Cross said, “That might be Cyril.”
When Peter answered, the bodyguard said, “Is he with you?”
Peter looked at Cross, who nodded.
“He is.”
“You guys at the hospital?”
“Why would we be at the hospital?”
Cyril said, “Tell him either he comes clean or I’m on the next plane to Arizona.” The line went dead.
Cross didn’t look surprised when Peter relayed the message.
“Throw on some pants,” said Cross. “We can talk on the way.”
Opening the lid of his suitcase, Peter exposed Martin’s memorabilia, the albums, the 45, the cellophane pouch with the yellowing chapbook.
“I hadn’t pegged you for a fan.” Cross picked up the collection and carried the items back over to the window to take a closer look. He slid the records out of their sleeves, turning them to sight along their edges. “This is some rare vinyl.”
Correcting the singer’s assumption seemed counterproductive; instead, Peter handed Cross a permanent marker. And, while he pulled on a pair of pants and dress shirt, Cross signed Martin’s treasures, fanning them out on the dresser so the ink could dry.
On the 45, Cross wrote, “Fuck Marty Diamond.”
“Is that a lyric?”
“Ha. Marty’s a collector. He’s the reason I’m the only person to ever pay three million for a split ranch in Wisconsin.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because it was the house I grew up in,” said Cross, heading out into the hall.
Peter caught up with the singer by the elevator.
“Cyril can make all the threats he wants, he’s not going anywhere. His wife’s a Chinese girl from Queens who wants their four kids to go to a Waldorf school. You have any idea what those places charge these days?”
Peter shook his head.
The elevator delivered them to a white service tunnel beneath the hotel.
Cross’s boot heels sounded like hammer blows. “I avoid lobbies. There’s always some thirsty soul waiting to latch on to me.”
Peter recalled the photographer who’d ambushed him in Rochester; certainly that man had looked thirsty.
After hiking up a parking ramp, they emerged onto a shaded side street. The air smelled of baked goods and dry-cleaning chemicals.
None of the people they passed gave Cross a second glance. Peter suspected that the contrast in their manner of dress served to conceal the singer. Cross looked like he’d fished his clothes from a charity box, while in his button-down and khakis, Peter resembled a caseworker out with a client.
“Are you going to tell me why Cyril thought we might be at a hospital?”
For two blocks Peter kept abreast of Cross, waiting for the singer to acknowledge the question. Finally he stuffed his hands in his pockets and froze.
Jimmy took two steps, stopped, went back, and, grabbing Peter by the elbow, towed the doctor across the street. Even after they’d reached the other sidewalk, Cross didn’t release his grasp on Peter’s arm.
“I used to have a talent for pissing people off, but these days I’m better at generating worry.”
They were on the shaded side of the street—Peter felt the cold cut through his shirt, except where Cross’s hand hung on him.
Cross stopped in front of a damp-looking wood door that was held together with wrought-iron strapping.
“You okay with a German place?”
Peter wasn’t certain he understood the question. Was he being asked about Germans or German cuisine? “I’ll give it a shot,” he said.
Inside, a heavyset woman in a dirndl led them to a table with a little placard that read Reserved.
“So,” Cross said, sitting down, “I was behind Allie getting off the plane. He’s got this patch on top of his head—I guess I’d never noticed it before—where his hair is starting to thin. It looks sort of like Antarctica. I leaned forward to tease him about it when I missed a step.”
“Did you fall?”
Before Cross answered, their waitress arrived to take their orders.
“He and I tumbled down together,” Cross continued. “Allie got the worst of it. Trouble always lands on top of him.”
Peter reached across the table and grabbed Cross’s wrists. He turned the singer’s hands.
“How far did you fall?”
The waitress delivered mugs of coffee and a little painted pitcher of cream.
Cross reached a finger up and tested a spot above his ear. “I’ve got a bit of a bump.”
“You hit your head?” Peter reached out his hand. “Show me.”
Cross guided Peter’s finger to the spot.
“That’s a real goose egg.”
Pushing back from the table, Cross escaped the doctor’s touch.
Questions lined up in Peter’s mind. “Are you having headaches? Blurry vision?”
“I’m just a bit sore.”
Peter filed the answers, moved on. “Any dizziness?”
“No.”
“How far did you fall?”
“Does it matter?”
Peter looked around the restaurant, as if searching for questions he’d misplaced. Across the room, a busboy paused while wiping down and stared at Cross. After a moment, he returned to his task.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me about this?”
“Remember, you weren’t there.”
“Did Alistair tell you how I ended up on the bus in the first place?”
Cross waved his hand. He was having none of it.
“Have there been any other issues?”
“Cyril stopped by my room this morning to check up on me.” Cross leaned forward, his voice a mere whisper. “He asked what I was up to and I said I was watching the spoon.”
“What’s the spoon?”
“I don’t know. It just came out of my mouth. I had the television on.”
Peter checked the time on his phone. It had been about seven hours since Cross fell. There were tasks he needed to complete, an optimal order in which to proceed. He felt calm. He hardly had to think. Ohio State’s hospital was nearby. They could walk, but a cab ride would be better. Peter needed to speak with Martin; someone from neurology should meet them at the hospital, the best guy in Ohio.
“We have to get you checked out,” said Peter, “but you know that. That’s why you were in my room.”
Cross shook his head.
The waitress delivered their plates, deli meats rolled into scrolls, a fanned-out stack of tomato slices, a jumble of charred sausage links, triangles of hard cheese, and, at the center of the plate, on a bed of romaine, a deviled egg.
“You can’t eat any of this,” Peter said.
The waitress seemed to consider whether it was worth her time to drag him out of the restaurant.
“Excuse us for a moment,” Cross said, his voice as cold and rigid as a tire iron.
The waitress left the food and walked away.
Peter shook his head. “You might need surgery.”
Cross picked up his fork, rolled it between his fingers so the tines flashed. The fork did a slow swan dive, burying itself in a sausage. Cross lifted the food to his mouth and delicately bit off the end.
“Maybe you think I’m being too cautions, but these sorts of things can deteriorate quickly.”
Cross finished chewing. Swallowed. “Believe it or not, I went to your room to get away from the people who want to help me.”
“If I don’t get you in a tube, I’m staring at a slam-dunk malpractice case.”
“I’m not going to sue you.”
Peter set his hands on the table. “In the scenario I’m worried about, you won’t be around to call the shots.”
Patients knew all sorts of things, but they didn’t know what they didn’t know.
“What sorts of ghouls would you be looking for?”
“Sometimes ‘senior moments’ prefigure s
omething much more destructive. It can be like the difference between a tremor and an earthquake.”
Cross stood up. “Don’t smile when you tell a person about earthquakes in his head. You think I want my memories trapped beneath mud walls? Tony isn’t perfect, but he never gives me a shot without telling me it’s going to sting.”
Peter raised his palms as high as his shoulders, patted the air.
“I’m just trying to help you,” Peter said.
“Then get Cyril off my back. He and Bluto look at me like I’m about to whisper ‘Rosebud.’”
“I can’t do that until we know everything is okay. It’ll only take an hour. You can spare an hour.”
“Listen. Right now I’m going back to my room to work on a libretto. After that, I’m taking Allie out for an early dinner and try my best to make him happy. Finally, tonight, I’m playing a show for a bunch of hardworking people who’ve scrimped and saved, swapped shifts, arranged babysitters, all so I can have the privilege of performing songs written by a young man I barely remember. So, what makes you think you know what I can and can’t spare?”
Would Peter ever utter a sentence with that much conviction?
“I thought I was your doctor.”
“Sure you are, but I never asked you to save my life.” Cross stuffed his hands into the pockets of his sweatshirt. “You’ll have to get the bill. I don’t have any money on me, or cards.”
Before Peter could find the words to respond, the singer walked out.
THE WAITRESS SET the bill facedown on the table. “He’s famous, yes, your friend?”
Peter said he was.
A man wearing a white paper hat and a damp, short-sleeved shirt joined them. “I told her. That was Robert Reich, Clinton’s labor secretary.”
Peter corrected them.
The couple exchanged a look.
“‘Long Gone,’” Peter said. “‘Absolutely Nowhere.’”
“What’s he doing in Columbus?” the waitress asked.
“He’s playing here tonight.”
“He still plays?” the man asked.
49
Even though we are divorced and not on the best of terms, Patricia and I have continued to sleep together from time to time. This is not something that happens monthly, or even yearly, but every so often we’ll find ourselves together and sometimes when we’re together we have sex—it’s nothing I’m proud of. When we have sex, part of me is with the young woman she was when we met. And I feel like she is with the young man I was. It’s not that I want to be that person again, but I also don’t want to turn my back on that person, who, after all, was me.
If Patricia’s husband, Mike, ever found out, he’d probably put me in the hospital. He calls Patricia his “partner in crime” and his “songbird.” Last year, on their fifteenth anniversary, he took her to Tahoe for a week and gave her a fox coat—her “foxy coat.” He calls Gabby “Abba-Gabba.” He calls me “A.P.,” which are my initials, though Mike likes to claim they stand for Absent Parent.
Mike wears Hawaiian shirts, never takes off his sunglasses, and he addresses strangers as “Bud-O.” He’s a Jimmy Buffett fan.
WHEN I TELL Rosalyn she’s welcome to join me, she tilts her head toward a small roller bag waiting by the back door. She’d packed the night before.
“I’m not usually an impulsive person,” she says.
Since the Corolla was sort of my bachelor pad, I ask Rosalyn if I should vacuum it first. She says, “In for a penny, in for a pound.”37
I move my executive organizer into the back and stow her bag.
As we buckle in, I feel a twinge of dread. What if the adventure I can offer isn’t what she’s seeking? The nicest thing about traveling alone is not having to worry about witnesses. “Here we go,” I say, as much for my benefit as for hers.
She reaches over and cups the back of my skull. “Thank you, Arthur.”
“Don’t thank me yet.”
I drive.
BILLBOARDS LORDED OVER empty fields, advertising mortgage refinancing and worship services. America, like a tree’s canopy or a balloon, is a thing composed mostly of nothing. We sail along.
“Do whatever you usually do,” Rosalyn says. “Pretend I’m not here.”
I reach behind my seat and fish out my collection of books on tape.38 I’d been listening to a Ken Follett for the second or third time, but it seemed impolite to ask Rosalyn to pick up halfway through a book. I pop in Pride and Prejudice, a book I’ve always intended to read, but never gotten around to—Gabby gave it to me years ago.
A guy announces that we’re about to hear some famous actress read Jane Austen’s “classic novel of manners.” Then the woman begins, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” Rosalyn reaches over and pokes me in the arm.
“I assure you, I don’t have a good fortune.”
I can’t pay attention to the book—my mind is clouded with feeling. There’s the irony that on the best night of the tour—maybe the best show in a decade—I spent a third of the time indisposed. There’s the fact that my daughter, it appears, is poised to embark on her own remarkable journey—Patricia sort of tipped her hand when she called. If Gabby asks me to give her away, it won’t mean that everything is okay between us; and if she doesn’t want me to give her away, then I’ll have to pretend that doesn’t hurt (it would hurt).
Rosalyn swings her head left and right, as though she expects to see a sign from God.
And then a sign appears before us: Ohio Welcomes You.
50
In Peter’s mind, Columbus was four-story redbrick halls, a football stadium, and a marching band. Craning his neck, he found himself surrounded by glass-skinned office towers. Where had they come from?
Instead of getting tangled up with that question, he called Martin and told him about Cross’s accident.
“Please tell me you’ve scanned him.”
“We’re negotiating.”
“This isn’t negotiable. You’re in Columbus; their medical center just picked up a new Siemens machine. I’ll call the head of imaging and have him meet you there.”
Peter knew all of this; he’d called Martin for reinforcement. “I’ll go find Cross.”
“Find him? Don’t tell me you let him walk off, a guy who’d reported cognitive lapses, a guy who recently fell down a flight of stairs.”
An image played in Peter’s mind: Cross sprawled on the damp cement of the hotel’s garage, drumming his heels between the parked cars, and when Peter pried open the singer’s eyelids, staring up, two empty black pupils.
“I’ll take care of this.”
“Hear me out, Peter. All you’re asking is for him to lie still in a bed. Too bad if he doesn’t like it. It’s his fault he’s got a doctor tagging along. If he tries to stonewall us, we’ll make him sign a release so cold-blooded he’ll beg you to pack him in bubble wrap. Cooper would love to put something like that together, as payback for that Perry Mason stunt.”
At their core, hospitals had more in common with a police station than with a university. To a hospital, health wasn’t an ideal to be pursued, but a law to be enforced. If Peter wasn’t the bully, he was the bully’s flunky.
“I can’t scare him into a hospital,” Peter said. “He isn’t some guy with a couple college-age kids and a second mortgage.”
“In the end, it doesn’t matter if you scare him or seduce him or trick him. What matters is that you examine him.” Martin said, “Wait until his generation dies off. Medicine is going to get much easier.”
At least Cross’s generation didn’t show up for their appointments with printouts from WebMD, with questions compiled by the know-it-alls at the Mayo Clinic. Peter’s older patients never asked to consult with homeopaths or herbalists or Reiki healers. They didn’t expect him to forward their X-rays to their phones or ask Peter to wait while they completed a text message.
His older patients never invited him to “join” them on LinkedIn.
“You’re not going to want to hear this,” Martin said, “but you really ought to call Ogata. If he hears about Cross’s fall from someone else, it’s going to look bad. Remember, Ogata and Cross have a relationship. You can exploit that.”
“I don’t want to exploit anything.”
“Lighten up on the semantics. Am I talking about child labor? No, I’m talking about basic preventative care. Stop stalling and do what you’d do if you were here.”
Peter’s phone felt like a brick in his hand. He sat down on a cement bench, caught his breath, and dialed Ogata’s number.
He expected to be intercepted by a secretary or transferred to a mailbox. Instead, a cheery, up-speaking voice asked Peter a question: “Are you well?”
Peter identified himself. “I’m trying to reach Dr. Ogata.”
“And you’ve reached him, but are you well?”
Leaning forward, Peter pinched his eyes closed. “I’m okay.”
“And how’s our friend?”
Taciturn. Slippery. Guarded. Probably not a friend. “He tripped coming off the jet last night. He claims Alistair broke his fall, but he wound up with a decent lump on the side of his head. I want to scan him, but he’s not taking my concerns very seriously.”
“You sure Allie didn’t push him?”
“I wasn’t there.”
“I was making a small joke.”
Did Ogata realize Peter didn’t have the freedom to joke?
Ogata continued, “Do you know the first rule of parenting?”
Peter heard people walking past, but he kept his eyes shut. “I don’t have kids.”
“It doesn’t matter. Anyway, Show up is the first rule. The second is Shut up and listen. If a parent follows both rules she’ll look like a genius. The reason I bring it up, they’re also great guidelines for patient care. Show up, then shut up and listen.”
“Not to sound unappreciative, but I didn’t call looking for advice about medicine. I was hoping you could help me deal with your friend.”
When he responded, Ogata spoke from a lower register. “I just offered you everything I know about how to look after a patient.”
Peter was tired of stroking everyone’s ego. He was tired. “I need to get him into the hospital. Neither one of us is going to look very good if something happens to him while he’s under the care of the Rochester Memorial/Tony Ogata Ambassador for Wellness.”
Vexation Lullaby Page 18
