Cross hooked a damp hand around Peter’s neck, drawing their heads together, a clinch. “You need to meet someone.” The singer had a distinct, iron smell, like something wrapped in butcher paper.
Peter fell in step with Cross. The singer’s attendants trailed behind them, crows chasing a hawk. A door opened before them and they entered an intimate domestic space, like the parlor of a winterized Victorian mansion, a loveseat, a few armchairs, all draped in white sheets. Cross’s entourage had disappeared.
“Who goes there?” said the loveseat.
A man in canvas pants, an untucked oxford tented over his stomach, lay diagonally across the cushions so that his knees dangled off one side. He had on beetle-black sunglasses; a series of rubber bands trained a full beard into something like a pharaoh would wear. A thread of smoke rose from the ebony cigarette holder staked in the corner of his mouth.
“Peter,” Cross said, “I’d like you to meet my son, Alistair.”
Cross’s son pulled his sunglasses down his nose, then tilted his head back so he was looking at Peter. “Excuse me if I don’t get up.”
“Allie’s back is bothering him,” explained Cross.
“It’s attacking me,” said Alistair.
“Do you want me to take a look?” Peter addressed his question to the room.
At the end of the cigarette holder, a twist of paper sizzled.
“I ought to get back to the office,” said Cross, putting his hand on the door. “Take Peter up on his offer. Maybe he can help.”
“Go make your widgets.”
Cross said, “We’re both terrible patients,” before opening the door.
Music raced into the room, but when the door latched the sound that had been trapped in the room collapsed.
Alistair extended a hand toward Peter and the doctor pulled him to his feet. “Where’d you do med school?”
“North Carolina.”
“Is that code for Duke?”
“No.”
“UNC?”
“Nope.”
Alistair shuffled over to a banquet table piled with cellophane-coned bouquets, twelve cans of Diet Coke, an ice bucket, a tower of clear plastic cups, a stack of white towels, and an unopened box of tissues. The singer’s son scooped ice into a cup. Turning, he said, “You haven’t spied a refrigerator, have you?”
Peter pointed to where an extension cord snaked under the table.
Gripping the table’s edge, Cross’s son lowered himself, a geriatric swimmer descending into a pool. When he was kneeling, he pushed aside the table’s skirting, revealing a mini-fridge. “Bingo!” He retrieved a Snickers bar and a liter of Smirnoff vodka, setting them on the table.
“What’d you do to yourself?”
A bloom of perspiration appeared on Alistair’s forehead. He filled his cup halfway with vodka. “I fell out of a samlor on my way to the Phulay Bay Ritz, where a friend awaited me in La Perla and coconut oil.”
“Are you taking anything for the pain?”
Cross’s son raised his glass. “It’s not usually this bad. I caught a flight out of Charles de Gaulle this morning, which was tolerable, but to get here I hopped one of those rectal thermometers the regional carriers use.”
Peter kept his face expressionless. “So you self-medicate.”
Cross’s son lowered himself onto the loveseat. “I used to work with this physical therapist who overhauled my diet. Rye bread instead of rye whiskey. Bananas without whipped cream. Coffee without Percocet. Real ‘Eye of the Tiger’ shit.”
The story was designed to get Peter to ask what had happened — Alistair would offer either a humorous or a tragic explanation for why a thirty-year-old man had the muscle tone of a paté. Rather than play his assigned role, Peter said, “Did your father expect you at dinner tonight?”
Alistair unwrapped the Snickers bar and bit it in half. He chewed. “What did you talk about?”
“He said he thought you could have been a doctor.”
Cross’s son started coughing. He held his cup at arm’s length, but there was a damp stain on his shirt. “You’re messing with me. He told you I could have been a doctor? That’s crazy. I guess he forgot how I barely finished high school.”
Outside the room, the band picked up their tempo. A bass line rattled the door.
“He said you were good with animals.”
Alistair took another sip from his cup. “How did he rope you into being his doctor?”
“It’s an opportunity. They named me the Rochester Memorial/Tony Ogata Ambassador for Wellness.”
Alistair reached for the candy bar. “What was wrong with your old name?”
The dressing room door opened and the orange-haired woman leaned her head in. A dark tendril of hair stuck to her cheek.
Peter said hello.
“Maya,” Alistair said, addressing the ceiling, “this is Peter, the guy I was telling you about.”
She closed the door behind her.
“Maya’s going to be a doctor,” Alistair said.
“In Performance Studies.” She brushed her wonderful hair back from her face.
“Peter’s an ambassador.”
“I thought ambassadors wore sashes.”
Peter looked at her again. She was funny. So what if Alistair had beautiful eyes and an accountant who paid his credit cards in full — Peter would not concede this woman. “What’s your research in?”
“The short answer? I study forfeiture of the self in music and religious rites.”
Alistair said, “You called yourself an expert on ecstasy.”
Maya said, “I know my audience.” Turning to Peter, “Technically, I research ecstatics. What does a medical ambassador do?”
“It’s a pilot program.”
With a flick of his hand, Alistair sent his empty cup spinning across the floor. “Let’s go see some live music, before it’s too late.”
33
Back at the Barge Inn, I log on to CrossTracks to see what Gene has been up to. The site attracts the kinds of people who are willing to believe that Cross would show up unannounced at a grange hall, play ten gems, and leave with Mrs. South Dakota. The top two threads listed in the general discussion area:
What Arthur Pennyman Doesn’t Want You to Know
Boycott JimCrossCompendium!
This is the thanks I get for refusing to post a CrossTracks-style Penthouse letter on JCC.
I check out the proposed boycott first. The thread is six pages long! “Let’s shut him down,” writes Fingerpicker. FlowerGrrl writes, “Wake up and smell the coffee. Pennyforger is an eccentric cog in the industrial entertainment business.” (I mean, really!) Someone quotes “Testimony of Pilot”: “If you cast out the money changer loitering in your temple / how come you let him sit at your breakfast table?”25
I read every post. The few people who don’t slander me say things like “Someone ought to back up his archive” and “Totally shocked!”
Then I open the thread that purports to address what I don’t want people to know. It begins with a post from someone (Gene!) calling himself HonestFolk. HonestFolk identifies himself as a longtime acquaintance of mine, a person who has known me for many years and who, in that time, has made some “startling discoveries” that he (HonestFolk) can no longer keep to himself, because he cares too much about the regular fans to let them get taken in by a “supposed expert.” Then he lists my faults, which I’ve transcribed below, in their entirety, because 1) I believe, to quote someone other than Cross for a change, “the truth will set me free”; and 2) the things HonestFolk said are now in the public record and it seems cowardly to cherry-pick those charges that are easily dismissed. Here is what he wrote: