Vexation Lullaby (14 page)

The Stanley seats only 3,200 people, making it one of the most intimate venues Cross plays. The space is renowned for how it showcases the human voice.
²²
That matters, because when the sound is good Cross can loosen the reins and allow nuance to sneak into the songs. For example, I had no idea “Fatty Arbuckle” was a song about moral turpitude in Vietnam until I heard him sing it at the Metropolitan Opera House.

I'm feeling quite optimistic, in part because this morning, in room 11 of the Barge Inn—I wouldn't have been there if not for Gene—I realized that if I'm ever going to read the book about Cross's life on the road, I'm going to have to write it myself.

Imagine: the day has already been auspicious, and there's still a show to attend.

28

People started to gather on the sidewalk as soon as the bus stopped. But for the fact that they weren't carrying signs, they resembled the sort of folks one might see protesting a nuclear reactor or genetically modified foods. The women, Peter noticed, preened as though the bus were a full-length mirror. They tilted their heads so that their necks appeared elongated, vulnerable. The men leaned against the building, as remote as cowboys.

A woman wearing a gray linen dress walked over to the bus, kissed her fingers, and touched them to the window, leaving a damp smudge on the glass.

Albert appeared next to Peter. “Watch this,” the drummer said, pressing the palm of his hand against the glass.

The crowd surged forward, phones waving like cilia. Peter recalled reading that in medieval times, a castle only raised its flag when the king was present.

“My hand is all over the Internet.”

Bluto said, “That's something you can tell your grandkids.” A line of text bounced inside the border of his laptop's screen. Rendered in fuchsia, the screen saver read, “Why Are You Looking at This?”

“Should we sally forth?” Albert asked.

The obvious answer was no.

But when they stepped off the bus, the crowd parted to let the men through. Peter could sense that people scanned his face, but his face didn't hold their attention. What surprised him was that they didn't seem to give much notice to Albert either.

Once they'd cleared the block, Peter said, “The fans don't bother you.”

“Most can't even see me,” the drummer said, tapping a new pack of cigarettes against the palm of his hand. “They figure I'm delivering pizzas. I'll take indifference over the stickheads who want to know what brand of stool I ride.”

They turned a corner, ducked under a strand of yellow caution tape, and squeezed between an eighteen-wheeler and another custom motor coach.

Albert nodded toward the bus. “This is the Trojan Horse. Late tonight, while you and I are catching Zs in our hotel, the roadies will crate things up and head off to the next stop.”

“What do you call the bus we were on?”

“I think it's just the bus.”

They came to a wide steel door set in a featureless brick wall. Albert tried to pull it open, but it was locked. He pushed a buzzer.

A damp wind funneled past the building; Peter, in a thin corduroy jacket, dress shirt, and khakis, shivered. He hoped someone would answer so they could get inside.

“They might be taking lunch,” the drummer said.

“Should we try another door?”

Albert shook his head. He plugged a cigarette into his mouth and lit it. “I tried quitting,” he said, “but my girlfriend smokes and if I stop I can't stand the way she smells. Now I have one a day, like a vitamin.”

“Bluto said she's Polish.”

With the same hand that held the burning cigarette, Albert reached out and straightened the lapels of the doctor's jacket. “Is there a part of the body you favor?”

It took Peter a moment to untangle the question. “I'm not a specialist, if that's what you mean.”

The kid turned and beat his fist against the door. “So what's wrong with him?”

“I can't discuss a patient's health. It's against the law.”

Albert dropped his cigarette and ground it under the sole of his shoe. “So he's your patient.”

Peter heard a bolt slam, then the door swung outward.

A doughy guy, dressed in filthy black clothes and dark aviator sunglasses, smiled at Albert. Except for his forehead and two semicircles beneath his eyes, the man's whole head was covered uniformly with salt and pepper stubble. “Who's your boyfriend?”

“This is the Big Man's doctor,” the drummer said. “Bluto's paying me to show him around.”

The man raised a pink, tender-looking hand in greeting. “Welcome to our corner of the quotidian. I'm the Blister.”

Peter introduced himself.

“Is there a name for the band's bus?” Albert asked.

“You guys stay in the Toolshed, the gear rides in the Attic, and the Big Man rides in the Taj.”

“Where is the Taj?” Albert asked.

“It's being converting to run on fry-oil,” said the Blister, “because of all the carbon-footprint Bolsheviks.”

“We fly most of the time,” added Albert.

“That's what they call the royal we,” the Blister said. “Now, if you gentlemen don't mind, I have to get back to work.”

P
ETER FOLLOWED ALBERT
across a cement-floored staging area. They pushed through a curtain of heavy translucent plastic, past crates and boxes, and onto a black-planked stage. The houselights were off. Peter could make out only the first few rows of seats, but the sound of their echoing footsteps gave him a sense of the space. On a battered plywood riser, tilted cymbals, tom-toms, and a bass drum crowded around a yellow leather stool; the arrangement reminded Peter of a device his middle-school science teacher had used to demonstrate the orbits of the planets. Albert picked a yardstick off the stage and went about measuring the height of the leading edge of the drumheads, the separation between the hi-hats, the distance between the pedals on the floor. Then, after making some minute adjustments to the setup, he mounted the stool and measured everything again, this time with a pair of drumsticks in his hands.

At any moment, Peter expected the kid to uncork a little flourish, but he didn't play.

“I imagine this is a dream job, playing with Jimmy.”

Albert squinted. “You see my name on the tickets?”

“Point taken,” said the Rochester Memorial/Tony Ogata Ambassador for Wellness.

Albert pointed his toe at a metal-reinforced box sitting on the corner of the riser. “Take a peek in there.”

Peter was reminded of those black-box data recorders designed to survive plane crashes. He flipped a pair of chrome latches and lifted the lid.

“It's like seeing Dorothy's ruby slippers, huh?”

Peter activated his phone's camera. Clasping his wrist with his free hand, like a pistol marksman, he took a picture and forwarded it to Martin.

A moment later, Peter's phone rang.

“I'm with a patient,” Martin said.

“You called me.”

“She has a question for you.”

A woman's voice came over the line. “Are those Jimmy Cross's harmonicas?”

“They are.”

“That's so cool.”

Martin got back on the line. “If you didn't need this so bad, I'd probably be jealous.”

Peter thanked his friend before hanging up. He felt as though someone had breathed on a coal inside his chest, as though some dull and ashy part of himself suddenly gave off light.

His phone vibrated as a text came in:
Asshole
.

29

Some people kill time, but I prefer to fill time. That's why, instead of reading the newspaper or ducking into a bar, I choose to head over to Buffalo Airfield.

Before 9/11,
²³
a person could drive right onto the runway at most executive airports. Airstrips were tranquil, dreamy places; I never had any trouble getting copies of flight plans or manifests. I'd eat my lunch and watch a local orthodontist practice touch-and-goes in a kit plane he'd assembled in his garage.

Now there are gates and guardhouses. If I park outside the perimeter fence, sooner or later someone will come by to make sure I'm not part of a sleeper cell.

D
RIVING AROUND THE
airfield, every dirt turnout has a sign reminding me that the area is under surveillance and I need to keep moving. I wind up a quarter mile away, in the parking lot of a Jo-Ann Fabrics. It's farther away than I'd like, but it's under the approach path and no one is going to give me trouble for being there.

Cross is just one person, but he's surrounded by a huge, grinding machine and that machine sometimes telegraphs its intentions. I think that's why, some nights, I can guess which song he'll play next—it doesn't happen often, but when it comes to me I'm never wrong.

Sitting in the parking lot, I get the feeling that Jimmy is about to appear.

I glass the runway with my binoculars; my eyes pass over the Cessnas guy-wired to the ground, the tiny little control tower studded with radio antennae, and one of those whirligigs they use to gauge the wind. A man stands beside a Piper Cub; the engine cowling is folded back. An orange pickup makes a slow circuit inside the control fence. Near the tower, an old-timer astride a girl's bike rides circles around a tied-up mutt. I check my watch. It's a little after six. The doors open in less than an hour.

M
Y PHONE RINGS
.
It's Patricia. She knows I have to answer because we have a child together.

“Hello, Arthur.”

“Did you have another dream?” Back in August she called to tell me that she'd dreamed that I'd died “alone in a hotel room” and she wanted me to make arrangements so, if I did pass away, Gabby wouldn't be the one to be notified by the police—in Patricia's dream, the police had called our daughter at work.

“Don't be a curmudgeon. Are you in Buffalo?”

“Is that why you called, to ask where I was?”

“Promise me you're going to see Gabrielle when you get down to Kentucky.”

“I talked with Gabby yesterday.”

“I know that. Why do you think I called you? I want you to promise me that you will see her. Don't screw this up.”

Two blocks away, I spot a black limousine waiting at a traffic light.

I promise her that I'll see Gabby.

“It appears you were off for a couple days. How'd that go?”

She's needling me.

“Yesterday I told someone I was married.”

I have her attention, because all of a sudden she's quiet.

“It was a slipup.”

“I hope you're not losing your marbles.”

The limousine pulls up in front of the airfield's gate. I watch the gatekeeper pedal over.

“Is there anything else?”

“Give Gabrielle your approval.”

“Don't I need to know what I'm approving?”

“No,” Patricia says, almost yelling.

The orange truck jounces across the infield.

“Repeat after me:
I will give her my approval
.”

“I will give her my approval.”

“You sound distracted.”

I recite my line again.

“I got my hair cut last week,” Patricia says. “I'm too old to wear it long. Maybe if I were a public intellectual.”
²⁴

I tell her she's not that old.

“You'd probably say I look like a lesbian.”

“That doesn't sound like me.”

A small jet roars overhead. The tires kiss the runway and leave a puff of white smoke. I tell Patricia I have to go.

“For a person who does nothing, you stay awfully busy. Aunt Liddy would be so proud.”

Patricia specializes in the parting shot. Sometimes it feels as though she's giving herself an alibi in case anyone ever accuses her of caring about me. It doesn't escape me that she knew I was in Buffalo—she bothered to check.

30

Albert and Peter had taken up seats in the front row of the auditorium. Tilting their heads back, they watched the new Kev as she crawled around the catwalks above the stage.

“What happened to the old Kev?” Peter asked.

Albert shook his head. “Vertigo. He couldn't climb a stepladder.”

“Did he see a doctor?”

“Bluto diagnosed him as unemployable. We left him in Boston. You don't know how to play mah-jongg, do you?”

Peter conceded that he didn't.

“He and Sutliff used to play before we'd go on.”

“Figuring out things to do with your downtime must be a challenge.”

“You're talking to a musician. Downtime is my preferred medium.”

People walked across the stage, flaking out coils of electrical cable, arranging guitars like weapons in an armory. A guy in camouflage cached water bottles beside every piece of stationary equipment.

F
LETCHER TAPPED PETER
on the shoulder and asked if he wanted to sit behind the boards while the band ran through their sound check.

If he stayed where he was, Peter thought he would feel a lot like an audience member, so he followed the technician to a control booth at the back of the room.

“Welcome to the doghouse,” Fletcher said, holding the door for the doctor.

The room reminded Peter of a poster that had hung on the wall of his boyhood home, a fish-eye perspective of the space shuttle's cockpit. But while the space shuttle required a pilot and copilot, Fletcher flew solo.

Judith had given Peter the poster as a birthday gift and then hung it in their living room among her things. Judith didn't care about boundaries. All their clothes shared a closet, for example. And she refused to close the door to her bedroom, because she thought that on some level he would perceive that as a rejection. They'd been inseparable. Judith had always been his best friend, even when it was embarrassing. She let him know that his favorite things to do were her favorite things. On spring days, while the whole town smelled of ferns, she would take him down to a stream where they'd turn over rocks and hunt for salamanders. He remembered summer afternoons in the town's arcade, the parquet floor slippery with sawdust from the tabletop shuffleboard, his mother bumping her hip against a pinball machine. He'd been seven and ten and fourteen and Judith was always there. She used to wear a leather bracelet with his name tooled in red. No museum is better guarded than the human heart.