Justin Tussing - Vexation Lullaby

In his final act of kindness, he snatched a bouquet of dried flowers from a vase in the entranceway and fed them into the garbage disposal.

“My mother gave me those.”

Martin turned on the faucet. “You’re welcome.”

The visit had been a tremendous gift.

I’m not sure what made me think Buffalo was only an hour from Rochester. It’s probably closer to a two-hour trip. Or it would have been if the DOT didn’t have a dozen crews out installing shiny new guardrails. The construction zones were lit like operating rooms.

My mind plays tricks on me at night. After the radio stations power down, I start to feel as isolated as an astronaut. It takes a little self-mortification to maintain any faith. Why else would Cross accept the lifetime achievement award at the Kennedy Center wearing a “World’s Greatest Grandpa” T-shirt? It was a hair shirt. What sort of family man stays out on the road a hundred and fifty days a year?

At least Cross can fall back on his legacy: nine studio albums, seven live albums, all those irrefutable songs, not to mention the royalty checks, the publishing rights, and his unimpeachable reputation. I’ve made similar sacrifices, yet I live in obscurity. Still, I can’t shake the sense that my fate is owed a cosmic reaccounting. How can I explain that I feel special in my skin?

I come to another work site — flatbed trucks support giant lights that resemble an insect’s eyes. Little oases of movement and life, then it’s back into the dark.

IT’S ALMOST SIX by the time I get to Buffalo. There’s some sort of precipitation: the streetlights have haloes, and the roads appear greasy. Following the directions emailed to me by my host, I drive past a used car lot, Denny’s, Dollar Store, Great Wall of China: Chinese Food and Sushi, PetWorld, Guitar Center, another used car lot, and then the Denny’s again. It’s a Möbius strip mall. Somehow I end up in the overflow lot of a McDonald’s. Chalking it up to destiny, I park and go inside.

A PRETTY GIRL, her hair pulled in plastic-looking marcel waves, wearing gold dollar-sign earrings as big as playing cards, stares at me openly. I’m the only customer. Her skin looks like a Hershey’s bar and her eyelids are painted Easter egg blue. Standing next to her, with his back to me, is a stout man in a cornmeal suit. He turns just enough that he can pick me up on his peripheral vision.

“You gots a customer, Laverne.”

The girl pokes at the register. “Welcome to McDonald’s. Can I take your order?”

“Good,” says the suit.

I ask for an orange juice and an Egg McMuffin without cheese.

“Where it say ‘no cheese’?” asks the girl.

“Don’t agitate,” the man coos. “You got to consider it logically.”

The girl frowns for a moment before punching a key.

“For a dollar more you want a Newman coffee?”

I say no thanks.

The boss turns to look at me. “I bet you on your way to bed.”

“Shortly,” I say.

“This job certifies you an expert in people,” the boss says to the girl. “Everybody come to Donnie Mack. Rich or poor, sooner or later a person gets hungry in his car. Stare at those golden arches for a while and you going to see some spread legs. That’s subliminal. And people think they’re looking at a giant M.”

The girl covers her mouth with one hand as the other takes my credit card and runs it through the machine.

“He know what I’m talking about. Those legs means this business recession-proof. Now hold up a second,” the man says. He walks over to the ice-milk machine and lifts a stack of papers off the top. He pulls a FedEx envelope out of the mix and sets it on the counter. “What you see here?” he asks, staking his finger to the logo:

The girl and I stare at the envelope.

“What we looking for?” she asks.

“That’s going to give it away.”

My sandwich slides down a stainless steel gutter.

“I don’t know,” I say.

“Oh, I gots it, I think,” Laverne says.

The boss shakes out a paper bag, walks over to my sandwich, and drops it inside. “Tell our customer what he’s missing.”

She sets her fingernail where the E meets the X. “They put an arrow in there.”

Her boss snakes an orange juice out of a cooler and sets it inside the bag. He reaches my breakfast toward me, then pulls it back. “Tells you they’re in the business of going places.”

“That’s my business, too,” I say, snatching the bag from him.

“But FedEx be recognized around the world and don’t nobody know you.”

I’m pushing through the doors when I hear the girl say, “You have a day.”

Back at his place, Peter popped 5 mg of melatonin and queued the triathlon movie on his DVR. As the killer unzipped her wet suit Peter thought of Cross’s bird-boned chest. When she bent to roll the suit off her hips, Peter focused on the actress’s plump ass; he jerked off, brushed his teeth, and got in bed. Staring at the ceiling, he discovered he could recall partial lyrics to no fewer than five Jim Cross songs, “No Evil Star,” “Long Gone,” “Wayward Satellite,” “Absolutely Nowhere,” and one about prohibition. He couldn’t recall the lyrics to “Jerkwater Blues,” but he remembered there had been a controversy after one of the pharmaceutical companies used the tune in a commercial for an acid-reflux remedy. Somehow, that Cross would accept the same dollars the Stones and R.E.M. stuffed their mattresses with proved nothing was sacred anymore. On TV a pundit suggested Virgin paint its logo on the tail of the Spirit of St. Louis .

•••

PETER WOKE TO one of those arid days where the atmosphere acts like a magnifying glass and even the farthest landmarks appear in hyperdetail. He had the sense that he’d survived a brush with danger or else passed a trial.

He checked his email while sitting on the throne.

In preparation for an upcoming board meeting, everyone was scrambling to generate enough paperwork to justify how they spent their days. He ignored report drafts from the committees he sat on, clicked through announcements from the vision center (they were relocating) and the flu clinic (welcoming a new RN). The Wound Care Clinic had produced an Excel sheet that demonstrated that they — and not Physical Therapy — were next in line for new furniture. Pediatrics was collecting board games.

Peter stepped into the shower.

At some point he would tell Martin about his evening, about meeting the tour manager and the sound guy’s weird getup and the polite giant with the metal detector. He would tell Martin about Kiki Beals, about mistaking her husband for Cross and then mistaking Cross for a roadie. He’d tell Martin the whole story and when he got to the punch line — when Cross invited him to get on his plane — Martin would say, “You should have gotten on the plane.” Or, worse, he’d say, “I would have gotten on the plane.” Just like that, the story wouldn’t be about Peter’s adventure, but about Peter squandering an adventure.

As he shut the water off, Peter heard his phone vibrate on the vanity. The screen listed three missed calls and two voice mails. Every number appeared as “Unavailable.”

While his post-Lucy coffeemaker hiccupped and hissed, he checked his messages: the head of patient care requested Peter stop by before his shift; Bluto said, Shoot me your address and social, doc, so I can cut you a check.

The phone buzzed again, another unavailable number. Peter answered; he would always be convenient.

“It occurred to me you wouldn’t know it was a Sunbeam Tiger,” Cross said. “You used to call it the Go-Go Car.”