Vexation Lullaby

by Justin Tussing

  “He’s waiting for you out front.”

  “Who is?”

  “The guy I told you about. He says he can’t come in.”

  Maya stood leaning against a column clad in white-enamel tile. She took out a tiny brush and dabbed red paint on her puckered lips. Her teeth peeked through, looking a little yellow, like a dog’s.

  Peter pocketed his phone; he pressed his lips against her cheek.

  “Cross said you saved his life.”

  “He told you that?”

  She nodded as he kissed her lower lip.

  She kissed his cheek, his ear.

  He listened to her hot breath.

  Alistair walked in, stopping in front of the sink; he caught Peter’s eyes in the mirror. They stood like that, it seemed to the doctor, for quite a while.

  “Did I just whizz in the sink?”

  Maya laughed.

  “Why do they put ice in the urinals?”

  Peter said, “Because it sounds like money when you pee.”

  Maya stood on her tiptoes to kiss him.

  “We shouldn’t stay in here,” Alistair said, “my father gets lonely.”

  RATHER THAN HEAD back to the table, Peter needed to find who Martin was trying to connect him with. Through the front door, Peter spotted Cyril, looking as stolid as a lighthouse, waiting beneath the restaurant’s fabric canopy.

  Peter stepped outside and joined the bodyguard at the top of the stairs. “Am I supposed to talk with you?”

  Cyril seized Peter by the base of the skull and aimed his head across the street. There, beneath a magnolia, Peter recognized the photographer he’d seen in Rochester, the Wild West consumptive, Cross’s thirsty man.

  “You have any idea how he found us?”

  Peter didn’t answer.

  Cyril twisted Peter’s head from side to side “No? Or”—he made Peter’s head tip up and down—“yes?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Do I need to explain why it’s a bad idea to tell strangers the whereabouts of an elderly man with a nine-figure net worth?”

  Peter stared at Pennyman. “I think I’ll go back inside.”

  Cyril handed Peter a slip of paper. “First, give him this.”

  It was a ticket. “You’re giving him a ticket to the show?”

  “Tell him if I catch him anywhere but the venue, I’ll take his shadow next.”

  “You’ll take his shadow?”

  Cyril didn’t respond. How had Peter failed to register what a threatening presence the man could be?

  Peter picked his way down the stairs, looked both ways, and crossed the street. He was probably fewer than a hundred yards removed from Cross’s table, yet it felt as though he were on the verge of leaving the tour.

  Pennyman stepped off the curb to intercept him, but Peter waved him back onto the sidewalk with the ticket.

  “Cyril doesn’t want you here.”

  Pennyman pocketed the piece of paper. “So, are you Doctor Axe, or . . .”

  “My friend said you needed to talk with me.”

  “Have you heard of a song called ‘Purple River Serenade’?”

  “I’m not a fan.”

  “You catch the initials? ‘P.R.S.’ I think it’s about you, or for you.”

  He shouldn’t have let himself drink so much. “Where can I hear it?”

  “You were by the side of the stage when he played it last night.” Pennyman reached up and laced his fingers over the crown of his head. “Before that, I’m not sure he’s ever played it, at least not for an audience.”

  Peter looked over his shoulder. Cyril must have gone in. “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “You can’t be his doctor.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “It’s a conflict of interest.”

  “I don’t think you know what that means.”

  “He’s your father.”

  “I’ve already got a father.” Was it strange that when Peter said the word “father,” he pictured Judith? Of course not.

  Pennyman shook his head.

  “You sound like a blackmailer.” Had Peter ever used that word before? “Blackmailer” belonged in a Hardy Boys mystery.

  “When people find out ‘Purple River Serenade’ is about you, it’ll be a big deal. Magazines are going to want to interview you. Big magazines. You’re Cross’s Rosetta stone.”

  Peter looked at his own feet. The ground turned beneath him. He had to close his eyes to keep from being sick.

  “If he doesn’t want people to know about the song, how is it your business?”

  “I’m Pennyman and he’s a public figure.”

  “He’s the most private person I’ve ever met.”

  Pennyman wrapped his coat around himself. “Tell me, am I the first person to figure this out?”

  “Why? Do you think you deserve a prize?”

  One of the man’s eyes twitched.

  Later, backstage, Peter couldn’t escape the smell of the roasted pig. He couldn’t recall how he’d gotten to the concert hall. Out of the murkiness that passed for his sight, Cross emerged, black-hatted and in mirrored aviator shades. The singer grabbed Peter by the ears and mashed a kiss on his forehead. “Help me sober up.”

  Peter spread his feet to keep from tipping over. “What’s ‘Purple River Serenade’?”

  Cross threw a slow-motion jab that stopped an inch shy of Peter’s chin. No, it connected, a glancing blow. “Your mother put you up to this?”

  “Pennyman asked me.”

  Cross turned sideways and threw up on the black-planked floor. The sick made a sunburst shape. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “I’ll protect you. We’ll set Kopp on him.”

  “What’s so important about this song?”

  Someone came over with a mop and started swabbing up the mess.

  “I’ve been on the road for twenty-six years, but it’s not enough. They want everything. They dig through my trash,” Cross said. “You need to give me something to straighten me out.”

  “What you need is time.”

  “You don’t know the first thing about time.” Cross’s voice sizzled.

  Making his way back to the security of a standpipe, Peter spotted Maya. She’d climbed halfway up one of the spiral staircases. She was talking to someone on her phone—she waved.

  “Golden child,” Alistair said, “how’re you feeling?”

  “I don’t know how I got so messed up.”

  “I sabotaged you. That’s the who and the why.”

  Peter blinked. He wanted to crawl into a dark hole.

  Cyril interjected. “The Big Man needs one of those shots, the bee-sting shots.”

  “An EpiPen?” Peter felt some of the fog blow away. “Did he get stung?”

  “He’s got to clear the cobwebs.”

  Nobody understood the least bit about medicine. “Epinephrine would increase his heart rate and raise his blood pressure. That’s the last thing he needs.” When Peter opened his eyes, he saw that he was talking to himself.

  73

  Rosalyn sits beside me in the car, forking cubes of cantaloupe from a clear plastic tub. After last night’s performance, she vowed to put only healthy things into her body. She wants sardines and olives. She wants leafy greens. The Holy Screw, she tells me, is also about the metaphor of diet. When people say that our bodies are temples, they only think about restrictions—thou shalt not eat processed sugar; thou shalt not eat trans fats. We need to consider what it is we choose to embrace. Embrace passion, she says. Embrace mindfulness.

  THE HILLSIDES ARE covered in bluegrass or rye. Black four-board fences stretch for miles. We watch a white horse racing across a paddock, its tail flying like a pennon. It seems that a person could travel the world over and never spy a healthier creature.

  When we cross into Tennessee, I call Gabby.

  Rosalyn coached me a bit. “Smile when you speak—she’ll be
able to tell. Tell her you’re excited to see her. Use your bright voice, your fun voice. Be more Arthur and less Pennyman.” Who knew I had access to a bright voice?

  “Honey,” I say, my mouth so wide I could swallow my phone.

  “Are you on your way?”

  “I’m very close, Gabby. I’m in Tennessee.”

  It’s not Rosalyn’s coaching: I’m looking forward to seeing her. I say, “I can’t wait to see you, baby.”

  Rosalyn deposits a kiss on her fingertip, then delivers it to my cheek.

  “Where do you want to meet? Do you want to meet at your house, or should we go somewhere?”

  “I’m starving. Can we meet at the Waffle House?”

  The town where she lives is little more than a few churches, the Waffle House, and the library, of course.

  “Perfect,” I say.

  “How soon will you be here?”

  “We’ll be there in thirty minutes, tops.”

  The vastness of the silence that springs up between us can’t be explained by the mundane fact that, in order to speak, our voices have to relay back and forth through satellites orbiting in space.

  “Is someone with you, Daddy?”

  I look at Rosalyn, but she can’t save me.

  “Yes. I’m bringing a friend with me. She—”

  “She? She, Daddy?”

  “She’s really looking forward to meeting you. And we’re both looking forward to meeting your special friend.”

  I can tell Gabby isn’t smiling when she says she’ll meet us at the Waffle House.

  “Oh, Arthur,” Rosalyn says, but what she means is How could you?

  74

  Peter found his plundered backpack beside the curtain. The empty auto-injector of an EpiPen sat beside it on the floor.

  IF THE STAGE was Cross’s home, then by walking through the curtains Peter made the second house call of his career.

  With the lights down, it was less a stage than an obstacle course. There were seams in the floor, loose cords and cords that had been taped down. Peter walked slowly, careful not to trip over Albert’s drum kit or the monitors, all the various matte-black equipment that waited, poised like booby traps.

  When he reached Cross, the singer’s head and shoulders were stuffed into a trash can. Cyril held him by the collar of his sweatshirt, presumably to keep him from toppling over.

  “He’s fine,” Cyril said, turning his bull’s head toward the doctor.

  Peter could hear the crowd gathered around them, the sound of the hushed anticipation.

  “Tell me he didn’t give himself a shot,” Peter said.

  “You feel okay, boss?”

  Cross put a finger to his nostril and blew, shooting mucus into the trash. Then he cleared the other side.

  “If your blood pressure gets too high, the artery wall will rupture.”

  “Cyril, have Bluto bring up the lights,” Cross said.

  Peter stood his ground. “You’re making a mistake.”

  “You can’t get anywhere if you’re afraid of mistakes.”

  The lights blazed on.

  Cross growled into a shotgun microphone, “Hand me the patch cord.” The singer’s voice broadcasted throughout the hall.

  Peter picked up the quarter-inch chrome-tipped plug and handed it to Cross. “I quit.”

  “Thank you, doctor. Now get off my fucking stage.”

  ALISTAIR AND MAYA stood by the edge of the curtain. Peter grabbed her hand and pulled her behind him. “Follow me,” he said, but he didn’t give her a choice.

  He dragged her past all the hangers-on, the VIP guests and radio contest winners, past the hired security, past Lumpy, who was clapping while the new Kev walked across the bare concrete on her hands. Peter pulled Maya down an empty, echoing hallway. He wasn’t even dragging her; she was coming along willingly. It almost looked like he was rescuing her. They slammed through some double doors and found themselves, all at once, outside. The Blister and Aisha Moon saluted him with their cigarettes.

  He towed her past the Toolshed and the Trojan Horse, past the hollowed-out tractor trailer the roadies would soon be repacking.

  “Where are you taking me?” Maya asked.

  Peter didn’t know.

  She shook off his hand and started running, not back toward the concert hall and not in the direction he’d been leading her—he didn’t know where he’d been leading her.

  He chased after her. He felt like a wolf.

  When he caught her, neither of them could breathe.

  “I shouldn’t have kissed you,” she said, panting. “I’ve got a boyfriend.”

  They walked together. The air smelled of fall and, still, the smoldering pig. They passed other couples out in the evening air.

  Maya stopped in front of a bar.

  She nodded. “You want to come in?”

  Peter couldn’t imagine drinking anymore. He told her so.

  She pulled him through the bar, into the lobby of a hotel. “It’s okay,” she said. They stepped into an elevator.

  Halfway down a whisper-quiet hallway, she dipped her key card into a lock.

  The curtains were open and the night sky caused the window to behave like a mirror.

  Maya retrieved two orange juices from the mini-bar. She handed one to Peter.

  “What now?” he asked

  “You want to watch TV?”

  “Sure.”

  They sat on top of the covers and watched a show about how the Incas built Machu Picchu. The host explained that archaeologists had uncovered more than two hundred terraces and an ingenious drainage system that prevented the place from washing away in heavy rains.

  A commercial interrupted the program.

  Maya turned to him, “Do you mind if I change?”

  He watched her head into the bathroom, and then he forgot about her for a while.

  He considered texting Martin to let his friend know that the Rochester Memorial/Tony Ogata Ambassador for Wellness had tendered his resignation on stage.

  The bathroom door opened and Maya came out in gym shorts and a thin T-shirt that fell straight down from the points of her breasts. A towel cycloned around her head. She flipped off the bathroom light and, for a moment, it was as though she’d been disappeared from the room.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d be here when I got out.”

  “Should I have left?”

  She reached her hands up and squeezed the towel. “I had to get that smell off me. It was too much.”

  He got up from the bed and walked toward her. She let herself be trapped against the wall.

  He kissed her neck. Her skin pinked where he touched her. She was so clean, it was like licking a balloon. She didn’t resist him. She could be a Buddhist submitting to a mosquito. She seemed to understand that he needed this and that, as long as it didn’t last too long, as long as he didn’t insist that it be fun, she would let him take her. He understood this and, even though he felt a bit shattered, it soothed him.

  He stopped. “Did you get your interview?”

  She retrieved her notebook and muted the TV. “Listen to this stuff: ‘Performers are more primitive than fans. Everyone is born a performer. Our parents are our first audience; they’re our fans.’ He has this idea that being a fan is how we teach ourselves to love.”

  “More autonomic nervous system?”

  “Exactly. He said it’s something you taught him.”

  “He’s given me credit for a lot of things I’ve had almost nothing to do with.”

  Her fingers glided across his cheekbone. She found a tender spot. “What happened here?”

  “I think he punched me.”

  “Some thanks.”

  She pressed her lips to the spot. “Better?”

  “It’s a good story, at least.”

  Maya put her notebook down. “Do you want to watch TV again?”

  Peter said that he did.

  Maya
got under the covers.

  On the television, solemn-looking actors pretended to be the slaves who’d built the Egyptian pyramids.

  Peter took his shoes off and lay back on the bed.

  “Are you going to be okay?”

  “I am.”

  “Somebody is going to have a lot of fun nursing you back to health.”

  It was a very nice thing for her to say. He said, “That’s a nice thing to say.”

  She had her phone out again.

  “Are you texting your boyfriend?”

  “Do you mind?”

  It turned out that he didn’t.

  75

  When we returned to Pittsburgh, one of Rosalyn’s oldest friends felt it necessary to confide in me that “Rosalyn’s having a midlife crisis.”

  Maybe she hoped I’d be repulsed. “I know,” I said. “We’re having one together.”

  Rosalyn asked me to be there in the recovery room after her surgery—it was a big success; the surgeon was optimistic he’d removed all the cancer.

  When she went through chemo, I cleaned and cooked for her. It had been ages since I’d cared for anyone other than myself. Eventually I won her friends over.

  AFTER HER SIX-month PET scan came back clear, we allowed ourselves to imagine that we could have a life together. She returned to her job. I’ve been volunteering for the local historical society—I’m helping them build a database.

  A few weeks after her oncologist pronounced Rosalyn in remission, I logged in to JimCrossCompendium. It felt odd at first, but the website had always been about my experience of the world. I posted a new message: Rosalyn and I Have Decided to Share Our Lives with Each Other. I suppose I was writing to myself; after I left the tour, the site had become something of a mausoleum.

  It came as a surprise when people wrote me back to congratulate us. The other day I got a message that said: Oh, my! The Restless One is finally settling down. We printed it out and taped it to the refrigerator door. It reminds me of Rosalyn’s reaction when, after telling me about her cancer, I told her that I’d found out that Gabby had gotten engaged. She’d said, “Oh, happiness.”

  76

  Maya was snoring when Peter awoke. He sat up in installments, afraid he’d wake his hangover. He pulled on his shoes, then slipped out of her room.