“Are you talking about a new thread?”
“Supposedly Cross saw a doctor in Rochester. Right? You took a picture of him.”
The kid seems to be after a reaction quote. A house burns down and they shove a microphone in the owner’s face. After a school gets shot up, they ask a victim’s parent how they’re coping.
I say exactly what’s on my mind. I say, “Wow.”
“It seems plausible after how weird that show was.”
I nod my head, not like I’m agreeing with him, but to confirm that I’m listening.
“Weird, how?”
“Like, right, he almost fell down.”
“So, were you at the show in Rochester?”
The kid blinks. We both know he’s done.
“Because, right, I was actually at the show,” I say.
One of the eavesdroppers, a guy about my age with hairy nostrils — it looks like he’s been snorting woolly bear caterpillars — abandons the pretext that he’s not paying attention and asks me, “Is it true? Is he seeing a doctor?”
I say, “I’ll find out.” Which is the sort of thing people say when testifying before Congress — it sounds like a strong answer, though it’s a coward’s gambit.
The interlopers stare at me. Maybe they expect me to confess.
“What sort of doctor was he supposed to have met with?” I ask, trying to go on the offensive. “Because there are all kinds of doctors.”
This guy I can’t even see, someone hidden in the second rank, chimes in, “So now you’re an expert on doctors, too?”
One can’t forget that it’s a fine line between an audience and a mob.
32
A limousine idled in front of the restaurant. Cyril opened the door, grabbed Peter by the wrist, and in one fluid motion incorporating elements of civility and judo, planted him on a rear-facing seat.
They were off.
Watching the road recede though the rear window reminded Peter that he was rushing blindly into the unknown. Cross didn’t need a doctor; he needed a barber (his ears were hidden beneath the curly wings of his hair) and a shave.
Cross lifted a bottle of water from a pocket on the door, checked the label, then cracked the seal and took a long drink. Sitting beside Cyril, the singer looked no bigger than a fifth grader. “Any word on Allie?”
“Not yet,” Cyril said.
The limo surged forward as the driver pulled onto an elevated roadway. Peter felt his body being sucked toward the rear of the car.
Cross was quiet for a moment. “Try to reserve judgment.”
“I don’t judge anybody,” Cyril said.
“You know, animals love him.”
Cyril thumbed his phone. “What sorts of animals are we talking about?”
“You remember those mutts that followed him around Paris.”
“Weren’t those his dogs?”
Cross took another sip of water.
“What am I supposed to be doing?” Peter asked.
Cross looked as though he didn’t quite understand Peter’s question. He turned to Cyril. “Is there somewhere he can watch the show?”
“We’ll find a place for you,” Cyril said.
“Good,” said Peter, though he felt guilty that the bodyguard would have to find a spot for him.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Cross said, his attention somewhere outside the car. “It’s another circle. . ”
“Two minutes,” Cyril said.
The singer took a big sip of water, rolled down his window and spit.
Peter wondered if he ought to offer words of encouragement, but decided he was better off saying nothing.
“I’ll get out of the vehicle first,” Cyril announced. “Then the Big Man gets out. You follow him, doc. Be his shadow, just don’t clip his heels. Got it?”
Peter said he did.
AS THEY PULLED behind the Stanley Opera Center, a floodlight cut across Cross’s face and revealed a changed man — his jaw hung loose, his eyes dull and hooded.
A uniformed cop stood by the stage door, his head swiveling like a room fan. The driver opened the door for Cyril, who stepped out of the car, looked around, then reached a hand in to help Cross out. Peter scrambled out of the car. When the limo’s door thumped shut, he nearly climbed up Cross’s back.
And then they were inside.
Bodies moved aside to let them through. Cross stopped and reached his arms above his head while someone lifted off his sweatshirt. A woman ran her fingers through his hair, tilted his head back, and drew lines beneath his eyes. Thirty feet away a wedge of white light split a heavy curtain; in the middle of this opening a crew member stood holding a steel guitar.
Peter perceived that this choreography was taking place in utter silence, in monastic quiet. He couldn’t hear what Bluto shouted into Cross’s ear or what the makeup artist said as she brushed color across Cross’s cheeks. He couldn’t even hear the thoughts in his own head. Everything was obliterated by the deafening silence, which, Peter noticed, seemed to cycle and hum, seemed to reach him through the air and through the floor, seemed to emanate from someplace inside his body.
Cross walked over to the curtain and took the guitar from the tech. His left hand held a bullwhip — no, it was a coiled black cord.
Peter noticed a pale woman, a pale, freckled woman, her orange, Pre-Raphaelite hair held in place by an elastic cord. She held her hands over her ears. She might have been laughing. Or screaming.
She leaned toward Peter suddenly, as though trying to bite him. Her nose brushed against his ear.
“Pinchme!”
He squeezed her elbow.
Her eyes, he would swear, shot green sparks.
Bluto’s assistant, Wayne, appeared before him holding a laminated pass for Peter’s inspection. Cross’s name flashed across the top in silver, beneath it, in blaze orange, the word “crew.” Wayne looped the lanyard over Peter’s head.
As Peter watched, Cross shoved the neck of his guitar toward the floor — the body of the instrument swung up to cover his back like a shield. He strode through the curtains, while above the roar an omnipotent voice announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, please help me welcome eleven-time Grammy-winner, Kellogg recording artist Jim Cross.”
PETER HAD NO musical aptitude. He’d never picked up a cheap guitar in order to impress a girl. While he recognized the names of the bands that were supposed to mean something to him, he couldn’t recall what made them important. In high school he’d preferred to listen to musical parodies. Standing at the side of the stage, his defenses were overrun. The music invaded him. Was it possible he’d never heard music before?
Jimmy stood both at the center of the stage and at the center of the music. Now and again he’d turn to one of the guys in his band and let his guitar say something quick and sharp. When Jimmy sang, he didn’t lean into the mic — he came at it sidelong, as though he had to get in the last word. Peter noticed how Albert built a floor for the others to play on, that Dom delineated vertical spaces with the bass, or so it seemed. People called Jimmy “the Court Jester,” but onstage Sutliff filled that role: he prodded his lap steel like a boy teasing a snake with a stick — every so often he’d throw his shoulders back, as though the instrument had taken a swipe at him. Peter wanted to share these observations with someone. But who? Not Bluto, who, even when he stood still, managed to convey that his attention lay elsewhere, that he shouldn’t be bothered. And Cyril? The bodyguard stood still, one hand cupped over the microphone on his headset, his eyes never still, always roving.
When Peter searched for the orange-haired woman, she was gone.
IN THE MIDDLE of a song, a crowd of people materialized around the doctor. Among these people — no, not among, at their nucleus — stood Cross.