gotten there? Does his house miss him, the quiet that hangs over its rooms in the afternoon a more somber silence? Do the secrets only he knew find another head in which to conceal themselves?

I gazed up at the photos on Alaina’s wall and tried to unbend in the exalted company—the once famous, the overrated, the roadkill. I sent myself into the tunnels of memories I had of Sonny but only found myself becoming more lost.

Sonny was dead. It didn’t matter what we did or what we said now. Sonny was gone. Gone forever. Every single person up in those frames, no matter how celebrated or disgraced, was going to die. No matter who heard them sing. No matter what legacy they left behind, or to whom. That’s where this was all headed. That’s what happens next. That, I decided, was Sonny’s unfinished thought.

I reached for my phone and dialed. It went to voice mail. I called back. Again and again—it was the only thing that mattered—until at last Sara picked up.

“It’s me,” I said, my voice breaking with relief.

Everybody should have someone to whom they’re simply It’s me .

She was typing an e-mail at the desk in our office when I blew into the condo. She spun her chair around and looked at me.

“It’s such a horrible thing,” she said. “Are you okay?”

I felt my jaw go taut. I wasn’t sure I could say it. “Sara. How come you never talk to me about Drew?”

She recoiled.

“All these years together and you’ve never spoken to me about him. And then Billy comes back and . . . I know Drew is with you, Sara. I know he’s with you all the time.”

She looked splintered by my bluntness, my crime of violating our long-standing accord to leave this alone. I watched her readying a nimble deflection. She’d tell me that this had nothing to do with him, that I was just thrown by what had happened to Sonny. It would be a thoroughly rehearsed act of self-defense.

But something was different this time. Her expression was changing, going somewhere I’d never been. Her mouth relaxed into a sad, honest smile.

“You’re not me,” she said. “You could never have known what I was going through. It’s not your fault. You’ve always just been someone else who didn’t have an answer.”