Vexation Lullaby

by Justin Tussing

  “Was Judith one of those people?”

  Peter shook his head.

  “Is there something funny about that?”

  “She doesn’t care what I do. She just wants me to be happy.”

  Cross said, “I always figured my son would make a good healer.”

  “Healer” had to be Peter’s least favorite euphemism. Doctors treated and prescribed. They operated and they educated. Doctors didn’t heal.

  “What does your son do?”

  “Alistair Cross? He’s a musician.”

  “I think I knew that.”

  “Small Ideas, that’s his band.” Cross took a sip of his beer.

  “Right,” Peter said. “Do you have other kids?”

  “Allie’s got a younger sister, Bea, and two half-sisters, Rebekah and Ludella. I’ve got five grandkids, too.” Cross leaned back in the booth. “Do you, maybe, play an instrument or make art or something?”

  “I don’t. I do not.”

  The waiters had disappeared somewhere; they never returned to the table. The two men ate in almost perfect silence. Peter stuffed his mouth with food; it seemed safer than speaking.

  “I’m grateful that you came out.”

  Was Cross talking about dinner or the tour? The ambiguity made responding a challenge. Peter said, “I’m looking forward to the show.”

  “I never talk about a performance beforehand. It helps to cultivate a little mystery.”

  Peter noticed the lights at the front of the restaurant had been turned off.

  “Did Judith have anything to say about you coming out on the tour?”

  “She said the Sunbeam belonged to you, but you let her borrow it.”

  “Did I tell you it was her car?”

  Peter wasn’t certain what he remembered from that night. And now they were eating Indian food in Buffalo. What would he remember from tonight? “Thanks for this opportunity.”

  “If anything, I should be the one thanking you.”

  “Well, thanks for dinner,” Peter said.

  Cross raised his hand, signaling Cyril. “See, there you go again.”

  31

  After the opening act takes their bow, a fan walks up to me in black, double-knit pants, and a skinny red dress shirt with mother-of-pearl snaps. Ostrich boots peek out from under the wide cuffs of his pants. He’s young, barely out of his twenties. The first thing he says is “Have you been to CrossTracks today?”

  I say, “I try to stay off the websites.”

  “But you’re Pennyman, right?”

  I tell him I am Arthur Pennyman.

  He scuffs his feet on the floor, giving me every opportunity to walk away.

  “You know there’s a thread about you?”

  There are no fewer than three threads about me, which is what I intend to tell the kid, when I notice that the conversations around us have ceased and that all these silent people are sort of discreetly moving toward us.

  “Are you talking about a new thread?”

  “Supposedly Cross saw a doctor in Rochester. Right? You took a picture of him.”

  The kid seems to be after a reaction quote. A house burns down and they shove a microphone in the owner’s face. After a school gets shot up, they ask a victim’s parent how they’re coping.

  I say exactly what’s on my mind. I say, “Wow.”

  “It seems plausible after how weird that show was.”

  I nod my head, not like I’m agreeing with him, but to confirm that I’m listening.

  “Weird, how?”

  “Like, right, he almost fell down.”

  “So, were you at the show in Rochester?”

  The kid blinks. We both know he’s done.

  “Because, right, I was actually at the show,” I say.

  One of the eavesdroppers, a guy about my age with hairy nostrils—it looks like he’s been snorting woolly bear caterpillars—abandons the pretext that he’s not paying attention and asks me, “Is it true? Is he seeing a doctor?”

  I say, “I’ll find out.” Which is the sort of thing people say when testifying before Congress—it sounds like a strong answer, though it’s a coward’s gambit.

  The interlopers stare at me. Maybe they expect me to confess.

  “What sort of doctor was he supposed to have met with?” I ask, trying to go on the offensive. “Because there are all kinds of doctors.”

  This guy I can’t even see, someone hidden in the second rank, chimes in, “So now you’re an expert on doctors, too?”

  One can’t forget that it’s a fine line between an audience and a mob.

  32

  A limousine idled in front of the restaurant. Cyril opened the door, grabbed Peter by the wrist, and in one fluid motion incorporating elements of civility and judo, planted him on a rear-facing seat.

  They were off.

  Watching the road recede though the rear window reminded Peter that he was rushing blindly into the unknown. Cross didn’t need a doctor; he needed a barber (his ears were hidden beneath the curly wings of his hair) and a shave.

  Cross lifted a bottle of water from a pocket on the door, checked the label, then cracked the seal and took a long drink. Sitting beside Cyril, the singer looked no bigger than a fifth grader. “Any word on Allie?”

  “Not yet,” Cyril said.

  The limo surged forward as the driver pulled onto an elevated roadway. Peter felt his body being sucked toward the rear of the car.

  Cross was quiet for a moment. “Try to reserve judgment.”

  “I don’t judge anybody,” Cyril said.

  “You know, animals love him.”

  Cyril thumbed his phone. “What sorts of animals are we talking about?”

  “You remember those mutts that followed him around Paris.”

  “Weren’t those his dogs?”

  Cross took another sip of water.

  “What am I supposed to be doing?” Peter asked.

  Cross looked as though he didn’t quite understand Peter’s question. He turned to Cyril. “Is there somewhere he can watch the show?”

  “We’ll find a place for you,” Cyril said.

  “Good,” said Peter, though he felt guilty that the bodyguard would have to find a spot for him.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Cross said, his attention somewhere outside the car. “It’s another circle. . . .”

  “Two minutes,” Cyril said.

  The singer took a big sip of water, rolled down his window and spit.

  Peter wondered if he ought to offer words of encouragement, but decided he was better off saying nothing.

  “I’ll get out of the vehicle first,” Cyril announced. “Then the Big Man gets out. You follow him, doc. Be his shadow, just don’t clip his heels. Got it?”

  Peter said he did.

  AS THEY PULLED behind the Stanley Opera Center, a floodlight cut across Cross’s face and revealed a changed man—his jaw hung loose, his eyes dull and hooded.

  A uniformed cop stood by the stage door, his head swiveling like a room fan. The driver opened the door for Cyril, who stepped out of the car, looked around, then reached a hand in to help Cross out. Peter scrambled out of the car. When the limo’s door thumped shut, he nearly climbed up Cross’s back.

  And then they were inside.

  Bodies moved aside to let them through. Cross stopped and reached his arms above his head while someone lifted off his sweatshirt. A woman ran her fingers through his hair, tilted his head back, and drew lines beneath his eyes. Thirty feet away a wedge of white light split a heavy curtain; in the middle of this opening a crew member stood holding a steel guitar.

  Peter perceived that this choreography was taking place in utter silence, in monastic quiet. He couldn’t hear what Bluto shouted into Cross’s ear or what the makeup artist said as she brushed color across Cross’s cheeks. He couldn’t even hear the thoughts in his own head. Everything was obliterated by the deafening silence
, which, Peter noticed, seemed to cycle and hum, seemed to reach him through the air and through the floor, seemed to emanate from someplace inside his body.

  Cross walked over to the curtain and took the guitar from the tech. His left hand held a bullwhip—no, it was a coiled black cord.

  Peter noticed a pale woman, a pale, freckled woman, her orange, Pre-Raphaelite hair held in place by an elastic cord. She held her hands over her ears. She might have been laughing. Or screaming.

  She leaned toward Peter suddenly, as though trying to bite him. Her nose brushed against his ear.

  “Pinchme!”

  He squeezed her elbow.

  Her eyes, he would swear, shot green sparks.

  Bluto’s assistant, Wayne, appeared before him holding a laminated pass for Peter’s inspection. Cross’s name flashed across the top in silver, beneath it, in blaze orange, the word “crew.” Wayne looped the lanyard over Peter’s head.

  As Peter watched, Cross shoved the neck of his guitar toward the floor—the body of the instrument swung up to cover his back like a shield. He strode through the curtains, while above the roar an omnipotent voice announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, please help me welcome eleven-time Grammy-winner, Kellogg recording artist Jim Cross.”

  PETER HAD NO musical aptitude. He’d never picked up a cheap guitar in order to impress a girl. While he recognized the names of the bands that were supposed to mean something to him, he couldn’t recall what made them important. In high school he’d preferred to listen to musical parodies. Standing at the side of the stage, his defenses were overrun. The music invaded him. Was it possible he’d never heard music before?

  Jimmy stood both at the center of the stage and at the center of the music. Now and again he’d turn to one of the guys in his band and let his guitar say something quick and sharp. When Jimmy sang, he didn’t lean into the mic—he came at it sidelong, as though he had to get in the last word. Peter noticed how Albert built a floor for the others to play on, that Dom delineated vertical spaces with the bass, or so it seemed. People called Jimmy “the Court Jester,” but onstage Sutliff filled that role: he prodded his lap steel like a boy teasing a snake with a stick—every so often he’d throw his shoulders back, as though the instrument had taken a swipe at him. Peter wanted to share these observations with someone. But who? Not Bluto, who, even when he stood still, managed to convey that his attention lay elsewhere, that he shouldn’t be bothered. And Cyril? The bodyguard stood still, one hand cupped over the microphone on his headset, his eyes never still, always roving.

  When Peter searched for the orange-haired woman, she was gone.

  IN THE MIDDLE of a song, a crowd of people materialized around the doctor. Among these people—no, not among, at their nucleus—stood Cross.

  Cross hooked a damp hand around Peter’s neck, drawing their heads together, a clinch. “You need to meet someone.” The singer had a distinct, iron smell, like something wrapped in butcher paper.

  Peter fell in step with Cross. The singer’s attendants trailed behind them, crows chasing a hawk. A door opened before them and they entered an intimate domestic space, like the parlor of a winterized Victorian mansion, a loveseat, a few armchairs, all draped in white sheets. Cross’s entourage had disappeared.

  “Who goes there?” said the loveseat.

  A man in canvas pants, an untucked oxford tented over his stomach, lay diagonally across the cushions so that his knees dangled off one side. He had on beetle-black sunglasses; a series of rubber bands trained a full beard into something like a pharaoh would wear. A thread of smoke rose from the ebony cigarette holder staked in the corner of his mouth.

  “Peter,” Cross said, “I’d like you to meet my son, Alistair.”

  Cross’s son pulled his sunglasses down his nose, then tilted his head back so he was looking at Peter. “Excuse me if I don’t get up.”

  “Allie’s back is bothering him,” explained Cross.

  “It’s attacking me,” said Alistair.

  “Do you want me to take a look?” Peter addressed his question to the room.

  At the end of the cigarette holder, a twist of paper sizzled.

  “I ought to get back to the office,” said Cross, putting his hand on the door. “Take Peter up on his offer. Maybe he can help.”

  “Go make your widgets.”

  Cross said, “We’re both terrible patients,” before opening the door.

  Music raced into the room, but when the door latched the sound that had been trapped in the room collapsed.

  Alistair extended a hand toward Peter and the doctor pulled him to his feet. “Where’d you do med school?”

  “North Carolina.”

  “Is that code for Duke?”

  “No.”

  “UNC?”

  “Nope.”

  Alistair shuffled over to a banquet table piled with cellophane-coned bouquets, twelve cans of Diet Coke, an ice bucket, a tower of clear plastic cups, a stack of white towels, and an unopened box of tissues. The singer’s son scooped ice into a cup. Turning, he said, “You haven’t spied a refrigerator, have you?”

  Peter pointed to where an extension cord snaked under the table.

  Gripping the table’s edge, Cross’s son lowered himself, a geriatric swimmer descending into a pool. When he was kneeling, he pushed aside the table’s skirting, revealing a mini-fridge. “Bingo!” He retrieved a Snickers bar and a liter of Smirnoff vodka, setting them on the table.

  “What’d you do to yourself?”

  A bloom of perspiration appeared on Alistair’s forehead. He filled his cup halfway with vodka. “I fell out of a samlor on my way to the Phulay Bay Ritz, where a friend awaited me in La Perla and coconut oil.”

  “Are you taking anything for the pain?”

  Cross’s son raised his glass. “It’s not usually this bad. I caught a flight out of Charles de Gaulle this morning, which was tolerable, but to get here I hopped one of those rectal thermometers the regional carriers use.”

  Peter kept his face expressionless. “So you self-medicate.”

  Cross’s son lowered himself onto the loveseat. “I used to work with this physical therapist who overhauled my diet. Rye bread instead of rye whiskey. Bananas without whipped cream. Coffee without Percocet. Real ‘Eye of the Tiger’ shit.”

  The story was designed to get Peter to ask what had happened—Alistair would offer either a humorous or a tragic explanation for why a thirty-year-old man had the muscle tone of a paté. Rather than play his assigned role, Peter said, “Did your father expect you at dinner tonight?”

  Alistair unwrapped the Snickers bar and bit it in half. He chewed. “What did you talk about?”

  “He said he thought you could have been a doctor.”

  Cross’s son started coughing. He held his cup at arm’s length, but there was a damp stain on his shirt. “You’re messing with me. He told you I could have been a doctor? That’s crazy. I guess he forgot how I barely finished high school.”

  Outside the room, the band picked up their tempo. A bass line rattled the door.

  “He said you were good with animals.”

  Alistair took another sip from his cup. “How did he rope you into being his doctor?”

  “It’s an opportunity. They named me the Rochester Memorial/Tony Ogata Ambassador for Wellness.”

  Alistair reached for the candy bar. “What was wrong with your old name?”

  The dressing room door opened and the orange-haired woman leaned her head in. A dark tendril of hair stuck to her cheek.

  Peter said hello.

  “Maya,” Alistair said, addressing the ceiling, “this is Peter, the guy I was telling you about.”

  She closed the door behind her.

  “Maya’s going to be a doctor,” Alistair said.

  “In Performance Studies.” She brushed her wonderful hair back from her face.

  “Peter’s an ambassador.”

  “I thought amb
assadors wore sashes.”

  Peter looked at her again. She was funny. So what if Alistair had beautiful eyes and an accountant who paid his credit cards in full—Peter would not concede this woman. “What’s your research in?”

  “The short answer? I study forfeiture of the self in music and religious rites.”

  Alistair said, “You called yourself an expert on ecstasy.”

  Maya said, “I know my audience.” Turning to Peter, “Technically, I research ecstatics. What does a medical ambassador do?”

  “It’s a pilot program.”

  With a flick of his hand, Alistair sent his empty cup spinning across the floor. “Let’s go see some live music, before it’s too late.”

  33

  Back at the Barge Inn, I log on to CrossTracks to see what Gene has been up to. The site attracts the kinds of people who are willing to believe that Cross would show up unannounced at a grange hall, play ten gems, and leave with Mrs. South Dakota. The top two threads listed in the general discussion area:

  What Arthur Pennyman Doesn’t Want You to Know

  Boycott JimCrossCompendium!

  This is the thanks I get for refusing to post a CrossTracks-style Penthouse letter on JCC.

  I check out the proposed boycott first. The thread is six pages long! “Let’s shut him down,” writes Fingerpicker. FlowerGrrl writes, “Wake up and smell the coffee. Pennyforger is an eccentric cog in the industrial entertainment business.” (I mean, really!) Someone quotes “Testimony of Pilot”: “If you cast out the money changer loitering in your temple / how come you let him sit at your breakfast table?”25

  I read every post. The few people who don’t slander me say things like “Someone ought to back up his archive” and “Totally shocked!”

  Then I open the thread that purports to address what I don’t want people to know. It begins with a post from someone (Gene!) calling himself HonestFolk. HonestFolk identifies himself as a longtime acquaintance of mine, a person who has known me for many years and who, in that time, has made some “startling discoveries” that he (HonestFolk) can no longer keep to himself, because he cares too much about the regular fans to let them get taken in by a “supposed expert.” Then he lists my faults, which I’ve transcribed below, in their entirety, because 1) I believe, to quote someone other than Cross for a change, “the truth will set me free”; and 2) the things HonestFolk said are now in the public record and it seems cowardly to cherry-pick those charges that are easily dismissed. Here is what he wrote: