Vexation Lullaby (2 page)

The guard barked something into his walkie-talkie. “They're expecting you on the top floor,” he said, turning to feed a card into the machine.

A ball of light exploded against the passenger-side window. Peter's attention jumped to a gaunt figure in an ankle-length duster approaching his car; the man held a camera out before him like a dowsing rod. The flash detonated again.

“I told you to get lost,” barked the watchman.

The camera lens
clacked
against the window, like a lover's teeth. A capacitor released its charge and the xenon gas painted the doctor with white light.

“Somebody about to get a camera
up
his ass,” said the guard.

When the gate lifted, Peter goosed the throttle. Checking his rearview mirror, he expected the photographer to chase after him, but the man was nowhere.

He corkscrewed his way up the structure. Fluorescent bulbs gave off a jaundiced light. Emerging from beneath the low ceiling, Peter reached the top of the garage and parked.

A small glass atrium, like a miniature greenhouse, connected the garage to the hotel. Inside, a man in a black-satin bomber jacket frowned at Peter's fifteen-year-old Subaru.

The man slapped a blue pad on the wall, causing the atrium door to yawn open.

“You Peter?” The man was short, oval-shaped. An overturned bowl of black hair (or was it a toupee?) cupped the top of his head. He had to be sixty.

“I am,” Peter said, grabbing his backpack. “Some weirdo took my picture.”

“That'd be Pennyman. You know ‘Jerkwater Blues,' the ‘
tangle of Coney Island jetsam
'
? Supposedly that's Pennyman. He thinks he's Jimmy's biographer.”

“You're not Jimmy.”

“I'm Bluto,” the man said. “Pennyman's at every show. It's not clear if he's following us or if we're following him.”

Bluto pushed open a fire door, into a quiet hallway where a custodian in a blue jumpsuit agitated a section of carpet with a steam cleaner.

Peter sifted through what the man had said. Only after a solution occurred to him did he realize he'd been trying to solve a riddle. The answer was absurd, but acknowledging the absurdity didn't dismiss it. “The person who called me, that wasn't the singer Jimmy Cross.”

“Folks don't usually accuse him of singing.”

“But, that was him?”

“Did you think you were going to see some regular shmuck? ”

“What's he doing in Rochester?”

“Shit, Jimmy loves this place. He's crazy about your cinnamon rolls, middle-brow architecture, and perchy tap water.” Bluto reached up and patted his own hair, as though soothing a pet. “Why do you think he's here? He played a show.”

Up ahead, a door opened and a guy emerged wearing a narrow tank top, leather shorts, and a neoprene knee brace. “Bluto, don't forget I need a king bed in Bowling Green. Moira's meeting me there.”

Bluto held his BlackBerry out, tapped a finger on the screen. “King-sized bed for king-sized appetites. I sent you a confirmation half an hour ago.”

The man assessed Peter. “You the new Kev?”

“The new Kev's meeting us in Buffalo. This is a friend of the Big Man.”

“I thought you were someone else,” the man said, retreating into his room. “I'm Fletcher. I'm in charge of sound.”

“Be sure Moira leaves that dog at home,” Bluto said, sliding his phone back in his pocket.

The guy responsible for sound looked stricken. “She can't go anywhere without that dog; it's for her anxiety.”

“Not my problem,” Bluto said. “No pets. No companions with pets. It's in your contract.”

“She won't come without that dog. You never heard of the Americans with Disabilities Act?”

“We're not going down the pet road, Fletch,” Bluto said, dragging Peter away.

When the two men had turned a corner, Bluto said, “Fletch is
sober now, but he's the only guy Black Sabbath ever fired for partyi
ng too hard. One time he passed out in the monkey enclosure at the Berlin Zoo.”

Bluto stopped next to a door and held up a finger. He knocked. The door opened partway and an Asian guy in a yellow knit hat stuck his head out. “I need you to pull Fletch's contract and make sure we put in a ‘no pet' clause. If there isn't one, add it and backdate it.”

“You got a baby in there?” the man asked, pointing at Peter's backpack.

Peter hugged his bag. “Diagnostic tools.”

“Excuse Wayne,” Bluto said, “he doesn't have a filter.”

Wayne said, “I'm just pointing out how he's carrying it in front of him instead of, like, on his shoulders. You know those fathers in Brooklyn who bring their babies to a bar, order Belgian beer, and play Dolly Parton on the jukebox? That's the way you're presenting yourself.”

Bluto shook his head. “Dr. Silver is here to see the Big Man.”

“No offense meant,” Wayne said, tugging his hat down over his eyebrows. “I figured you were someone else.”

Bluto repeated that the new Kev would be joining them in Buffalo.

They passed another elevator, turned a corner, and ran into a giant, pumpkin-faced man in a navy pinstriped suit.

“Cyril, meet our mystery guest.”

The large man stepped toward them, eclipsing the overhead lights.

“You the doctor?” Cyril asked.

Peter said he was.

Cyril sucked on a lower lip as dark and plump as a plum. “I still got to wand you and look in that bag.”

Bluto clasped Peter's hand. “If you need anything, let me know.”

A white plastic paddle maneuvered up the inseam of Peter's pant leg, tapped his left testicle, retreated.

“Sorry 'bout that,” Cyril said, peering in the front of the doctor's backpack. “Follow me.”

Bluto had disappeared, but Peter discovered he was holding the man's business card:

BLUTO GILHOOLEY

Logisticals

“Mr. Cross knows your mom,” Cyril said, heading down the hall. He didn't turn around; he might as well have been talking to the fire sprinklers in the ceiling.

Peter meant to say, “There's been a misunderstanding.” Instead, he said, “I think there might be a misunderstanding.” “Might” was the strongest resistance he could muster.

Cyril stopped and tapped a key card against a door frame. A lock clunked open. Pushing the door in, Cyril said, “Wait in the back bedroom. The Big Man will find you.”

Peter ducked beneath the arbor of Cyril's arm.

3

I have an ex-wife in California and a daughter in Tennessee, but for more than twenty years I've been without a home. In that time I've traveled to thirty-nine countries. I've slept in five-star hotels and on park benches. I've squandered two fortunes and I've let myself go. I'm not a great man, but I possess a greatness of determination. My name is Arthur Pennyman and what sets me apart from the other seven billion souls on this earth is this: since July 27, 1988, I've attended every one of Jim Cross's public performances.

Dominick Moretti, Jimmy's bassist, has been with the tour since it started in 1986, but I've seen more shows than he has, thanks to two protracted leaves of absence. No one else has even
lasted a decade. Dwight Sutliff and Albert Blunt, Jimmy's current instrumentalist and percussionist, have only been around for a couple of years.

Some fans consider the shifting shape of the band to be the central narrative of the tour.
²
To that end, distinct periods have been identified and ranked. Among the cognoscenti, the hard-driving guitar work of the late C. L. Boyd is held in the highest esteem; meanwhile, defending Junior Pearl's dirty southern twang only invites ridicule. The significance of March 7, 1996, the date Frederick Tate replaced Gracie Dean on drums, has been debated exhaustively. While I have been fonder of certain players than others (good riddance, Gary Woodman), on balance I find the
band to be a tolerable distraction. I'd much prefer Jimmy appear on
stage alone.

4

Peter turned a corner and found himself in a sitting room. A man
with a shaved head reclined on a sectional sofa, Celtic green basket
ball sneakers peeking out from beneath the hem of a mustard-
colored robe. Beside him, a pasty dude in a leather biker jacket, eyes hidden behind a zebra-striped mask, snored with his arms folded over his gut.
SportsCenter
flashed on a muted TV. On the other side of a half-wall, a grizzled roadie in headphones sat at a black lacquer table; the man wrote in a ledger, ignoring the fruit salad that overflowed from a watermelon carved to resemble a swan.

The monk aimed a remote at the TV and Peter saw the serial killer unzip the front of her wet suit.

“Such big breasts for an athlete,” the monk said.

The biker lifted the corner of his sleep mask.

Peter continued down a dim hallway, past an inflated balance ball, a coiled jump rope, two sets of dumbbells, and a tangle of giant elastic bands. Half a dozen identical black roller bags lined up like dominoes.

At the end of the hall he found a bedroom. A middle-aged woman, her long gray hair spun into a cotton-candy tower, sat at the edge of the mattress reading a magazine. Beside her, a black cowboy hat sat on a pillow.

“You're the doctor,” the woman announced, her face hidden behind the phone-book-thick fashion magazine.

Peter introduced himself.

With an index finger, she folded down a corner of the magazine, made eye contact. “I'm Kiki Beals.”

Peter knew the name was supposed to mean something to him. He said, “Ah.”

“The photographer. I did the Abu Ghraib re-creations in McDonald's bathrooms.”

That was it. He'd read about her in
Time
.

On the other side of a door someone coughed and a toilet flushed. Peter heard water splash into a sink.

“
Billions Served
, that's the title.” The woman dropped the magazine on the bed. “Jimmy and I are writing an opera.”

Did people still write operas? Peter wasn't sure.

“Have you been to the Arctic?” Kiki asked, hopefully.

The bathroom door opened and out walked a compact man in a shiny gray suit, his head covered in silver stubble. Heavy-lidded squinting eyes looked out from above a pair of frameless bifocals.

Peter had twice before had brushes with celebrity. In the fourth grade, Randy Owen, from the band Alabama, came into his mother's store and bought a jelly-bean-sized emerald, peeling seven hundred-dollar bills from a roll as thick as a soda can. Later, during his residency, Peter ducked into an examination room and came face-to-face with a television actress. In her intake report, she complained of soreness in an elbow she'd had scoped two months earlier. “I've been playing tennis against doctor orders.” She turned her lip down in an exaggerated pout. In the closeness of the examination room, her beauty made him feel goofy. He started to write a codeine scrip. “Also,” she said, “I may have contracted gonorrhea.” “The risks of tennis,” Peter said. He was relieved when she laughed. He'd thought of her last fall, when she was nominated for an Emmy for her portrayal of a fertility surrogate who learns that the child she's carrying is the genetic clone of an eccentric billionaire.

Unsure of protocol, Peter found himself bowing to the man in the suit. “It's an honor to meet you,” he said to a pair of burgundy wing tips.

“Honey,” Kiki said, “this is Peter.”

“I'm Mr. Kiki Beals.”

“I don't like that joke, Nicholas.”

Peter felt sure he'd embarrassed himself, but the couple didn't seem to notice.

“Are you a musician?” Nicholas asked, pursing his lips.

“He's Jimmy's
doctor
.”

“You're a psychiatrist, Peter?”

“I'm a hospitalist.”

Nicholas turned to his wife. “Do you know what that means?”

“I studied the delivery of medicine in a hospital setting.”

“I was just telling Peter about the opera.”

“Do you know Charles Leale?” Nicholas asked.

Peter recognized that eternal cocktail party game of establishing common ties. Unfortunately, the name didn't ring a bell. Which milieu was the man reaching out to? Was Leale from Rochester? A friend of Cross? “Remind me.”

“Leale was the first physician on the scene when Lincoln was shot. He published a book about his experience.”

“The opera concerns Lincoln's assassination,” Kiki explained.

“Oh,” Peter said. He wanted to ask what the Arctic had to do with anything.

Kiki stood up from the bed. “We really ought to get going. It was
nice meeting you.”

This time Nicholas bowed.

A
FTER THE COUPLE
walked out, Peter checked in with his apprehension. He found it substantially increased. He'd left his condo intending to engage in a little noblesse oblige, but circumstances had changed in a way he didn't fully understand. He wanted to slip out, but how does one slip past a bodyguard? He imagined himself getting tackled, tasered. He'd wait.

Almost silently, hidden machines recycled the air.

The room phone rang twice, quit. Peter read a laminated card detailing instructions for operating the suite's electronic blinds. At some point, Peter realized, he would need to use a bathroom. He set his backpack down on a dark wood card table, beside a tray of Jordan almonds. He picked one of the candies up and popped it in his mouth.

“You got a sweet tooth?”

The speaker's heavy-lidded, bloodshot eyes peered out from behind a pair of thick-framed reading glasses. Peter thought he recognized the roadie he'd spotted writing at the table when he'd first entered the suite.

“I just ate the one.”

“Anybody hassle you?”