Justin Tussing - Vexation Lullaby

“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.

FLETCHER 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.

•••

WHEN 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.

•••

THE 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.