Vexation Lullaby (22 page)

Peter was getting settled in a seat at the front of the bus when a bearded dude in a kilt climbed aboard.

Aisha said, “Heads up, Lumpy, Bluto asked the doctor to grab a urine sample from you.”

The man stopped in his tracks. “If Bluto wants my pee, he can shake it out himself.”

“She's joking,” Peter said.

Lumpy scraped a toe on the carpet. “Sorry if I escalated that.”

“Get some rest, sugar,” said Aisha.

“I need to take the edge off with some RollerCoaster Tycoon,” Lumpy said, pushing through the curtain.

Peter's phone buzzed as the missed texts finally caught up with him.

Head 2 stage door when encore starts.

Paging Dr. Silver. STAT.

Enjoy Pittsburgh.

“Someone checking up on you?” Aisha asked.

“Sort of.”

“Wife or girlfriend?”

Peter turned his phone toward her. “Wayne.”

Fletcher boarded, followed by a guy dressed head to toe in brown tree-bark camouflage.

Cross's soundman looked at Peter. “Shouldn't you be on the plane?”

“I'm collecting urine samples.” Peter meant to be playful, but the way the guy flinched told him his aim was off. Then he remembered Bluto telling him Fletcher was in recovery.

“He's messing with you,” said Aisha.

“An attempt at humor,” said Peter.

“I get it.” Fletcher turned to his companion. “Brucie, have you met the doctor yet?”

The man stuck a hand out. “Charmed.”

“Brucie's got webbed toes,” Fletcher said. “You ever see that before?”

“It's called syndactyly.”

Aisha spoke up. “So, while I'm driving, am I to assume you guys are giving each other pedicures?”

Brucie stooped and pulled a plastic pint of orange juice from a refrigerator mounted in a cabinet beneath the television. “It helps pass time between the handjobs.”

“The new Kevin is going to be a little late,” Fletcher said. “The intern wound up pulling all the tape off the floor, including the blocking cues for a Halloween pageant. Kev is trying to fix things.”

“Why would anyone bother pulling tape?” Aisha asked.

“Because he's the worst intern ever,” said Brucie.

Fletcher said, “Let's not fault the guy for showing initiative.”

“He's lucky Kev is a fucking communalist,” Brucie said. “She's okay.”

Aisha said, “Someday it's going to dawn on that girl that she's no longer surrounded by French-Canadian acrobats and she's going to need a shoulder to cry on.”

“And then you're going to scissor her raw,” said Brucie.

“Speaking of,” said Fletcher.

A stocky woman, the sides of her head shaved, her yellow hair in dreadlocks, climbed onboard. Tattooed along her carotid artery:
Focus
. She smiled at Peter. “You're the doctor.” She leaned over and hugged him. “In the circus, I knew a juggler who was a doctor.”

Peter noted that she hadn't said “a doctor who juggled.”

“Somebody fetch the doctor a clean blanket and a pillow,” instructed Aisha. “We want him to make himself comfortable.”

“Can't he crash in your berth?” asked Kev.

“Indeed he cannot,” said Aisha.

A
S SOON AS
the intern boarded (despite the fact that he appeared to be in his middle forties, he wore cargo shorts and a Chicago Bulls game jersey), Aisha got them on the road.

Curled up on the bench seat, Peter's mind hummed along with the tires. By his calculation, Cross and the band were already in their hotel rooms. He'd forfeited the comfort of the hospital, the comfort of his condo, of routine and habit, for what? To be forgotten in a basement. To be shoehorned on a bus.

Peter had assumed, as the only doctor, he'd have some power, but the only power he'd ever had was the power to practice medicine and no one seemed especially interested in medicine. What they wanted was medication.

He quit pretending to sleep and sat up.

In the opposite lane, the rising sun glared in the windshields of oncoming semis

“Are you some sort of hotshot?” Aisha flipped a switch and a map light illuminated half her face. “I mean, how come it's you here and not somebody else?”

Peter found her eyes in a mirror mounted above the stairwell. “He and my mother used to be friends a long time ago.”

Aisha chewed on this for a second. “As a rule, his friends don't usually end up on the bus.”

Peter moved across the aisle, so he could see her more directly. “I'm not his friend—I'm his doctor.”

“What's wrong with him?”

“I can't answer that.”

“It must be serious if it caused Alistair to fly out.”

The bus's shadow stretched so far ahead Peter couldn't tell where it ended, but in another hour the sun would rise high enough that things would again resemble what they were.

“So, this is Ohio?”

“It better be.”

47

I will say a few things about women of a certain age and their
breakfasts.

They can function all day on a single hard-boiled egg speckled with cracked pepper, but they prefer Greek yogurt and granola. They like blueberries. They will eat half a grapefruit, but they would never eat a whole grapefruit. When they eat a banana in front of a stranger, they use a knife and fork. A package of toaster waffles might last them a month.

They drink coffee from oversized earthenware mugs.

If there is a glass of water in the sink, it's to aid them in swallowing their Fosamax pill—I've learned to recognize the stylized bone embossed on each white tablet.

Patricia, my ex, is one of these women. I've met a few more over the years. These women of a certain age are the same whether they live in Tokyo (despite Aunt Liddy's largesse, I couldn't bear to pay $500 a night for a room) or Seattle or Lyon (in Europe, the toaster waffle is replaced with a croissant or sweet roll; they tear the bread to pieces before brushing the crumbs into the sink—these women of a certain age have meager appetites and unyielding wills).

On their kitchen table, the local paper occupies a place of honor—when these women die they will take newspapers with them, meaning newspapers have no hope beyond these women. If their husbands are gone, to death, to younger women, they may pass the Sports section to the man sharing their breakfast, but if they are living in the same town where they raised children they will check the high school scores first.

These women appreciate it when you to carry your dishes to the sink, but do not try to load their dishwashers. Never load their dishwashers.

When breakfast is done, they will look at your empty plate and say, “I should have given you more” or “I guess you liked it” or (if they don't trust their English) “Good. Good.” They will ask where you have to be—and they will generate enthusiasm for your answer (“Dearborn is very nice” or “Lucky you”). It is time to go. They have no patience for dawdling. They will watch you carry your bags out to your car, or a cab, or the subway, T, Metro, Tube, BART, Transit Authority, etc.

Do I think I understand these women of a certain age? I have never understood women of any age, and these women have had their entire lives to make themselves unfathomable.

Take Rosalyn: last night she seemed on the verge of sleeping with me, a complete stranger, but when I find her this morning she has already dressed in slacks, a modest blouse, and a cardigan. She is arranged so neatly that any fantasy I might have nurtured goes right out the window.

She says, “I said I would feed you,” making it sound like the fine print of a contract.

I tell her it's no trouble, that I'm happy to get out of her hair.

She leads me to her breakfast bar. Side by side: two plates with half-moons of cantaloupe, currant scones. She lifts a thermal carafe and spills coffee into thick, homely mugs.

Shoulders nearly touching, we sip our coffees.

Her right leg jiggles like a sewing machine. Is she nervous? Impatient? Ashamed?

I say, “I'm sure you have to be somewhere.”

I receive a demure smile. No, I read it as demure, but it is guarded.

“Are you familiar with
The Holy Screw
?”

For a moment I wonder if she's not trying to stump me with an obscure lyric.

“It's a book.”

I tell her I can't keep up with the publishing world.
³⁶

“It's about a woman's midlife crisis.”

I say I wasn't aware that women had midlife crises.

“We do. We do, Arthur. In the book the woman goes on an adventure in search of the divine inside her. She doesn't necessarily believe there is anything divine inside her, but she remembers feeling there was when she was a girl. The book is about returning to her girlhood. She embarks on a trip to a place she's never visited and, on the way, she meets her soul mate. The book is about how the journey is more important than the destination. It's an incredibly powerful book. They're adapting it for Broadway because the only way to convey that sort of emotion to an audience is with music—even though there's almost no music in the book because she spends so much of her time in silent meditation.”

Rosalyn has my attention.

She continues, “Music emanates from our bodies and it also passes through our bodies. If you look at a great painting you experience it in your eyes and in your brain. Your body is cut off at the neck. The ancient peoples who taught us to locate the soul in the chest weren't being naïve. Our bodies are important. The book is about that, our sacred bodies.

“I'm not trying to be provocative, Arthur. I thought about you a lot last night. You may not have read
The Holy Screw
, but you manage to live your life in harmony with its principles. The writer had to go halfway around the world to discover what you know. We can't waste opportunities, and we can't be frightened when opportunities present themselves. That's what the book is about.”

I watch her slice the orange-pink fruit from the rind.

“You're very passionate.” I'm sober now, so I feel I see her with clear eyes.

She leans over so our shoulders kiss. “Please don't tease me.”

The scone tastes of baking soda, turns to dust in my mouth. I sip more coffee. I tell her I'm not teasing.

“Last night helped me realize that I need music in my life. It also reminded me to do new things.” She centers her cup in its saucer. “I have a proposition for you, Arthur.”

What does it mean that my chest feels tight? That I have to bite my lip and that, while I feel her eyes on the side of my face, I won't turn to her.

“After you went to bed I reread the scene in
The Holy Screw
where the author first meets her spiritual guide and lover, Ruben. Something stood out to me: Ruben is Spanish, but she meets him in Venice. Do you know where I'm going with this?”

It seems that maybe I don't.

“I looked at Jimmy Cross's tour schedule and saw he's playing in Columbus, Ohio, tonight. Columbus, which takes its name from Christopher Columbus, an Italian explorer who sailed under the Spanish flag.”

Rosalyn turns and faces me head-on. “I know it's a big favor, Arthur, but I want you to take me with you.”

48

Aisha tapped Peter on the shoulder. “This is your stop.”

They were pulled up to a curb. On the sidewalk a pair of fluffy dogs towed a man in an overcoat, pajama pants, and fleece slippers. A greenway bordered the sidewalk, then the land fell away, hiding something, a highway, a hole.

“Meaning: get out,” Aisha said, clarifying.

Peter stood up, checked to make sure he wasn't leaving anything behind.

Aisha returned to her seat, pressing a button that caused the bus to kneel. She opened the door.

“Where am I supposed to go?”

She directed his attention across the street, to the glass façade of a hotel. “I'm not sure you have the temperament for bus travel. A person can rise above a crisis, but you can't rise above a bus.”

Peter paused at the top of the stairs. He searched for something to say. Whatever that might be, a response or a counter, it eluded him. Instead he made his face into a smile, descending to the street.

He said, “Thank you,” but the door was shut and the bus was already on its way.

A desk clerk slid Peter a key card and directed him to a bank of elevators. He walked past a continental breakfast buffet that looked pillaged. Someone had affixed a name tag to the self-serve waffle maker:
Hello, My Name Is Out of Order
. Glutenous Danishes sweated in individual cellophane pouches. Half a dozen peeled eggs stewed in a punch bowl filled with cloudy water.

His suitcase waited at the foot of the bed, like some obedient dog. Sleep seemed unearned, so Peter changed and headed to the gym. He churned a recumbent bicycle while a flat-screen television hung above his head like a guillotine's blade. The cramped, antiseptic space reminded him of his condo's promised gym. He was lucky they'd never built it. The last thing Peter needed was another excuse to stay inside. Five days a week he commuted from one parking garage to another. His life was hermetic, boxes inside boxes. Sometimes when he was on duty he would take catnaps in a windowless cube stuffed with boxes of supplies.

Going on the tour should have been exciting, yet so far he'd spent most of his time waiting, in hotel rooms and backstage. It wasn't enough to go on an adventure—one needed to be adventurous. In his heart, Peter knew he was not adventurous.

He forced himself do biceps curls and seated rows, now that he was single. Prior to moving out, Lucy had joined a gym downtown—which had surprised him, because he thought that they weren't the sort of people to join a gym. Lucy had been so proud of the hard-soled sneakers she wore to her spin class. Now she was taking her round ass to Albany. Not to mention her presence, the way she made the place smell. He had no interest in living alone. When he got back to his life, maybe he'd get a dog. At least with a dog, he'd be forced outside a few times each day. Plus, women trusted men with dogs—it was biological, if you could take care of a dog, they extrapolated, you could take care of a child; a cat proved nothing.