Vexation Lullaby (15 page)

•••

W
HEN THE SOUND
check started, the band played on top of one another, a tangled dissonance. Fletcher moved over the board, tweaking the settings on his switches, slides, and dials. At times he'd ask the band to take five while he investigated the source of a particular buzz or echo. When they weren't playing, the musicians basked in the stage lights, as cold-blooded as lizards.

Fletcher wore a pair of headphones around his neck, not unlike a stethoscope. Every so often he'd lift them to his ears.

He made a hundred inscrutable adjustments to the board before asking the band to move on to another song. The musicians barked requests in jargon: cool it down, less edge, drop the ceiling, add some rust. After repeating the opening, they lifted their thumbs. The guys swapped guitars before repeating the process.

“How do you know what to adjust?”

“Before this gig, I ran the boards for a Monsters of Metal tour,” Fletcher said. “Back then I had to reinvent the wheel every night, but these guys are professionals. If I'm feeling bored I'll tweak one of the midrange frequencies and we'll play our version of Battleship. Dom can usually pinpoint the issue after two or three notes.”

Peter confessed that Albert was the only band member he knew.

“Don't sweat it,” Fletcher said. “I ran the board for fifteen months before anyone bothered to learn my name.” He pointed to a thickset man wearing a brown, flat-brimmed fedora. “Dom's the one who looks like a Cuban exile. The skinny tree next to him is Sutliff.”

At the back of the stage there was a guy wearing two guitars, one almost up to his armpits and the other down over his knees. “Who's that?”

“James Blonde is a tech. He stands in for Jimmy during sound checks.”

“Mr. Cross doesn't do sound checks?”

Fletcher reached under the soundboard and grabbed a soda fountain drink. He had a long pull on the straw. “Are you asking me as a doctor or as a curious person?”

“As a doctor, I guess.”

“The doctor is in,” said Wayne Shiga. Bluto's assistant must have joined them while Peter was watching the band.

Peter couldn't remember what he'd been talking about.

Wayne bumped fists with Fletcher, then, looking at Peter, he said, “You ready for your date?”

People like Wayne, the perpetually blasé, annoyed Peter. It wasn't enough that they thought he was square, they wanted everyone else to think so as well.

“Ready and raring,” Peter said.

“Try not to get wood.”

Act dignified, thought Peter.

Wayne led him through the lobby, out the front of the hall, and helped him into a waiting cab. “When you get to the restaurant, make sure your phone is off. Listen to Cyril.”

Peter said he understood.

“Good cowboy,” Wayne said, like an asshole.

The cabbie pulled away from the curb. Where, Peter wondered, was he going to meet Cross? He imagined a private dining room, a dim enclave where surfaces were walnut or leather. He took his phone out. No calls. No messages. Anyone who emailed him would receive an autoreply explaining that he was unavailable. He'd been on the tour for seven hours, but it felt like he'd slipped the bonds of time.

•••

T
HE CAR STOPPED
in front of a red vinyl banner announcing “New India Palace Takeout/Delivery.” A yellow Heineken sign blinked in the window.

“This is it,” said the cabbie, an otherwise unremarkable man who had the Union Jack tattooed on his forehead.

“What do I owe?”

The driver shook a hand in front of the rearview mirror. “It's been taken care of.” Peter was relieved—he needed to stop by an ATM and get some cash.

Cyril waited beside the door to the restaurant. “This way, doc.”

As he jogged toward the bodyguard, Peter noticed his reflection in the restaurant's plate-glass window was bent over like a person getting out of a helicopter.

Cyril set a hand as heavy as a saddle on the Peter's shoulder. “The Big Man's waiting for you in back.”

Peter walked past a gilded Ganesh and a stone pagoda studded with silk flowers, past empty two-tops and four-tops, to a booth near the bathroom. The table was set for four, but Cross was by himself. He wore a white cowboy hat and a shirt as pale as a winter sky.

Cross smiled, extending a hand toward the empty spot opposite him. “Grab a seat.”

Peter slid onto the bench.

“You been to Buffalo before?”

“Once or twice.” Peter looked around the empty restaurant. “Is the food good?” The question glittered in its stupidity. How much would Martin pay for the chance to eat bad Indian food with his hero? Five grand? Ten?

Cross locked his fingers together and set them on the table. “It's going to be good for me to have you out here. I can feel it.”

“You'll have to let me know what I can do to help.”

The singer sucked in a deep breath. “See, you're already helping.”

“Have you had any more problems with slippery time?”

Leaning forward, Cross said, “Hey, I hope Tony didn't cause you too much of a headache.”

Peter sipped his water. “It's all cleared up.”

Cross set his hat down beside him. “I wanted to introduce you to someone, but it looks like we've been stood up.”

Who would have the nerve to stand Cross up? Maybe the singer meant something else.

Two waiters burst out of the kitchen carrying crowded trays, the food hidden beneath aluminum domes. The waiters lifted the lids, releasing puffs of cottony steam. Potatoes, lentils, and curry in every combination. Green beans and golden onions. One of the waiters set two sweating bottles of Kingfisher beer on the table, then poured them silently into the tilted necks of pilsner glasses. Peter had shared a Kingfisher with Lucy once, at a Malaysian place where the waiters whispered around in slippers.

Cross ladled things onto his plate. “I can never remember what I like, so I got us a bit of everything.” He pointed at a sauce. “Watch out for that stuff. India's full of contradictions—they make red food that tastes cool and green stuff that can strip paint.”

Though he couldn't imagine eating, Peter loaded his plate.

“So, what made you decide you wanted to be a doctor?”

Most of the people Peter met in med school had familial connections in the profession—medicine happens behind closed doors, and the same mechanisms that protect the privacy of the patient protect the privacy of the practice. For Peter, becoming a doctor wasn't the fulfillment of a dream, so much as the culmination of a process. He said, “People kept telling me I ought to look into medicine. Eventually, I listened.”

“Was Judith one of those people?”

Peter shook his head.

“Is there something funny about that?”

“She doesn't care what I do. She just wants me to be happy.”

Cross said, “I always figured my son would make a good healer.”

“Healer” had to be Peter's least favorite euphemism. Doctors treated and prescribed. They operated and they educated. Doctors didn't heal.

“What does your son do?”

“Alistair Cross? He's a musician.”

“I think I knew that.”

“Small Ideas, that's his band.” Cross took a sip of his beer.

“Right,” Peter said. “Do you have other kids?”

“Allie's got a younger sister, Bea, and two half-sisters, Rebekah and Ludella. I've got five grandkids, too.” Cross leaned back in the booth. “Do you, maybe, play an instrument or make art or something?”

“I don't. I do not.”

The waiters had disappeared somewhere; they never returned to the table. The two men ate in almost perfect silence. Peter stuffed his mouth with food; it seemed safer than speaking.

“I'm grateful that you came out.”

Was Cross talking about dinner or the tour? The ambiguity made responding a challenge. Peter said, “I'm looking forward to the show.”

“I never talk about a performance beforehand. It helps to cultivate a little mystery.”

Peter noticed the lights at the front of the restaurant had been turned off.

“Did Judith have anything to say about you coming out on the tour?”

“She said the Sunbeam belonged to you, but you let her borrow it.”

“Did I tell you it was her car?”

Peter wasn't certain what he remembered from that night. And now they were eating Indian food in Buffalo. What would he remember from tonight? “Thanks for this opportunity.”

“If anything, I should be the one thanking you.”

“Well, thanks for dinner,” Peter said.

Cross raised his hand, signaling Cyril. “See, there you go again.”

31

After the opening act takes their bow, a fan walks up to me in black, double-knit pants, and a skinny red dress shirt with mother-of-pearl snaps. Ostrich boots peek out from under the wide cuffs of his pants. He's young, barely out of his twenties. The first thing he says is “Have you been to CrossTracks today?”

I say, “I try to stay off the websites.”

“But you're Pennyman, right?”

I tell him I am Arthur Pennyman.

He scuffs his feet on the floor, giving me every opportunity to walk away.

“You know there's a thread about you?”

There are no fewer than three threads about me, which is what I intend to tell the kid, when I notice that the conversations around us have ceased and that all these silent people are sort of discreetly moving toward us.

“Are you talking about a new thread?”

“Supposedly Cross saw a doctor in Rochester. Right? You took a picture of him.”

The kid seems to be after a reaction quote. A house burns down and they shove a microphone in the owner's face. After a school gets shot up, they ask a victim's parent how they're coping.

I say exactly what's on my mind. I say, “Wow.”

“It seems plausible after how weird that show was.”

I nod my head, not like I'm agreeing with him, but to confirm that I'm listening.

“Weird, how?”

“Like, right, he almost fell down.”

“So, were you at the show in Rochester?”

The kid blinks. We both know he's done.

“Because,
right
, I was actually at the show,” I say.

One of the eavesdroppers, a guy about my age with hairy nostrils—it looks like he's been snorting woolly bear caterpillars—abandons the pretext that he's not paying attention and asks me, “Is it true? Is he seeing a doctor?”

I say, “I'll find out.” Which is the sort of thing people say when testifying before Congress—it sounds like a strong answer, though it's a coward's gambit.

The interlopers stare at me. Maybe they expect me to confess.

“What sort of doctor was he supposed to have met with?” I ask, trying to go on the offensive. “Because there are all kinds of doctors.”

This guy I can't even see, someone hidden in the second rank, chimes in, “So now you're an expert on doctors, too?”

One can't forget that it's a fine line between an audience and a mob.

32

A limousine idled in front of the restaurant. Cyril opened the door, grabbed Peter by the wrist, and in one fluid motion incorporating elements of civility and judo, planted him on a rear-facing seat.

They were off.

Watching the road recede though the rear window reminded Peter that he was rushing blindly into the unknown. Cross didn't need a doctor; he needed a barber (his ears were hidden beneath the curly wings of his hair) and a shave.

Cross lifted a bottle of water from a pocket on the door, checked the label, then cracked the seal and took a long drink. Sitting beside Cyril, the singer looked no bigger than a fifth grader. “Any word on Allie?”

“Not yet,” Cyril said.

The limo surged forward as the driver pulled onto an elevated roadway. Peter felt his body being sucked toward the rear of the car.

Cross was quiet for a moment. “Try to reserve judgment.”

“I don't judge anybody,” Cyril said.

“You know, animals love him.”

Cyril thumbed his phone. “What sorts of animals are we talking about?”

“You remember those mutts that followed him around Paris.”

“Weren't those his dogs?”

Cross took another sip of water.

“What am I supposed to be doing?” Peter asked.

Cross looked as though he didn't quite understand Peter's question. He turned to Cyril. “Is there somewhere he can watch the show?”

“We'll find a place for you,” Cyril said.

“Good,” said Peter, though he felt guilty that the bodyguard would have to find a spot for him.

“I'm glad you're here,” Cross said, his attention somewhere outside the car. “It's another circle. . . .”

“Two minutes,” Cyril said.

The singer took a big sip of water, rolled down his window and spit.

Peter wondered if he ought to offer words of encouragement, but decided he was better off saying nothing.

“I'll get out of the vehicle first,” Cyril announced. “Then the Big Man gets out. You follow him, doc. Be his shadow, just don't clip his heels. Got it?”

Peter said he did.

A
S THEY PULLED
behind the Stanley Opera Center, a floodlight cut across Cross's face and revealed a changed man—his jaw hung loose, his eyes dull and hooded.

A uniformed cop stood by the stage door, his head swiveling like a room fan. The driver opened the door for Cyril, who stepped out of the car, looked around, then reached a hand in to help Cross out. Peter scrambled out of the car. When the limo's door thumped shut, he nearly climbed up Cross's back.

And then they were inside.

Bodies moved aside to let them through. Cross stopped and reached his arms above his head while someone lifted off his sweatshirt. A woman ran her fingers through his hair, tilted his head back, and drew lines beneath his eyes. Thirty feet away a wedge of white light split a heavy curtain; in the middle of this opening a crew member stood holding a steel guitar.