Justin Tussing - Vexation Lullaby

The boys put it on autopilot for the encore, marching through “Low, Lower Down,” “Luster,” and “Broom Job.” Three classics, but played back-to-back-to-back the effect is less than the sum of their parts, like Neapolitan ice cream.

When the lights come up, Mindy finds us. She looks exhausted (I guess her five kids have caught up with her). She tells me how nice it was to run into me, but I suspect she’s upset that I monopolized her friend.

“Should we get a coffee?” she asks, yawning.

“It’s late,” Robinson says. “I’m going to give Artie a ride to his car.”

The two women share a hug, while I pretend to be distracted.

“Good night, Artie.” Mindy makes a kissing face; my past disappears into the crowd.

•••

I post the setlist while Robinson drives me (in a late-model Volvo wagon) to my car. As I shift to get out, she grabs my fingers. “I want you to follow me back to my place, but I understand if you can’t.”

“We’ll see,” this bad boy says.

HOPPING FROM ONE interchange to another, we make our way north of the city and into a picket-fence neighborhood of oversized colonials. A moat of security lights ring her house. She docks her car in the glowing maw of an automatic garage door. An immaculate John Deere riding mower occupies the adjacent space. She gets out of her car and tells me she can move the mower if I want to garage my car; I tell her that both the car and its owner are accustomed to sleeping under the stars. She says, “That sounds so pitiful.”

I wonder if the drive hasn’t dampened her enthusiasm. Once the musicians unplug and the houselights go up, the magic starts to dissipate. Robinson smiles at me. “Lucky for you, my father bred in me an unquenchable appetite for pity.”

I say, “It’s nice to be appreciated.”

SHE GOES INTO the house first and deactivates an alarm. Then she leads me to a bathroom off the kitchen. There’s a shower. She hands me a towel.

“I’ll see you when you get cleaned up,” she says, closing the door.

Beneath the sink I find a caddy loaded with two unopened toothbrushes, a floss dispenser, a pump bottle of toothpaste, a coral-colored scrubby, and a selection of body washes, shampoos, and conditioners, plus body lotion, face lotion, and a ceramic cube holding a few dozen cotton swabs. Stepping into the shower, I systematically attack each appendage with the appropriate product. I lather and scrub, rinse and condition, gargle and floss, dry and moisturize. Once again, I’m gone too long. I emerge, wrapped in a towel, my body glowing like a feverish child.

Robinson is not waiting for me.

I climb the stairs. Her bedroom — her bed is a fluffy white confection — is empty. I find her in a second bedroom (a real estate agent would call it a “home office”). She’s changed into these flouncy strawberry shorts and a heather-gray T-shirt: the shorts suggest sex, but the shirt suggests television. She’s staring into a computer monitor— arghh , she’s logged into CrossTracks. Before I can see what she’s reading, she turns the monitor off. She takes my hand and leads me back downstairs. The guest room is a still life — a bed, a ladder-back chair, a spray of dried flowers erupting from a vase that sits on a Federal-style desk. Robinson draws back the top sheet.

She says, “In the morning I’ll feed you.”

Had a person spent as much time on the road as I had, had he walked away from half the things I’d walked away from, had he come to believe it was his lot in life to be a constant stranger, that man could understand my gratitude. I thank her.

“You called me Robinson,” she says.

“Robinson.”

As she draws the door closed between us, she says, “It’s Rosalyn.”

Cross planted himself at the head of the stage and thrashed his guitar. He and his men had the high ground. They used their strategic advantage to punish the crowd. What, Peter wondered, had the city of Pittsburgh done to deserve this? Peter wasn’t sure he liked what they were up to, but he couldn’t help but feel awed that a seventy-year-old man could be responsible for such noise.

He watched the faces in the first rows — it was impossible to tell whether they were singing or screaming.

Wayne cupped a hand around Peter’s shoulder. Then, leaning close, he said, “Allie wants an adjustment.”

“I’m not a chiropractor,” Peter shouted

Taking a step back, Wayne raised his hands, a mock surrender. His body said, Don’t shoot the messenger! “He’s waiting for you downstairs.”

“Fine,” Peter said, though not loud enough to be heard. He’d been wishing that he could have gone out into the audience. He wanted to be able to see Cross’s face instead of the audience’s.

•••

Peter followed a set of stairs beneath the stage and under the orchestra pit. Near the end of a concrete hallway, he discovered the cramped, subbasement dressing room that Alistair had commandeered. Cross’s son sat on the makeup table, his back against a large mirror, a ring of frosted bulbs haloed his body. His bare feet hung off the edge of the table, as white as peeled potatoes. Maya sat in front of him shredding buds of pot on the face of an ebook reader. Both occupants looked like they’d been teargassed.

“Herr Doktor,” Alistair said, “welcome to our salon.”

As Peter watched, Maya pinched the weed into a corncob pipe, licked a finger, and swept the gizmo’s screen clean.

“I think I’ll come back later.”

Alistair said, “But you’re the missing ingredient.”

“When’s the show start?” Maya asked.

Peter was sure he could still hear the music. “He’s already playing. Listen.”

“That’s the radio,” Alistair insisted.

“It’s not.” Peter would stand for reason, hopelessly square reason.

“Are you avoiding him?” Maya asked, sucking the lighter’s flame into the bowl.

When she’d finished, Alistair grabbed the pipe and held it, ready, in front of his mouth. “I’m not avoiding anyone.”

“Says the guy in the basement.” A thread of smoke spun up from the corner of her lips.

Peter still couldn’t pin down her accent, some remote British colony. He refused to ask her where she came from. He didn’t want to seem interested; that strategy had worked for him in the past. “I should go,” he said, not moving.

Alistair took another hit. “This is just laundry-folding pot.”

Maya shook her head. “It’s weaponized.”

Alistair tapped the pipe on the table before shoving it and the lighter into his pants pocket. “Do you ascribe to doctor-patient confidentiality?”

“Do I ascribe to it?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Wayne said you wanted me to take a look at your back.”

“Fine,” Alistair said, scooting off his perch.

Peter glanced at Maya; at that moment, it appeared she was trying to read her own bare hand.

“She can stay.”

“So we’re clear, I’m not a chiropractor.”

Alistair took a sip from a plastic cup. “Good, I’m not a patient.”

Peter found his stethoscope, pressed the diaphragm against Alistair’s damp and pale wrist. The man’s heart cantered along at 80 bpm. His blood pressure registered on the high side, though within range.

When he palpated Alistair’s lower back, the man winced. Peter lifted the hem of his shirt — the skin around the lumbar vertebrae appeared mottled. “Is this where it hurts?”

“You’ve found the Forbidden City.”

Peter had Alistair do some basic stretches to gauge his flexibility. “It’s probably a mild muscle strain. You should take Advil and try not to irritate it.”