Thank you again for your time,
Ellen and Dale Potts
(Maybe something terrible happened. Or maybe she doesn’t want to be found. I’ve looked at the picture many times. If I saw her, I believe I’d recognize her. But what I’d do then, I can’t say. Though they don’t mention it in their note, Kathleen was twenty-five when she disappeared. She’d be thirty-three now. I don’t reply because I’ve got no news for them and the last thing they need is for me to feed them hope.)
26
At ten the next morning, Peter said good-bye to his condo and his charmless car and took a cab to the Regency. He brought a large roller suitcase stuffed with clothes and personal effects. A smaller carry-on contained — in addition to the memorabilia — basic medical supplies: nitrile exam gloves, gauze and tape, burn dressing, two compressions bandage, a glucose meter, an IV kit, one bag of glucose, one bag of sodium chloride, one bag of Hespan, one bag of sterile water, a blood pressure cuff, a penlight, two insulin pens and two epinephrine pens, heat packs and cold packs, an intubation kit, a suture kit, a portable pulse oximeter, a stethoscope, a CPR mask, Ativan and tramadol, ibuprofen and Ambien, an infrared thermometer. He had enough space left over for the portable defibrillator that the band’s insurance rider required travel with Cross.
Peter had agreed to meet Bluto in the hotel’s lobby at ten-thirty, but the manager was nowhere to be seen. The elevators kept burping out people in suits and ties.
A few minutes after eleven, the elevator shuddered to a stop and a bellhop wrestled two overloaded brass carts into the lobby. He towed the luggage past the front desk, out a side door, and parked it beside the valet station.
“You been here long?” Bluto wore a maroon tracksuit that made him look like a tick. His smooth cheeks looked slapped.
“Not too long,” Peter said.
“You ready to get your cherry popped?”
“Something like that.”
“I’ll tell you when we’re ready to go.”
Peter looked toward the hotel’s entrance. A glossy black bus had pulled up to the curb. As he watched, the driver went around unlatching the side compartments.
“You want a hand?”
“Don’t be a Boy Scout.” The tour manager rolled Peter’s luggage outside, shaking his head.
At eleven-thirty Peter’s phone buzzed. Bluto asked, “Where are you?”
The driver waited by the door of the bus, gray curls stuck out beneath a Greek fisherman’s cap. Peter introduced himself. “Okay,” the man said, “don’t make us late.”
Two booths and a deep leather sofa constituted a little lounge at the front of the coach. Bluto sat in the second booth, a sheaf of spreadsheets and a laptop in front of him. A heavy blue curtain blocked off the rest of the bus
“Is it just us?” Peter asked.
Bluto hooked his thumb over his shoulder. “The rest of the inmates are getting some undeserved rest.”
“Should I say hello to Mr. Cross?”
Bluto checked his watch. “Mr. Cross is in California.”
Peter wished he’d brought a magazine.
The driver took his seat and closed the front door. “We clear for takeoff?” he asked.
Without looking up, Bluto said, “Kick it.”
A few miles outside of Buffalo, a barefoot kid in a chef’s hounds- tooth slacks and a black T-shirt emerged from behind the curtain. He slid into the booth across from Bluto.
“You need something?” the road manager asked, still tapping away at his computer.
The kid pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and flattened it on the table.
“I’m not reading that,” Bluto said.
“Björk’s percussionist has a donkey jawbone. I want one.”
“Where do I find something like that?”
“I don’t know. Iceland?”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah, who’s the golfer?”
The manager cleared his throat, turned ever so slightly toward Peter. “Dr. Silver is a friend of Jimmy’s.”
Peter said, “Hello.”
“Is he cool?”
“He’s a board-certified doctor, if that’s what you mean.”
The kid pulled at his lip. “You’re not a journalist?”
“I’m a hospitalist.”
“I sit behind the plates,” the kid said. “Name’s Albert.”
Bluto took the kid’s note and shoved it in his pocket. “If you show the doctor around when we get to the joint, I’ll have Wayne track down your thing.”
Albert slid out from the booth, stopping in front of Peter. “I’ll see you later, donkey bone.”
•••
Bluto said, “His girlfriend is a famous Polish conceptual artist.”
“I don’t know any Polish conceptual artists.”
“I’ve met her a few times. She looks about fifty because she was born under communism.”
“How old is he?”
“Albert turns twenty next month.” Bluto looked up and smiled. “Not bad for a kid who was homeschooled in a van.”
The bus started to rattle as the driver swung them toward an exit ramp.
“Should we talk about your expectations for my role on the tour?”
Bluto closed his laptop. “Let’s be clear, I don’t have any expectations. I do, however, have a rule: don’t make us late. I’m paid to babysit the band. People not in the band need to be self-sufficient. Wayne will give you a copy of the itinerary each morning. Don’t lose it.”
“Is there an itinerary for today?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but we sort of overlooked you.”
Martin had warned Peter that the music industry was, in many ways, the inverse of the health care industry. While the health care industry valued order and discipline, the music world revered disorder and risk. When he was on his way to a gig with the Steel Retractors, Martin made it a point not to wear his seat belt; he believed that acts of self-preservation were fundamentally antithetical to strapping on a guitar. Of course, Martin’s car weighed five thousand pounds and, in the event of an accident, he’d find himself cocooned in ten Teutonic air bags. If Martin wanted to embrace the rock-and-roll spirit, Peter thought, he ought to buy a motorcycle.
“Do me a favor,” Bluto said, “don’t tell Jimmy that we forgot about you.”
Peter asked when he might see the musician.
“You’re having dinner with him.”
The bus shuddered to a halt alongside a row of hooded parking meters. The driver turned on the intercom: “Welcome to Buffalo, Lake Erie’s asshole.”
27
I’ve been looking forward to Buffalo ever since the show was announced. Cross is appearing at the Stanley Opera Center, a refurbished Beaux Arts showplace.21 The building has a great story. In the sixties, in disrepair, the original Wurlitzer organ was entombed in a plywood box, while the stage (where Caruso sang!) was walled off to create a movie screen. But a few years ago a new ownership group set about restoring the place. They brought in artisans to repaint the house-sized frescoes that bracket the stage. From the crimson velvet wallpaper to the soap powder dispensers in the washrooms, the place is period correct. The brass pipes of the organ give off a nautical gleam.
The Stanley seats only 3,200 people, making it one of the most intimate venues Cross plays. The space is renowned for how it showcases the human voice.22 That matters, because when the sound is good Cross can loosen the reins and allow nuance to sneak into the songs. For example, I had no idea “Fatty Arbuckle” was a song about moral turpitude in Vietnam until I heard him sing it at the Metropolitan Opera House.
I’m feeling quite optimistic, in part because this morning, in room 11 of the Barge Inn — I wouldn’t have been there if not for Gene — I realized that if I’m ever going to read the book about Cross’s life on the road, I’m going to have to write it myself.