Thank You, Goodnight (3 page)

Amid the swirling foot traffic at the museum entrance, I paused for a breath. There was a seemingly homeless Rastafarian on a vibraphone. I think he was banging out “9 to 5” by Dolly Parton.

Inside, the atmosphere was art-school vibrant and airplane-hangar reverberant. Swiping a floor map from the visitors’ desk, I moved among the meandering appreciators, all the while fighting off a swell of anxiety. I wasn’t so sure I wanted to see whatever it was Warren wanted me to see. On the escalator up to the second floor, I felt that adrenaline-fueled thump, a schizophrenic cross between This better be worth it and God, I hope it’s a letdown.

The escalator deposited me in an open room with high ceilings, white walls, and artwork of varying species blooming in every direction. With a pit in my stomach, I started combing through the halls, detouring into the various chambers situated off the main room, a keen eye toward anything that could possibly shed light on what the hell I was doing there.

By the time I’d completed one revolution around the floor, anxiousness had given way to frustration. What if my legacy was gone, carted off to another gallery? What if I was looking right at it but just didn’t get it? It occurred to me that I might very well walk out of there empty-handed. It also occurred to me that that might be the best possible scenario.

Then I noticed one wall at the end of the main room that I hadn’t yet examined. I walked toward it and came upon a photography exhibit, pictures of seemingly random people printed on large canvases. They
were candids of distantly familiar faces. The first shot was of a New York Yankee from the seventies or eighties—an outfielder, if memory served. He was aging and whalelike, besieged by pockmarks, lugging his big old self down a busy Manhattan avenue in a rumpled suit. The way he glared at the camera, Charles Manson daggers in his eyes, suggested that life after baseball had not been kind, albeit flush with hot dogs. I grunted in satisfaction; fuck the Yankees.

The next photo depicted a postcute woman in her midtwenties standing at a bus stop, an army-green duffel bag slung over her shoulder. She was wincing from the weight of the luggage and peering down the quiet road, impatient for the bus. Her features seemed awfully worn for someone in the flower of youth, and her hair seemed to be in a protracted estrangement from water and shampoo. I’d seen this woman before. She was the daughter of a right-wing senator who’d been excommunicated from the party upon revelations that he enjoyed parading around the house in his wife’s lingerie. Either that or she was the former starlet who tipped one White Russian too many with Lindsay Lohan and ended up the target of a restraining order by that guy from
That ’70s Show
. I hadn’t thought about her in years, and the look in her eye suggested she knew it all too well.

The third photo was even sadder, a woman enshrouded in a raincoat on a rainless day, flanked by cops on a street corner. A high-end boutique clothing store stood in the background, and the way the officers loomed over the poor woman made the story all too clear. Thief ! Her eyes were downcast to the concrete and her hands were stuffed dolefully in her jacket pockets, the very picture of humiliation. Although the hood of her raincoat snugly enveloped her head, one could still make out the woman who, fifteen or so years ago, had been the unflappable matriarch of a sitcom family, dishing out good-natured one-liners at her husband and children while carrying a basket of laundry. This actress-cum-shoplifter, like the bloated Yankee and disgraced starlet before her, had clearly seen better days.

Speaking of which: the next picture was of me.

It was a doozy. I was in a Mexican-themed cantina, the sort of place where the ceiling fans drone high overhead, the menus are laminated, and the heavily cheesed burritos stay with you for days. The photographer had snapped me unawares as I sat alone at the bar with a plate of mango salsa nachos and a mojito. At the precise moment that the shutter winked in my direction, I’d clumsily scooped an unbalanced heap of salsa onto a chip and the whole thing had fallen apart, leaving a bloodstain of sauce trailing down my shirt and a hailstorm of chopped onions, chicken squares, and jalapeños heading south for my lap. My chin was thrust forward buffoonishly and my lips were agape, a last-ditch attempt to steer the chip into my mouth before it lost its cargo. As a bonus, an unsightly sliver of cilantro was lodged between my two front teeth. You could see it perfectly.

Nobody in the history of our species had ever looked more foolish.

There was more. The title of the photo was printed on a little white card next to the canvas. Riffing cleverly on my band’s number-one hit song, “It Feels like a Lie,” the picture was called
It Feels like a Lie . . . and It Looks like a Mess
, which I guessed would seem funnier later. The photographer was someone named Heinz-Peter Zoot from someplace called Unterseen. Both sounded made-up.

This was my legacy. This was what the world now thought of the lead singer of Tremble, one of the most popular bands in the world a short decade ago. When they thought of him at all.

I struggled to suppress the stream of profanities boiling upward in my throat, and I came dangerously close to spending the night in a British jail for attacking a defenseless photography exhibit.

One final poster cemented my disgrace. It spelled out the title of this collection in bold black letters:

FADED GLORY:

WHERE DO THEY GO WHEN THEY HAVE NOWHERE TO GO?

A mug shot of the artist was conveniently located underneath, just in case the viewer was moved to spit, deface, or otherwise trash
what he or she was looking at. This Heinz-Peter Zoot was a burly, shaven-headed, toothsome son of a bitch, some breed of carnival barbell slinger looking merrily proud in a white muscle shirt—fucker got all dressed up for his photo. I studied the features of this meathead, a man soon to die by my hand. To my immense horror, it dawned on me that I knew him.

I marched back to the picture of me and the nachos. Yes, goddamnit! I knew him! The memory of the encounter came roaring back. The cantina was in Amsterdam, where I’d traveled two years ago on firm business. All I’d wanted that night was a quiet dinner, but I kept noticing some jerk staring at me. I probably said something polite, like “Do you fucking mind?” and he apologized in heavily accented English—English dunked brusquely in the milk of Somewhere Else. Then he said he recognized me the moment he walked in and couldn’t believe his luck. He was a big fan. I must’ve been in a good mood, because instead of swiveling my chair in the opposite direction, I invited him to pull up a stool. Which he did, and then proceeded to regale me with the extent of his fandom. He sang the praises not only of our first record, but also of our follow-up album—which exactly nobody owns—and even claimed to still listen to our music on a regular basis. I didn’t dislike him. I bought the moron a drink. I smiled for his camera. I raised a Corona with him as another patron took our picture together. I was downright affable, and usually I am downright not.

And where did all that accessibility land me? In one of the world’s most famous galleries, looking like the King of the Schlubs. In case the world was wondering where that loser from that nineties band was hanging out these days, he was sitting alone in a cheap Mexican tourist trap, a big fat salsa stain on his shirt and something gross in his teeth.

I glared at the act of betrayal hanging on the wall and plotted a riotous squall of violence. “I’m going to fucking kill him,” I seethed.

A sudden flash of light burst onto the canvas. At first I thought the photo had somehow come alive. Then I turned my head. The flash went off again, this time searing into my eyeballs. Someone was
now taking pictures of me, right there in the Tate. When I regained the use of my retinas, I saw the culprit. He looked like a rat. “Ha! It
is
him!” he crowed. Today was this scrawny little punk’s lucky day. He’d watched the subject of a photo witnessing himself in that photo, and thought, Well golly, that itself should be a photo. How meta. How
Being John Malkovich
. There’s something slightly audacious, scandalous perhaps, about the way in which the miserable slob observes himself being portrayed as a miserable slob.

I bared my teeth at the kid, but was somehow only able to point to the sign in the doorway. “No photos! Can’t you fucking read?”

He hooted and darted off in a blaze of raw denim, leaving me to worry about which gallery
that
picture would end up in.

*       *       *

My exit from the music world was not graceful. We called the second record
Atomic Somersault
, but a more apt title would’ve been
Atomic Belly Flop
. No hit single, undetectable levels of airplay, and an unacceptably low draw on tour, all culminating in the inevitable blow of being dropped by our label. My agent, the otherwise indefatigable Alaina Farber, conveyed that particular news item at her chic New York office, rare vapors of surrender in her voice. Clad in a tight, hypnotically pink pantsuit—the color of teenage rebellion hair—she rocked back in her desk chair with a leg up on the table. While squeezing one of those hand grippers that make your forearms look like a relief map of Mexico—Who’s the go-to person for opening jars now!—she informed me that she’d gotten a call from the record company.

“Game over, cupcake,” she said. “Tremble is being released.”

I’d seen it coming, but still it stung. “What are our options?”

“Well,” she sighed. I’d never seen her sigh before. “We could always see if there’s interest from an indie, something smaller but still with decent distribution. It’s worked for other bands.”

These suggestions were infused with exactly zero enthusiasm. Alaina had other clients, ones that actually sold records, ones whose
concerts were a gathering of people, not empty seats, ones who could support her expensive perfume habit.

Lifting herself out of her leather chair, she strutted around the mahogany desk and leaned her slim figure against it. “Maybe now’s the time to downsize, go small and less commercial. Free yourself of public expectations.”

“I think the public expected us to make good music. Maybe we didn’t do that on this record.” My eyes remained downcast on Alaina’s stiletto heels, which at that moment struck me as the ideal implement for puncturing a balloon. Or someone’s dreams.

“Buck up, sugar packet.” She playfully tousled my hair. “You hit the jackpot with that stupid song of yours. It’s going to bankroll your kids’ rehab stints. You’ll be collecting royalty checks until you’re wearing Depends.”

I let out a weary breath and proceeded to look abused and dejected, mistreated by the industry and misunderstood by the vox populi. I didn’t think
Atomic Somersault
was a bad album, just one that, as it turned out, had limited appeal. That wasn’t really my fault, but record companies weren’t concerned with the assignment of blame. A sense of accountability only came with the burden of a conscience.

“Listen, you know I’m not the kind of girl who says I told you so, but headlining a tour by yourselves instead of going on the road with the Junction? Head-scratcher, man. You shocked us all with that display of self-admiration. I say this with love, Teddy, but you were a dumbass of the highest order to turn down a tour with those guys. No one’s saying they’re not despicable human beings, but because they sell out everywhere they go without even trying, we overlook the occasional lapse in moral judgment. Six months of packed stadiums opening for the Junction would’ve set you guys on fire again. But no. You had to go it alone. Because you’re Teddy Tremble and special and you had one hit like two years ago—an eternity in this business—and a new album that nobody cared about. You kind of fucked the dog. You fucked it hard.”

“All of this you’re saying with love.”

“I’m just saying it was a missed opportunity, and I never really understood why.”

I contemplated the carpet.

Two of her fingers, delicate as satin gloves, lifted my chin. “You’re sulking, Theodore. You do know there’s a fine line between tragic cowboy and wallowing drip.”

“This is my life we’re talking about. I don’t get five minutes of self-pity?”

“Self-pity is a gateway drug. Look, we’ll get a suite at the Paramount, we’ll shoot back Jameson from the minibar. There’s an awful lot I can help you forget.”

The fact that Alaina’s body couldn’t distract me from my crumbling life only underscored how unfit I was for this industry. Besides, her stab at seduction was no more than the playing out of a familiar dynamic. She’d made a sport of offering herself to me, and I’d made a rule of declining. I’d already, on one occasion, mixed business with pleasure. It happened only once, it involved my wife, and nothing had been the same for me since.

Alaina shook her head with mock wonder at my mute rejection. “Do you seriously not see what a perfect crime we Asian Jews are?”

“Take care, Alaina,” I said, and headed home to Philly.

I devoted the next several weeks to cultivating a full-bodied gloom. While my bandmates took the news in stride and moved on with their lives like adults, I sat on the edge of my bed at two thirty in the afternoon trying to visualize how I was going to make it through the dreariness of the next half century.

Then one day, my wallowing was interrupted by a call from my father.

“Ted, let’s meet for dinner tonight,” he said, more summons than proposal.

Lazing on my sofa with
A Fish Called Wanda
on pause, I sighed with great majesty. “I don’t know, Dad. Tonight’s not good.”

“Come on. Get off your duff and meet your old man.”

My duff and I had become quite close during those mopey days,
and my father wasn’t exactly the guy to coax me off it. “How about next week?” I said. “Let’s shoot for next week.”

“I’m in Charleston next week. Tonight. I’ll make a seven o’clock reservation at Raymond’s.”

Raymond’s was the stodgy steak place directly across from my father’s law office that served as his personal dining room at least two lunches and one dinner per week. My dad was of that ilk, the ilk that went to steakhouses for lunch. A veggie burger was fine so long as you were wearing pantyhose.