Thank You, Goodnight (27 page)

The stench of roadside hotel Dumpster jarred me out of my old mistakes and back into my new ones. I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and called Sara.

“How’s the trip?” she asked.

“Okay so far. Jumbo ended up coming with me.”

“God—why?”

“Because it would’ve been weird if it was just me and his dad.”

In explaining how it came to pass that I set out on a trans-Pennsylvania road trip with that father and son duo, it dawned on me that their reasons for driving out here were no less credible than my own.

Sara was still at the office, having just returned from the home of fabulously well-to-do clients on Delancey Street. A redecorating project was bleeding from one room to the next, as this genteel couple sought to address the discord of a house in which the Provençal lavenders of French country abutted the sleek blues and oranges of midcentury.

“It’s just as well you’re out of town,” Sara commented. “It’s probably going to be a late night for me too.”

“What’s going on?”

“It’s Michel’s last day, so there’s a dinner party.”

“Oh. That should be fun, right?”

“There’s been a lot of talk of sangria,” she said.

“Sure.”

“It seems to flow through Michel’s veins. But I guess that stands to reason.”

“Right,” I agreed vacantly.

There was a pause. “You don’t know who Michel is, do you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Christ, Teddy, I’ve introduced you a dozen times.”

“Of course I know Michel. I just didn’t know she was Spanish.”

“He’s not,” she said curtly.

I sighed in defeat.

“Is it nice being oblivious?” Sara asked, her tone dry.

“That’s kind of a loaded question, but no, I don’t think it’s terribly nice.”

She was chuckling on the other end; I had no idea at what, but it was usually me.

“You keep a lot of secrets.” I pled my case through her laughter. “I don’t get a ton of information from you.”

“Well, I can’t imagine you’d pay much attention if you did.”

“That’s not fair, Sara. I mean, come on, you get together with your ex-husband and you tell me about it after the fact.”

“He’s not my ex-husband—that’s the point.”

“No, that’s not the point.”

“Why does that bother you?” she asked.

“I’m not saying it bothers me.”

“Teddy.” She took a hefty breath. “There are things Billy understands about me that you just never will.”

Her words were perfectly valid and perfectly true, which probably explained why they stung so much. The sentiment had been framed in the present tense too. Billy
understands
. That ran contrary to my understanding of divorce, which I’d always viewed as a parting of the ways.

“I didn’t mean for that to sound so harsh,” she said.

“It’s okay.”

“Aren’t there things that Mackenzie understands about you that I never will?”

She was being deliberately provocative. Billy and Mackenzie were hardly equivalents and she knew it. I gave it fair reflection anyway.

“I’m not so sure. Maybe.”

I buttressed myself against the functional architecture of the Dumpster. “Look,” I said. “I don’t know how much longer I can go on arguing with you.”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means I’m standing next to the most foul Dumpster in all of Pennsylvania. I’m asphyxiating. I’m actually surprised you don’t smell it through the phone.”

“I do, actually. I just thought you hadn’t showered.”

Then she said, “Want to call me in the morning?”

“Yeah. Have a good night.”

“I’ll send Michel your regards.”

“Yeah, tell her I wish her well.”

“He’ll appreciate that.”

*       *       *

The hotel side door had the clunky weight of the hatch of a sub. As I passed the game room—and I do not mean games room; the tiny space housed exactly one amusement, a seventies-era pinball machine featuring the image of a mustachioed race car driver grinning with seductive machismo—I became aware of two silhouettes shuffling down the hall. One of the silhouettes was slight and frail, the other large and oafish. The oafish one carried a duffel bag.

“Jumbo?” I called, walking toward them.

“There you are. I’ve been calling you.” He interrupted himself. “Where’d you get that soda?”

“From the soda machine.”

“Interesting.” Our voices sounded blunt and boxlike in the narrow corridor. “Listen, we have to leave.”

“Leave? What do you mean you have to leave?”

“One of my patients is having contractions. I have to get back to Baltimore. Pronto.”

“Are you kidding me? One of your patients?”

“She’s going earlier than I thought.”

“Jesus, Jumbo, you’re not an ob-gyn. Whatever it is you do at those births will happen just fine without you.”

“I’m sorry, Mingus. Nobody is more committed to this band than me, but today I’m still a midwife. People are counting on me.”

Hopefully, that wasn’t true.

“So, I’m supposed to just blow Mack off ?” I said. “We drove across the fucking state.”

“Calm down. I got the front desk to have a rental car dropped off. You stay and work Mack over.” He paused to snicker meaningfully. “Dad and I have to go and we have to go now. Mrs. Winchester can’t go into labor without me.”

Only Jumbo could manage to be practical and impractical simultaneously. It was a horrendously inconvenient time for him to develop a sense of responsibility.

“Besides, you and Mackenzie seem to do just fine on your own.” He winked and gave me a jocular elbow to the ribs. “Dad, I’m going to grab us a couple of Cokes and meet you in the lobby. We’ll jam the new Tremble tunes the whole way back! And Mingus, no more dustups. My old man won’t be there to save your sorry ass!”

CHAPTER 17

O
n the other side of the glass, a gathering of diners filled the bistro. Simple wooden tables stretched back in long, narrow lines under pendant lighting as stylish, well-groomed patrons sipped wine in happy profile.

Mackenzie materialized from the shadows. She had slid herself into a pair of jeans but had not abandoned those voguish glasses, which bridged the thick flows of blond hair cascading down both sides of her face.

“How’s your hotel?” she asked.

“No better place to stay if you’re a chain smoker.”

I couldn’t stop looking at her. I was utterly disarmed by the sight of the person who for so long had inhabited my dreams, who’d haunted me, guided me here without ever knowing it. When she reached for the restaurant’s door, I was suddenly overcome by the need to confess, an unexpected urge toward forthrightness. It would be unfair of me to conceal the reason for my visit and allow the charade of a dinner between old friends to unfold as I lay in wait for just the right moment to pounce.

“Look, Mack, before we go in, I need to be honest with you about something.”

She eyed me suspiciously. “Okay.”

“I’m not out here for work.”

“What do you mean?”

I tried to breathe normally. “I came out here to see you. I drove out here with Jumbo. Jumbo was going to be the surprise I mentioned earlier. So was his father, actually, but that’s a whole other fucked-up story.”

She looked instantly traumatized, like I was one of her freak patients. “Wait. Jumbo is here with you?”

“No. Not anymore. He left.”

That didn’t seem to help. “Teddy, you’re scaring me.”

“You’re going to think I’ve completely lost my mind.”

“What’s going on?” But the mortal astonishment in her eyes conveyed the beginnings of understanding, and I felt that familiar shamefaced look creep over me.

With a grimace, I said, “We won’t make you audition this time. Promise.”

“You’re kidding.”

I shrugged.

“You want to get the band back together.”

I nodded.

“Is this a joke?”

“Depends how you look at it.”

“You’re insane.”

“I keep hearing that.”

“You drove to Pittsburgh to show up at my office unannounced and ask me to walk out of my practice and play music again. You actually did that.”

“It wasn’t unannounced. I had an appointment.”

Her stunned silence afforded me the opportunity to relay the whole sorry saga, beginning with my public flogging courtesy of Heinz-Peter Zoot, right up through Sonny, then Alaina.

“It’s happening, Mack. We’ve got all the old players back. We need you.”

Mackenzie was shaking her head at this pitiful little horror movie. Faces and names were popping up out of the past like zombies undead and stammering, with designs on dragging her away.

A pack of young women, coworkers I would’ve guessed, breezed up and maneuvered around us to enter the restaurant, looking at us as if witnessing the genesis of a domestic dispute.

Mackenzie fumbled for words and fidgeted with the buttons on her overcoat. “Your timing is not ideal, I’ll say that much.”

“Come on, Mack. You were the one in the band that I could most relate to. You had to have known that.”

“And yet you came to me last.”

“You also happen to be the only one in the band who terrifies me. For obvious reasons.”

She started to laugh. “So, you’re going around foisting your midlife crisis on people you haven’t seen in years? That’s what Teddy Tremble has come to?”

“Why does everybody keep calling this a midlife crisis? I’m thirty-eight.”

“You know, it’s funny. Every day, people come into my office to deal with issues in their relationships. They come in, they sit down, and say things like ‘My wife isn’t interested anymore’ or ‘Once a week just isn’t doing it for me.’ That’s what the majority come to me for. Not sex addiction, not curing them of some shame-inducing practice that appalls their partner, but improving the connection with the man or woman in their lives. For most of these people, helping them involves little more than a recalibration of their expectations. ‘Your wife isn’t twenty-five anymore, she’s fifty, so no, the mere sight of her naked body may not bring you to your knees.’ Or ‘Wouldn’t once a week be okay if it knocked your socks off ?’ More often than not, I’m just slowly helping people accept reality.”

“So the key to happiness is low expectations?”

“No, but the key to unhappiness is definitely unreasonable expectations.”

“I’m not unhappy. That’s not why I’m doing this. And to be honest, my expectations feel more reasonable the deeper I go.”

“The hallmark of a delusional mind.” She rocked forward onto her toes. “I can’t help you, my friend. I’m a sex therapist, not an everything therapist. You need an everything therapist.”

“You’re a bass player, Mackenzie. That’s what you are.”

In a better world, that remark would’ve awakened something inside her and she would’ve started to nod slowly, the momentum building within, her thoughts racing, an inner voice thumping Fuck yeah! That’s exactly what I am! A bass player! and she’d be swept away into the current of the bold, burnished future. Instead, she was peering at me over her glasses with a look that rendered me utterly defenseless.

“Before you say no, do me a favor. Don’t say no,” I pleaded.

With hands stuffed into the pockets of her jacket and her mouth agape, she looked everywhere for help—the passing cars, the row of restaurants and closed shops up and down the block, the night sky circling above. Her toe tapped the asphalt.

Then I remembered my glove compartment. It was the path to a place where the memories could flood like the falls, where I could turn her mind’s camera back to the glory days and seduce her with the ecstatic shiver of those times returning.

I heard myself say, “Look, I have a bag of weed in my car. It’s not mine and I can’t vouch for the quality.”

She froze, horror flowering amid bewilderment. I’d just compounded all my other offenses by proposing we do some drugs. Music and pot. How old was I?

“Bad idea,” I said, retreating. It was my second in as many minutes. “Forget I mentioned it.”

She sighed, already wearying of me. Then she tilted her head down the block. “Come on. Let’s get your stash. I live around the corner.”

*       *       *

Mackenzie must’ve considered herself dirtier than most people, or maybe her profession inspired the desire to come home and get clean, for at every turn in her old red Victorian, which loomed munificently over the hushed street, a carefully arranged dish displayed some type of designer bathing product. Soap blocks, soap shells, soap bombs, soap flowers, even little containers of body butter lay about the place in every direction. Their names swept you away into a tranquil land of exotica: bonsai deodorant, buttermilk bath bomb, citrus sage shampoo bar, French chocolate bath melt.

Mack took genuine delight in my misadventures in Europe. The tale inspired convulsions of silent laughter, her torso swaying back and forth but never quite toppling as a densely packed joint was passed between our pinched fingers. We were sitting on the living room rug, our backs against the sofa in a room illuminated only by a Tiffany dragonfly lamp.

“We really have a lost legion of fans in Switzerland?” she asked, bemused and incredulous.

“And not even casual fans,” I said. “They wanted to know where your solo albums were. They asked where they could find bootlegs of our shows. I was signing ticket stubs!”

“That must have been a blast.”

“I was too busy trying to escape to enjoy it.”

“Why am I not surprised?” she said. “The rest of us would’ve eaten it up, you know.”

Mack placed the joint, now a shrunken stub, in a soap dish that she’d brought onto the floor, and remarked, “I have to say, I think it’s pretty cool that one little photograph could get you writing songs again.”

“I had no choice. That picture reduced me to a joke. I couldn’t go to my grave as an object of ridicule.”

“A photograph catches one moment, Teddy, and you have had plenty of good ones.”

“And yet when I die, people will think of me and laugh.”

“Who cares? You’ll be dead.”

“I wouldn’t have given my legacy a second thought were it not for Warren calling me about that exhibit. Ignorance would’ve been such bliss.”

Mack looked doubtful. “Other than Abe Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., and Hitler, I really don’t know what a legacy is or who has one. I’m just saying that if you’re really lucky, you get one miracle in this life. Seems awfully presumptuous to be asking for seconds.”