Vexation Lullaby (16 page)

Peter perceived that this choreography was taking place in utter silence, in monastic quiet. He couldn't hear what Bluto shouted into Cross's ear or what the makeup artist said as she brushed color across Cross's cheeks. He couldn't even hear the thoughts in his own head. Everything was obliterated by the deafening silence, which, Peter noticed, seemed to cycle and hum, seemed to reach him through the air and through the floor, seemed to emanate from someplace inside his body.

Cross walked over to the curtain and took the guitar from the tech. His left hand held a bullwhip—no, it was a coiled black cord.

Peter noticed a pale woman, a pale, freckled woman, her orange, Pre-Raphaelite hair held in place by an elastic cord. She held her hands over her ears. She might have been laughing. Or screaming.

She leaned toward Peter suddenly, as though trying to bite him. Her nose brushed against his ear.

“Pinchme!”

He squeezed her elbow.

Her eyes, he would swear, shot green sparks.

Bluto's assistant, Wayne, appeared before him holding a laminated pass for Peter's inspection. Cross's name flashed across the top in silver, beneath it, in blaze orange, the word “crew.” Wayne looped the lanyard over Peter's head.

As Peter watched, Cross shoved the neck of his guitar toward the floor—the body of the instrument swung up to cover his back like a shield. He strode through the curtains, while above the roar an omnipotent voice announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, please help me welcome eleven-time Grammy-winner, Kellogg recording artist Jim Cross.”

P
ETER HAD NO
musical aptitude. He'd never picked up a cheap guitar in order to impress a girl. While he recognized the names of the bands that were supposed to mean something to him, he couldn't recall what made them important. In high school he'd preferred to listen to musical parodies. Standing at the side of the stage, his defenses were overrun. The music invaded him. Was it possible he'd never heard music before?

Jimmy stood both at the center of the stage and at the center of the music. Now and again he'd turn to one of the guys in his band and let his guitar say something quick and sharp. When Jimmy sang, he didn't lean into the mic—he came at it sidelong, as though he had to get in the last word. Peter noticed how Albert built a floor for the others to play on, that Dom delineated vertical spaces with the bass, or so it seemed. People called Jimmy “the Court Jester,” but onstage Sutliff filled that role: he prodded his lap steel like a boy teasing a snake with a stick—every so often he'd throw his shoulders back, as though the instrument had taken a swipe at him. Peter wanted to share these observations with someone. But who? Not Bluto, who, even when he stood still, managed to convey that his attention lay elsewhere, that he shouldn't be bothered. And Cyril? The bodyguard stood still, one hand cupped over the microphone on his headset, his eyes never still, always roving.

When Peter searched for the orange-haired woman, she was gone.

I
N THE MIDDLE
of a song, a crowd of people materialized around the doctor. Among these people—no, not among, at their nucleus—stood Cross.

Cross hooked a damp hand around Peter's neck, drawing their heads together, a clinch. “You need to meet someone.” The singer had a distinct, iron smell, like something wrapped in butcher paper.

Peter fell in step with Cross. The singer's attendants trailed behind them, crows chasing a hawk. A door opened before them and they entered an intimate domestic space, like the parlor of a winterized Victorian mansion, a loveseat, a few armchairs, all draped in white sheets. Cross's entourage had disappeared.

“Who goes there?” said the loveseat.

A man in canvas pants, an untucked oxford tented over his stomach, lay diagonally across the cushions so that his knees dangled off one side. He had on beetle-black sunglasses; a series of rubber bands trained a full beard into something like a pharaoh would wear. A thread of smoke rose from the ebony cigarette holder staked in the corner of his mouth.

“Peter,” Cross said, “I'd like you to meet my son, Alistair.”

Cross's son pulled his sunglasses down his nose, then tilted his head back so he was looking at Peter. “Excuse me if I don't get up.”

“Allie's back is bothering him,” explained Cross.

“It's attacking me,” said Alistair.

“Do you want me to take a look?” Peter addressed his question to the room.

At the end of the cigarette holder, a twist of paper sizzled.

“I ought to get back to the office,” said Cross, putting his hand on the door. “Take Peter up on his offer. Maybe he can help.”

“Go make your widgets.”

Cross said, “We're both terrible patients,” before opening the door.

Music raced into the room, but when the door latched the sound that had been trapped in the room collapsed.

Alistair extended a hand toward Peter and the doctor pulled him to his feet. “Where'd you do med school?”

“North Carolina.”

“Is that code for Duke?”

“No.”

“UNC?”

“Nope.”

Alistair shuffled over to a banquet table piled with cellophane-coned bouquets, twelve cans of Diet Coke, an ice bucket, a tower of clear plastic cups, a stack of white towels, and an unopened box of tissues. The singer's son scooped ice into a cup. Turning, he said, “You haven't spied a refrigerator, have you?”

Peter pointed to where an extension cord snaked under the table.

Gripping the table's edge, Cross's son lowered himself, a geriatric swimmer descending into a pool. When he was kneeling, he pushed aside the table's skirting, revealing a mini-fridge. “Bingo!” He retrieved a Snickers bar and a liter of Smirnoff vodka, setting them on the table.

“What'd you do to yourself?”

A bloom of perspiration appeared on Alistair's forehead. He filled his cup halfway with vodka. “I fell out of a
samlor
on my way to the Phulay Bay Ritz, where a friend awaited me in La Perla and coconut oil.”

“Are you taking anything for the pain?”

Cross's son raised his glass. “It's not usually this bad. I caught a flight out of Charles de Gaulle this morning, which was tolerable, but to get here I hopped one of those rectal thermometers the regional carriers use.”

Peter kept his face expressionless. “So you self-medicate.”

Cross's son lowered himself onto the loveseat. “I used to work with this physical therapist who overhauled my diet. Rye bread instead of rye whiskey. Bananas without whipped cream. Coffee without Percocet. Real ‘Eye of the Tiger' shit.”

The story was designed to get Peter to ask what had happened—Alistair would offer either a humorous or a tragic explanation for why a thirty-year-old man had the muscle tone of a paté. Rather than play his assigned role, Peter said, “Did your father expect you at dinner tonight?”

Alistair unwrapped the Snickers bar and bit it in half. He chewed. “What did you talk about?”

“He said he thought you could have been a doctor.”

Cross's son started coughing. He held his cup at arm's length, but there was a damp stain on his shirt. “You're messing with me. He told you I could have been a doctor? That's crazy. I guess he forgot how I barely finished high school.”

Outside the room, the band picked up their tempo. A bass line rattled the door.

“He said you were good with animals.”

Alistair took another sip from his cup. “How did he rope you into being his doctor?”

“It's an opportunity. They named me the Rochester Memorial/Tony Ogata Ambassador for Wellness.”

Alistair reached for the candy bar. “What was wrong with your old name?”

The dressing room door opened and the orange-haired woman leaned her head in. A dark tendril of hair stuck to her cheek.

Peter said hello.

“Maya,” Alistair said, addressing the ceiling, “this is Peter, the guy I was telling you about.”

She closed the door behind her.

“Maya's going to be a doctor,” Alistair said.

“In Performance Studies.” She brushed her wonderful hair back from her face.

“Peter's an ambassador.”

“I thought ambassadors wore sashes.”

Peter looked at her again. She was funny. So what if Alistair had beautiful eyes and an accountant who paid his credit cards in full—Peter would not concede this woman. “What's your research in?”

“The short answer? I study forfeiture of the self in music and religious rites.”

Alistair said, “You called yourself an expert on ecstasy.”

Maya said, “I know my audience.” Turning to Peter, “Technically, I research ecstatics. What does a medical ambassador do?”

“It's a pilot program.”

With a flick of his hand, Alistair sent his empty cup spinning across the floor. “Let's go see some live music, before it's too late.”

33

Back at the Barge Inn, I log on to CrossTracks to see what Gene has been up to. The site attracts the kinds of people who are willing to believe that Cross would show up unannounced at a grange hall, play ten gems, and leave with Mrs. South Dakota. The top two threads listed in the general discussion area:

What Arthur Pennyman Doesn't Want You to Know

Boycott JimCrossCompendium!

This is the thanks I get for refusing to post a CrossTracks-style
Penthouse
letter on JCC.

I check out the proposed boycott first. The thread is six pages long! “Let's shut him down,” writes Fingerpicker. FlowerGrrl writes, “Wake up and smell the coffee. Pennyforger is an eccentric cog in the industrial entertainment business.” (I mean, really!) Someone quotes “Testimony of Pilot”: “
If you cast out the money changer loitering in your temple / how come you let him sit at your breakfast table
?
”
²⁵

I read every post. The few people who don't slander me say things like “Someone ought to back up his archive” and “Totally shocked!”

Then I open the thread that purports to address what I don't want people to know. It begins with a post from someone (Gene!) calling himself HonestFolk. HonestFolk identifies himself as a longtime acquaintance of mine, a person who has known me for many years and who, in that time, has made some “startling discoveries” that he (HonestFolk) can no longer keep to himself, because he cares too much about the regular fans to let them get taken in by a “supposed expert.” Then he lists my faults, which I've transcribed below, in their entirety, because 1) I believe, to quote someone other than Cross for a change, “the truth will set me free”; and 2) the things HonestFolk said are now in the public record and it seems cowardly to cherry-pick those charges that are easily dismissed. Here is what he wrote:

• Though Arthur Pennyman claims to have “lots” of contacts on the tour, he only knows a few people. Most refuse to talk to him because they know doing so would get them fired.
  
• Arthur's favorite topic of conversation is not Jimmy Cross, but
  himself
  .
  
• He originated the rumor that the “
  tangle of Coney Island jetsam
  ” from “Jerkwater Blues” is somehow a reference to him, when it clearly represents the Cyclone roller coaster.
  
• Cross never initiated a restraining order against him. This is another rumor circulated by Pennyman in order to increase his profile!
  
• Records show that between 1990 and 1997, Arthur Pennyman failed to pay court-ordered child support. As a result, his child endured hardships such as going without heat and/or staple foodstuffs.
  
• In the divorce papers his ex-wife filed, she listed sexual incompatibility and abandonment as the two primary reasons for ending their union.
  
• The U.S. government is trying to recoup a large tax debt, which Pennyman has refused to pay.
  
• The accuracy of his setlists has been greatly overstated. A cursory examination of his archives turned up more than sixty likely errors.
  
• The website and the things he writes there are part of an elaborate strategy to establish himself as an expert on Cross so that he can sign a lucrative book deal about Cross's life.
  
• He has not shared any of the tens of thousands of photographs he has taken of Cross, but intends to sell exclusive rights to those photographs at some future date.
  
• Numerous law enforcement agencies have investigated
  him on suspicion of pedophilia and endangering children.
  

First, I acknowledge there is truth in everything he alleges. However, the manner in which he presents his “facts” is prejudicial. For instance, if an older man is observed wearing a duster and carrying a camera in a school zone, he can expect to be approached by a member of the school staff and/or the local constabulary (as he should be, I think); this has happened to me on a couple occasions. In each case the “investigation” was concluded with a handshake and an apology—I only mentioned it to Gene to emphasize my own estrangement from society. As for the meaning of those enigmatic lyrics in “Jerkwater Blues,” Cross pointed directly at me while singing those lines.
²⁶
In the period mentioned (1990–1997), I did not always meet my court-ordered responsibility to Gabby. Yes, she suffered. There is no excuse for what happened. I have NO PLANS TO PROFIT, not today, nor in the future; profiting is the antithesis of my project. Like I've said before, I consider following Cross to be an artistic performance (and, as a piece of art, I expect its value as art to be determined by those people who observe it).
²⁷
I'm not aware of any errors in my database—identifying “Painted Horses” as “Painted Hoses” does not, to my mind, qualify as an error (even if such errors could be found, in an archive of more than 22,000 song performances, 60 errors would represent less than 0.3 percent of my entries).