Thank You, Goodnight by Andy Abramowitz Read Free Book Online Page B

himself into the chair vacated by his daughter, perilously close to me on the sofa.
    I took in the monster. Yeah, he could kill me. Though it would’ve been a lot easier to finish me off while I was unconscious. Unless he planned on nursing me back to health and then killing me. It was really his call.
    This, I realized, had been a monumental act of stupidity, a true breakdown of rational thought on my part. Why hadn’t I thought to bring the other Faded Glory losers along with me? We could have come as a mob of salty has-beens intent on taking back our dignity. That would’ve been the stronger tactical move.
    Heinz-Peter’s moon face hung over me, grinning with an impenetrable blend of menace and pity. “You are comfortable?”
    I nodded cautiously.
    “Tereza get you medicines.” Then his face twisted, as if he’d suddenly recalled how it came to be that I, a virtual stranger from thousands of miles away, was lying on his sofa one tooth shy of a full set. “Why you hit me?”
    Before I had the opportunity to point out the obvious, Tereza glided back into the room and presented me with an oblong white capsule and a glass of water. I inspected the pill. It didn’t look familiar, nor did it have any word printed on it, much less a reassuringly familiar one such as Tylenol, Advil, Aleve.
    “What is this?” I asked.
    “Medicines,” Heinz-Peter replied.
    “Aspirin,” Tereza said.
    It was significantly larger than any pill I’d ever seen, prescription or over-the-counter, and, in fact, resembled a small lightbulb. I considered asking to see the bottle.
    “Is good,” Heinz-Peter encouraged. “Eat.”
    The pain was nearly unbearable, an unacceptable alternative todeath, so I popped the thing into my mouth and chased it with a swig of water. It hardly mattered at that point that it was probably cyanide.
    “I’m sorry I beat you up,” the photographer said. “It is big honor to have you in my house.”
    “It really is,” Tereza echoed. “We’re big fans.” Then she pointed at my mouth and conferred with her father in their native tongue. Whatever information was passed, it clearly upset the man, for he issued some emphatic grunt of surprise— Boonsk?! —and looked at me with grave concern.
    “Let me see mouth,” he urged.
    Feeling foolish, I opened wide—there’s no unfoolish way to pre-sent your throat to total strangers—and after a brisk inspection, the man’s arms shot up over his head in a cartoonish show of frustration. Then he stormed out the front door in a fit of yapping and baying.
    “He went to look for your tooth,” Tereza translated.
    “Are you serious?” I noticed it was easier to sit up now, what with some alpine analgesic whipping through my bloodstream.
    “Let him look,” she said, sitting down and crossing her legs.
    “Stop him, would you?”
    Even if the mad photographer poked around in the boot-stomped mulch and somehow came bursting back in with a dirty dislodged bicuspid between his fingers, I wasn’t likely to put the thing back in my mouth.
    Tereza looked at me lying lamely on her sofa, and an apple of a smile absorbed every feature on her cherubic face. “I love your music. I really do.”
    My eyebrows dropped into a skeptical furrow. “That’s nice.”
    “I’m a huge fan. Seriously. I know everything you’ve done.”
    “You’re funny,” I said, meaning You’re insane .
    “I’m not joking.”
    “How old are you?”
    “Seventeen.”
    “You shouldn’t even know who I am.” I struggled to my feet and staggered toward the front door to call Heinz-Peter off the case. It now looked as if I had an outside shot at getting out of there alive and saw no reason to squander the miracle.
    “I listen to all kinds of music,” she went on.
    “You should listen to many kinds of music. No need to listen to all kinds.”
    “What do you mean?” she asked, clearly amused.
    “I mean, sometimes old music is just old music.”
    “Is there something wrong with