Justin Tussing - Vexation Lullaby

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.

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. 2To 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.

Peter turned a corner and found himself in a sitting room. A man with a shaved head reclined on a sectional sofa, Celtic green basketball 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.

AFTER 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.