Vexation Lullaby (21 page)

W
E STAND AT
the back of the hall (I don't for a moment entertain returning to our seats) while the crowd pleads for its encore.
³⁵
Robinson leans against me so that her head touches my shoulder, but while it appears that she is resting on me, the effect is that I feel propped up.

The boys put it on autopilot for the encore, marching through “Low, Lower Down,” “Luster,” and “Broom Job.” Three classics, but played back-to-back-to-back the effect is less than the sum of their parts, like Neapolitan ice cream.

When the lights come up, Mindy finds us. She looks exhausted (I guess her five kids have caught up with her). She tells me how nice it was to run into me, but I suspect she's upset that I monopolized her friend.

“Should we get a coffee?” she asks, yawning.

“It's late,” Robinson says. “I'm going to give Artie a ride to his car.”

The two women share a hug, while I pretend to be distracted.

“Good night, Artie.” Mindy makes a kissing face; my past disappears into the crowd.

•••

I post the setlist while Robinson drives me (in a late-model Volvo wagon) to my car. As I shift to get out, she grabs my fingers. “I want you to follow me back to my place, but I understand if you can't.”

“We'll see,” this bad boy says.

H
OPPING FROM ONE
interchange to another, we make our way north of the city and into a picket-fence neighborhood of oversized colonials. A moat of security lights ring her house. She docks her car in the glowing maw of an automatic garage door. An immaculate John Deere riding mower occupies the adjacent space. She gets out of her car and tells me she can move the mower if I want to garage my car; I tell her that both the car and its owner are accustomed to sleeping under the stars. She says, “That sounds so pitiful.”

I wonder if the drive hasn't dampened her enthusiasm. Once the musicians unplug and the houselights go up, the magic starts to dissipate. Robinson smiles at me. “Lucky for you, my father bred in me an unquenchable appetite for pity.”

I say, “It's nice to be appreciated.”

S
HE GOES INTO
the house first and deactivates an alarm. Then she leads me to a bathroom off the kitchen. There's a shower. She hands me a towel.

“I'll see you when you get cleaned up,” she says, closing the door.

Beneath the sink I find a caddy loaded with two unopened toothbrushes, a floss dispenser, a pump bottle of toothpaste, a coral-colored scrubby, and a selection of body washes, shampoos, and conditioners, plus body lotion, face lotion, and a ceramic cube holding a few dozen cotton swabs. Stepping into the shower, I systematically attack each appendage with the appropriate product. I lather and scrub, rinse and condition, gargle and floss, dry and moisturize. Once again, I'm gone too long. I emerge, wrapped in a towel, my body glowing like a feverish child.

Robinson is not waiting for me.

I climb the stairs. Her bedroom—her bed is a fluffy white confection—is empty. I find her in a second bedroom (a real estate agent would call it a “home office”). She's changed into these flouncy strawberry shorts and a heather-gray T-shirt: the shorts suggest sex, but the shirt suggests television. She's staring into a computer monitor—
arghh
, she's logged into CrossTracks. Before I can see what she's reading, she turns the monitor off. She takes my hand and leads me back downstairs. The guest room is a still life—a bed, a ladder-back chair, a spray of dried flowers erupting from a vase that sits on a Federal-style desk. Robinson draws back the top sheet.

She says, “In the morning I'll feed you.”

Had a person spent as much time on the road as I had, had he walked away from half the things I'd walked away from, had he come to believe it was his lot in life to be a constant stranger, that man could understand my gratitude. I thank her.

“You called me Robinson,” she says.

“Robinson.”

As she draws the door closed between us, she says, “It's Rosalyn.”

46

Cross planted himself at the head of the stage and thrashed his guitar. He and his men had the high ground. They used their strategic advantage to punish the crowd. What, Peter wondered, had the city of Pittsburgh done to deserve this? Peter wasn't sure he liked what they were up to, but he couldn't help but feel awed that a seventy-year-old man could be responsible for such noise.

He watched the faces in the first rows—it was impossible to tell whether they were singing or screaming.

Wayne cupped a hand around Peter's shoulder. Then, leaning close, he said, “Allie wants an adjustment.”

“I'm not a chiropractor,” Peter shouted

Taking a step back, Wayne raised his hands, a mock surrender. His body said,
Don't shoot the messenger!
“He's waiting for you downstairs.”

“Fine,” Peter said, though not loud enough to be heard. He'd
been wishing that he could have gone out into the audience. He wanted to be able to see Cross's face instead of the audience's.

•••

Peter followed a
set of stairs beneath the stage and under the orchestra pit. Near the end of a concrete hallway, he discovered the cramped, subbasement dressing room that Alistair had commandeered. Cross's son sat on the makeup table, his back against a large mirror, a ring of frosted bulbs haloed his body. His bare feet hung off the edge of the table, as white as peeled potatoes. Maya sat in front of him shredding buds of pot on the face of an ebook reader. Both occupants looked like they'd been teargassed.

“Herr Doktor,” Alistair said, “welcome to our salon.”

As Peter watched, Maya pinched the weed into a corncob pipe, licked a finger, and swept the gizmo's screen clean.

“I think I'll come back later.”

Alistair said, “But you're the missing ingredient.”

“When's the show start?” Maya asked.

Peter was sure he could still hear the music. “He's already
playing. Listen.”

“That's the radio,” Alistair insisted.

“It's not.” Peter would stand for reason, hopelessly square reason.

“Are you avoiding him?” Maya asked, sucking the lighter's flame into the bowl.

When she'd finished, Alistair grabbed the pipe and held it, ready, in front of his mouth. “I'm not avoiding anyone.”

“Says the guy in the basement.” A thread of smoke spun up from the corner of her lips.

Peter still couldn't pin down her accent, some remote British colony. He refused to ask her where she came from. He didn't want to seem interested; that strategy had worked for him in the past. “I should go,” he said, not moving.

Alistair took another hit. “This is just laundry-folding pot.”

Maya shook her head. “It's weaponized.”

Alistair tapped the pipe on the table before shoving it and the lighter into his pants pocket. “Do you ascribe to doctor-patient confidentiality?”

“Do I
ascribe
to it?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Wayne said you wanted me to take a look at your back.”

“Fine,” Alistair said, scooting off his perch.

Peter glanced at Maya; at that moment, it appeared she was trying to read her own bare hand.

“She can stay.”

“So we're clear, I'm not a chiropractor.”

Alistair took a sip from a plastic cup. “Good, I'm not a patient.”

Peter found his stethoscope, pressed the diaphragm against Alistair's damp and pale wrist. The man's heart cantered along at 80 bpm. His blood pressure registered on the high side, though within range.

When he palpated Alistair's lower back, the man winced. Peter lifted the hem of his shirt—the skin around the lumbar vertebrae appeared mottled. “Is this where it hurts?”

“You've found the Forbidden City.”

Peter had Alistair do some basic stretches to gauge his flexibility. “It's probably a mild muscle strain. You should take Advil and try not to irritate it.”

“Do you think I have to be told not to irritate it?”

Peter suggested he try alternating warm and cold compresses.

Alistair rolled his eyes. “I assume that's if I want to feel more uncomfortable.”

It seemed that Alistair had sent for Peter because he'd wanted to be entertained. This suspicion was strengthened when Alistair suggested that the three of them find a restaurant.

“That's exactly what I want to do,” said Maya.

“Perfect,” Alistair said. “I saw a pierogi place nearby. We'll drink vodka and have donuts for dessert. It'll be an all-potato meal.”

Peter couldn't sneak out. He wasn't merely on call—he'd agreed to be embedded and he needed to stay embedded. “I can't leave the building.”

“My father won't fire his new pet for insubordination.”

Peter decided to take the high road—he'd seen what happened when Dom had tried to quarrel with Alistair. He didn't want to be humiliated in front of Maya.

“We can bring something back for you,” she said, which he found encouraging.

And he really was hungry. Since lunch, all he'd had was an oatmeal cookie. “It's up to you,” he said, “I guess I'll be backstage.”

“We'll bring you something,” Alistair said, “but wait here. If you head upstairs, I'll have to deal with people and I'm not in the mood for that sort of hassle. The place is only a block away.” With the pipe staked in the corner of his mouth, Cross's son looked like the love child of General MacArthur and Genghis Khan.

“What can we get you?” asked Maya.

“Surprise me.”

Maya said, “We'll be quick.”

“He literally said, ‘Surprise me,'” Alistair was talking to the girl.

W
HEN PETER LEANED
his head against the wall he could hear something, but he was no longer sure if he was listening to the band or the audience or the building itself.

He hoped Alistair had given up on the pierogi place and brought him back a cheeseburger. If he was getting into shape, then his muscles needed protein. Not
if
he was getting into shape—it was happening. He'd never been able to stick with an exercise program; he'd always found it a little vain, like tanning. He suspected Lucy had slipped that notion into his head. Or, who knows, maybe Judith had made some offhand remark that stuck with him. How much of who he was had he cribbed from other people?

Up on the ceiling a red light flashed intermittently; Peter kept losing it and finding it again. He couldn't be sure if it belonged to a smoke detector or a camera.

Maya had practically begged him to come along, and he'd let her walk off with Alistair because of some sense of responsibility. Going forward, he would give a little more thought to the consequences of his principles.

Ten minutes passed, or an hour. Now he was sick with hunger. When Alistair returned, he'd say something about being considerate to others. Or, maybe, they'd bring him two hamburgers.

The Blister poked his head into the dressing room. He had an open can of beer in one hand, and bundled electrical cords hung on his shoulders like bandoliers. “You hot-boxing motherfucker.”

“Alistair went out to get some food.”

“We thought you were AWOL.”

Peter took his phone out—a message blinked across his screen:
Searching for signal
.

“They're already at the airport.” The Blister shook his head,
reached a phone toward Peter's face. “Bluto wants to speak with you.”

He'd gotten a contact high, Peter realized. He was stoned. He held the phone to his ear.

“Marco?”

“This is Peter.”

“The response I'm looking for is ‘Polo.' You want to try again?”

“There was a miscommunication.”

“Wayne says he texted you, but you didn't get back to him. He feels bad, but not seppuku bad.”

“Alistair knew where I was.”

“Well, that's all milk under the bridge. We're already on the bird, which means you're humping the dog tonight. That's the situation. Pretend you're Dian Fossey or something and we'll see you in Columbus.”

The Blister finished his beer and dropped the empty can on the floor. Putting a hand on the wall, he bent over and retrieved another beer from a pocket near his knee. He cracked the top, sipping the foam from the mouth. “You enjoy medicine?”

“I do, Mr. Blister.”

“Mr. Blister was my father.” The man laughed at the ceiling; then he dropped his eyes to Peter's. “Let me give you a little background: I was a guidance counselor with a mortgage and a Volks-wagen. However, due to social anxiety, I now carry a walkie-talkie and sleep in a berth. A few dozen Valium left in a paper sack would be a godsend, or we could forgo the whole cloak-and-dagger business and you could lay the stuff on me.”

“That's a nice speech, but I'm not a pharmacy.”

The Blister rubbed his bristly head with a dirty hand, smiling, “You need me to walk you to the bus?”

Peter said he could find his way.

The driver, a walnut-skinned woman with a high forehead and a stud in her nose as big as a cuff link, introduced herself as Aisha Moon. She wore steel-toed engineer boots and denim overalls on top of a thermal undershirt, a style that the doctor thought of as rural butch.

He had spent some time on buses. As a boy, he and his mother used to take Greyhounds to see his grandparents on the gulf coast of Florida. Judith insisted they leave their car at home, because a woman traveling alone with a child made an easy mark.

Inside the crew's bus, Peter was aware of scents on top of scents, lemon on sage on Lysol on bleach; it reminded him of the carnival game where you had to cover a larger yellow circle with five red disks. Beneath all of the clean smells lurked something fetid, something swampy, like a dead turtle.