Justin Tussing - Vexation Lullaby

Why did Peter feel such satisfaction? He’d almost walked into that room alone. Even if Peter had managed to keep his job, he’d have been branded a fool.

“Cross has a big following in the Philippines. A couple years ago he filled the national soccer stadium — fifty thousand seats and twice as many people hanging around outside.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed.”

“Every Filipino man believes he has four talents: a great lover, a great boxer, an outlaw, and a singer.”

“And that’s Jimmy Cross.”

“Exactly.”

The bartender delivered the next round.

“Were you at the concert last night?”

“Sheila and I had tickets, but we got stuck at home. I heard he seemed spacey.”

Two women who seemed to have taken great pains to appear to be in their thirties, tanned, their hair blown out, their assets stuffed into strapless dresses, wedged between the men.

“Are you doctors?” asked the one closer to Peter.

Martin said he was a mechanic.

“I’ve never met an honest mechanic,” said the second woman.

“He’s kidding,” Peter said.

The women fixed their eyes on Martin.

“At the moment I’m trying to repair this young man’s heart, but I don’t have the right tools.”

When the women stared at his chest, Peter pulled his shoulders back.

The woman nearer Peter leaned toward him and asked, “What happened to your heart? Someone break it?”

“Crushed it,” said Martin.

“Poor baby.” Specks of mascara had settled on her cheeks, like cinders.

He pushed his lip down, pouting. When she turned to repeat herself to her friend, he noticed a pink weal half an inch above the upper edge of her dress.

Martin ordered a round for the women. The whisperer was a Katie; her friend was Jillian with a J.

The bartender delivered drinks to the women.

“What are these?” asked Jillian.

“It’s what the doctor ordered,” Peter said. His little joke seemed to sail over the women’s heads. Martin gave him a look that Peter translated as Cut the shit .

“Is it a White Russian?” Katie asked.

Martin curled a finger to draw them close. “It’s an Anchors Aweigh: bourbon, peach and cherry brandy, triple sec, and cream.”

The women frowned, but sipped their drinks.

“It tastes like poisoned candy,” Jillian said.

Martin reached over and took the woman’s drink away.

Laughing, Katie added, “Or like something my grandfather drinks in his basement.”

Martin said, “I doubt either of you has a living grandparent.”

Peter had warmed to Katie. She had a flirty habit of bumping her bare shoulder against him, and it had gotten so he’d started to anticipate the next collision.

But Martin’s comment hit its mark.

“What!” squawked Katie.

“Nasty,” Jillian said.

The women stood there sizzling like fuses, before storming off.

Peter said, “We should probably relocate before they enlist someone to teach us a lesson.”

Martin looked toward the door. “I won’t let anyone mess up your face before you’ve had a chance to take advantage of your station.”

“What station is that?”

“You’re going on tour.” Martin took a long sip of his drink. “Peg will tell you in the morning. Act surprised.”

Peter pulled his phone out of his pocket. No voice mails. No texts.

“You guys didn’t even call me.”

“I called as soon as we’d sorted out the details.”

That’s not what he’d meant. Why hadn’t anyone called him while his future was still being decided? “Thanks.”

“If someone gave me the choice between watching my kids graduate college or hearing Cross play ‘Sin Perdido’ live, I’m not sure which I’d pick.”

“You’d pick your kids.”

Martin tapped his glass against Peter’s. “I’ve never dreamed of watching my kids graduate.”

Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” played on the TV as Mariano Rivera walked from the bullpen to the mound.

A pair of large guys squeezed between the doctors and ordered four pitchers of beer — they wore matching T-shirts and goatees.

Peter glanced at the back of the room — maybe ten more men in goatees and T-shirts circled a table. A wave of laughter rippled through the group, and as it did Peter realized that they weren’t gathered around a table at all, but around Katie, his favorite shoulder bumper.

When the men carried the pitchers to the back of the room, Peter told his colleague they needed to leave.

“Not before Mo strikes out these cocksucking Rays.” Martin glanced at the back of the room. “Silver Surfer, you ever been in a fight?”

Peter understood he wasn’t talking over drinks with Dr. Vinoray — he was out with the Steel Retractors’ impulsive front man. A sour taste blossomed in Peter’s mouth. “In fourth grade.”

“How’d it start?”

On the TV, the batter took a defensive swing at an inside pitch. One out.

“This kid in my gym class pulled his arms in his sleeves so his elbows poked against the front of his shirt and he sort of made them go in every direction—”

“Like boobs.”

“Like Judith’s boobs.”

“I take it Judith wasn’t a fan of bras.”

Peter glanced at the back of the room. Nobody paid any attention to them. “His whole impression hinged on that fact.”

“You remember the kid’s name?”

Peter could picture him, his face as round as a pie. “Danny Macanudo.”

“And you defended Judith’s honor.”

“Something like that. Then he clobbered me with a rubber horseshoe.”

“Where’d he get a rubber horseshoe?”

“They were just there. Someone in the superintendent’s office probably bought a crate of them, figuring they’d be safe.”

On the TV, the batter sent a pitch bouncing to the second baseman, who relayed the ball to first in time. A base runner scampered to second.

The horseshoe had caught Peter in the side of the neck and dropped him as clean as a gunshot. The gym teacher, who’d been supervising the kids from his glass-walled office on the other side of the gym, had come loping over, pulled Peter to his feet, and told him to “walk it off.”

“You want to get in a fight now?” Martin asked.

“Why would I want that?”

“It’s hard to be depressed while someone’s kicking your ass.”

“You think I’m depressed?”

“How are you feeling about Lucy moving to Albany?”

“When did I tell you that?”

Martin pinned three twenties beneath his empty glass, pocketed the rest of the bills, and stood up. “You didn’t. She stopped by the house last weekend to say good-bye to Sheila and the kids.”

After watching two cutters almost bounce off the plate, the next batter camped out on a fastball and launched it out, out, into the October night, where it died, just short of the warning track, in the left fielder’s glove.

At the back of the room, the beer drinkers cheered.

“That’s the game,” Martin said. “Let’s get out of here before we get Macanudo’ed.”

When I open my eyes I see a lightbulb burning in a tulip-shaped glass fixture beneath the ceiling fan. A white dwarf of a headache throbs at the base of my skull. The bed is beside me. At some point in the night, after dreaming I was suffocating, I relocated to the braided rug.

My tongue is a fossil. I pull myself to the sink, where nausea shakes me. I shuck my clothes and climb into the shower, but though I turn the handles like an Etch A Sketch, the water doesn’t come. I make a rude orchestration on the toilet.

EMERGING FROM THE bathroom, I gather up my few things, my camera, a duffle of clothes I had hoped to launder, and my Dopp kit. I leave the spare key on the counter where Gene can’t miss it.