Medical school hadn’t been as rough. Right after Peter entered the program, Judith sold the store and moved away. After the fledgling flies away, does the mother bird dismantle her nest? He might have taken it personally, if he hadn’t been so preoccupied with not failing out. Who changes careers and time zones when they’re forty? Judith Silver, that’s who. Compared to her, Peter was gutless.
He didn’t drift to sleep; he plummeted.
35
Dear Mr. Pennyman,
Did you notice that on 10/10/2010 the tenth song Mr. Cross played, “Blackstrap,” was also the 10th song on his 10th album (counting LPs and EPs together). I thought it was interesting. I checked out 7/7/07, 8/8/08, and 9/9/09 (he didn’t play that night) and didn’t see any patterns. It was probably a coincidence. I only noticed because 10 is my favorite number.
What if he plays “Linda of Fort Orange” on November 11, next year? That would be so great!
The reason my email address uses a woman’s name is because it’s my mom’s. I’m not old enough to have my own email. I’m twelve!
Sincerely,
Aidan
Dear Aidan,
Thanks for your letter. I hadn’t noticed the 10s and now you’ve got me excited about next November — can you believe we have to wait a year to test “Aidan’s Hypothesis”? I hope you’re right.
Your friend,
Arthur
Dear Disgusting,
My boyfriend got us tickets to the Providence show. It was a present for our six-month anniversary. Both of us volunteer as community activists and agents of change; we don’t have a lot of extra $$ for things like concerts. I was really excited for the show. And then I saw you, two rows in front of us, wearing the flesh of a once beautiful animal. Have you ever thought about the sentient being that was tortured and murdered for your “fashion” sense? I could smell the suffering coming off that hideous coat. I started crying and then my boyfriend started crying, too. I wanted to say something to you, but the thought of standing any closer to you made me physically ill.
Later my boyfriend realized who you were and showed me this site. If you are a human being, do me a favor and imagine this: right before you die, someone sticks a steel hook through your ankles, hangs you upside down, and peels your skin off your body.
Alyssa
Dear Alyssa,
I’m sorry that I ruined the concert for you. In my defense, I’ve had the coat for a long, long time. By now I would probably have gone through five or six or more synthetic coats — produced by processing oil, the application of poisonous chemicals, dyes, solvents. Once those coats outlived their use, they would probably wind up in a landfill somewhere.
I will try to be more mindful in the future. I hope you get a chance to see another show.
Arthur
Mr. Pennyman,
This past spring, my wife and I celebrated our forty-second anniversary. She liked to tell people that we would have been high school sweethearts if only I hadn’t been so shy. She had just started phased retirement at the freight company where she’d worked her whole life and was volunteering for a local women’s shelter. On July 16th, on her way home from the shelter, she fell asleep at the wheel and her car drifted into the oncoming lane. The surgeon who worked on her when she came in said he didn’t understand how she could be alive. He told me she must have had a lot of love connecting her to the world. For three days our sons and I sat beside her and urged her to keep on fighting. When the boys and I woke up on the fourth day, the hospital’s PA was playing Cross’s “Mourning Psalm” and we knew the time had come to say our good-byes. She passed that afternoon, having never regained consciousness after the crash.
I’m writing to you in hopes that you might consider adding her story to your archives. My wife’s name was Della Anne Mason.
In gratitude,
Gregory, Patrick, and Owen Mason
Dear Gregory, Patrick, and Owen,
I am very sorry for your loss and I am humbled to receive your letter. I will not forget Della.
In friendship,
Arthur Pennyman
Dear Pennyman,
Longtime fan here. I’ve been reading you since your newsgroup infancy. Up until now I haven’t had a reason to write, but you were correct about Rochester. Cross hasn’t been feeling like himself. Don’t ask how I know;-)
Respectfully,
Doctor Axe
(My heart almost stops. Is Dr. Silver writing to me? If he read my old newsgroup posts, he must have been a teenager.)
Dear Doctor Axe,
I know better than to look a gift horse in the mouth, but maybe you would be willing to share some more. If you’ve been following me as long as you say, then you know I never reveal my sources.
In the spirit of reciprocity, I have a question for you: What does Silver mean to you?
In good faith,
Arthur
36
In the morning, Peter put on shorts and a T-shirt and followed the signs to the hotel’s gym. If he didn’t burn some energy, he was fairly certain he’d drive himself crazy.
Near the back of the room, Cross and Cyril jogged side by side on a bank of treadmills. The bodyguard wasn’t wearing shoes — he ran in a pair of black, ankle-length socks. The treadmill was cranked up at an angle and he ran fast. Cross had on basketball sneakers and he stayed up on his toes, like a boxer. Next to the men, two women who might have been Peter’s age, in yoga pants and light cotton jackets, took long strides, as though walking on railroad ties — they worked on their butts while, three feet away, one of the most iconic entertainers on the planet shuffled in oversized sneakers.
Peter claimed a recumbent bicycle in the corner. He flipped through a celebrity magazine while a jagged red LED landscape scrolled across the bicycle’s display.
“You know these machines are terrible for your knees.” Cyril stood next to Peter, his crotch a foot from the doctor’s head. “It’s not a natural motion for a biped.”
Leaning away from the bodyguard, Peter shook the magazine. “Just doing a little multitasking.”
“You read anything in there about a doctor winding up on a rock tour?”
Maybe it was only the power of suggestion, but Peter’s left knee started to ache. “I don’t think so.”
“Wait. They’re already talking about you on the fan sites.” Cyril didn’t appear to be joking.
People were talking about him. But he was boring; he knew that about himself. “What about me?”
Cyril looked toward Cross — the singer had moved to the exercise mats, where he did push-ups off his knees. “Word is the Big Man’s got a doctor with him, and they’re extrapolating from there.”
Even when people were talking about him, Cross was their true subject. “What should I do?”
Cyril wiped his brow with the ham he called his forearm. “Don’t go thinking you can steer the conversation. On those boards, we’re the tail and they’re the dog.”
Peter decided there was a lot he needed to learn about this organism everyone called the Tour.
“You know we’re meeting in the lobby at one?”
“At one?” How could he fill five empty hours?
Cyril reached down and poked the button that increased the bicycle’s resistance. “One-thirty at the latest, doc.” Peter watched Cross follow the bodyguard out of the gym.
The women on the treadmill looked like they could keep it up all day.
Peter’s phone beeped. Judith had sent him an email with the subject line: “Rock Star.”
Do you remember the letters I wrote while you were at science camp? The camp director had told all the parents that writing would help ward off homesickness, but when I picked you up you said the letters made things worse. You told me, “Most moms sent care packages, but you only sent words.” It seems we really are doomed to repeat history.
You asked me what I thought about you going on tour with him. In part, it feels like you’ve discovered a time machine. I imagine you turning a corner and running into the person I was at twenty — I suppose that the fear of running into one’s mother must be among the chief deterrents to time travel. The bottom line: you have as good a chance of running into the person I used to be as you do of running into the person Cross was back then. He wasn’t a musician when I knew him — he’d been a musician, but it was as if he and music had had a falling-out.
I was as shocked as anyone when he released that album. Suddenly he was nowhere and everywhere.
He gave us the money to open Natural Wonders. It was sort of like a settlement. I planned to repay him, but when I wrote him to set up a payment schedule one of his attorneys told me the money should go into an account for your education. I probably should have told you that before, but he’s always had too much money to care about it and I never cared to have any.
I may have given you the impression that I don’t like Cross’s music. That’s not the case. The first time I heard “Pleiades for Breakfast,” it spoke to me on a molecular level — I wanted to pretend he’d written it for me (he didn’t!). He always seemed more interested in you.
All of Peter’s friends had the same complaint: their mothers had no idea how to write a proper hundred-word email. A bunch of inveterate letter writers, their mothers composed essays. Reading her message on his phone was like viewing a mural through a loupe.
Judith’s mention of a time machine seemed prophetic: her email had taken him back. When had he last thought about science camp? He remembered shaving a plantar wart off a kid’s heel with a plastic-handled scalpel; he’d performed the surgery for the same reason the patient agreed to it — to attract the attention of a home-schooled Amazonian named Lauren Platz, the only girl at the camp.
This email had shocked him. Why would she have let Cross loan her money? Loans produced debt. Peter’s sense of Judith’s untarnished self-sufficiency took a hit. Plus, he felt retroactively wounded — he’d always imagined that he and Judith were equal partners in the store.
When Cross first called, Peter had wondered if he wasn’t trying to collect a debt. Was it possible that his instinct had been correct?