“Mama’s boy,” Lucy said, when he insisted she separate the salad forks from the dinner forks. But hadn’t it been affectionate?
45
Countless times, I’ve found myself sandwiched between the unusually large, the drunk, the belligerent, the unwashed. Those sorts of indignities are easy to forget when I am near the stage, when I can see, for example, a dry cleaner’s tag on the hem of Cross’s pant leg. The only nice thing I can say about Claire’s seat is that it’s close to the exit.
The difference between seats and great seats is almost not worth mentioning, but since I’ve given the subject some thought, I’ll say a bit more. A competent sound guy33 will monitor the levels throughout the hall. However, since an empty hall and a hall packed with sound-absorbing bodies are entirely different things, there are really only two places to sit. You should either be close to the stage, to hear what the performers hear, or sit near the soundboard, since the sound engineer will tweak the levels so that things sound right to him or her.
Everyone knows that sound and light travel at different speeds, but that’s not something one is usually reminded of while at a concert. Yet, in Pittsburgh, I can see Jimmy’s fingers make a run on the keyboard before I hear that run. And when he tilts his head back and belts out something heartfelt, I have to wait an eternity before I find out where he’s taking us.
At least the company is excellent! Mindy and Robinson both seize my arm when Jimmy first walks on stage (what had they expected?). Likewise, when he launches into a rote version of “Long Gone,” they’re in awe. They sing along when they know the tune, and when Cross plays something more obscure I feed them the title and locate it in his discography. “You could rent yourself out,” Mindy says. “A concert gigolo,” Robinson says. My stock peaks when I correctly predict Cross will follow “Alabaster Ragout” with “Tennis Shoe Blues.”
It feels like a magical night. Cross tears through “Ripcord”(!), jumps into “Bomb Shelter Romance” (!!), reassures the casual fans with “Absolutely Nowhere,” before covering the Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer” (@?$%), doing that whole ba-ba-ba-baaaa-ba, ba-ba-ba-baaaa-ba on the harp! Robinson grips my thigh, which is thrilling, and then she moves her hand and — it’s probably an accident — squeezes my penis through the fabric of my pants (my decorum is protected by my duster).
But I am eternally Arthur Pennyman — which means that nothing can go right unless something else goes wrong. My brain receives an urgent message from my gut: that horrid juice is wrecking havoc on my gastrointestinal system.
I unlatch Robinson’s electrifying grip to slide past Mindy. As I turn up the aisle, I want to shoot Robinson a look to let her know I’ll be back, but she’s following me! Does she think that we’re making our escape, that I’ll ravish her in the parking lot? I wait for her, trying to think of a quick excuse. Then she says, “I have to tinkle.” Which is a relief, obviously.
We reach the lobby and I dart off to the men’s room.
THERE ARE A limited number of situations where a duster causes an inconvenience; the restroom is undoubtedly the chief example. My fingers have to do the fine work with my belt and zipper, while my core muscles clench. I’m praying that I can complete the operation and only suffer a close call as opposed to a humiliation. When my pants puddle around my legs, I flip the tail of my coat over my head and drop onto the seat. In short order, internal pressure and external pressure equalize. Like a summer storm, there is thunder and wind; the temperature in the stall drops twenty degrees in about five seconds — or so it seems. I don’t remember sweating, yet all at once I’m aware of sweat cooling, on my scalp, near my kidneys, behind my knees.
I stagger to the sink. I want torrents of glacial runoff, but the faucet is one of those water misers; I have to punch it a hundred times. As soon as I’m clean, it’s time for round two. At last, hollowed out like a flute, I leave the stall. Rip Van Winkle stares back at me from the mirror.
Impossibly, I find Robinson waiting for me in the lobby.
“I was beginning to think you’d gone out a window.”
I don’t say, “I nearly went down the drain.”
She hands me a scrap of paper. Snippets of lyrics from four songs: “Minister of Moonshine” (!!), “Rothko’s Circus” (!!), “Evaline,” and “When You Wash (Your Hair)” (!).34
It’s an amazingly thoughtful gesture and I tell her so.
“You want to get out of here?” she asks.
I do. But wanting is fleeting. Besides, leaving early — regardless of the circumstances — would only feed ammunition to my detractors. A life is defined through a million opportunities to abandon principles.
WE STAND AT the back of the hall (I don’t for a moment entertain returning to our seats) while the crowd pleads for its encore.35 Robinson leans against me so that her head touches my shoulder, but while it appears that she is resting on me, the effect is that I feel propped up.
The boys put it on autopilot for the encore, marching through “Low, Lower Down,” “Luster,” and “Broom Job.” Three classics, but played back-to-back-to-back the effect is less than the sum of their parts, like Neapolitan ice cream.
When the lights come up, Mindy finds us. She looks exhausted (I guess her five kids have caught up with her). She tells me how nice it was to run into me, but I suspect she’s upset that I monopolized her friend.
“Should we get a coffee?” she asks, yawning.
“It’s late,” Robinson says. “I’m going to give Artie a ride to his car.”
The two women share a hug, while I pretend to be distracted.
“Good night, Artie.” Mindy makes a kissing face; my past disappears into the crowd.
•••
I post the setlist while Robinson drives me (in a late-model Volvo wagon) to my car. As I shift to get out, she grabs my fingers. “I want you to follow me back to my place, but I understand if you can’t.”
“We’ll see,” this bad boy says.
HOPPING FROM ONE interchange to another, we make our way north of the city and into a picket-fence neighborhood of oversized colonials. A moat of security lights ring her house. She docks her car in the glowing maw of an automatic garage door. An immaculate John Deere riding mower occupies the adjacent space. She gets out of her car and tells me she can move the mower if I want to garage my car; I tell her that both the car and its owner are accustomed to sleeping under the stars. She says, “That sounds so pitiful.”
I wonder if the drive hasn’t dampened her enthusiasm. Once the musicians unplug and the houselights go up, the magic starts to dissipate. Robinson smiles at me. “Lucky for you, my father bred in me an unquenchable appetite for pity.”
I say, “It’s nice to be appreciated.”
SHE GOES INTO the house first and deactivates an alarm. Then she leads me to a bathroom off the kitchen. There’s a shower. She hands me a towel.
“I’ll see you when you get cleaned up,” she says, closing the door.
Beneath the sink I find a caddy loaded with two unopened toothbrushes, a floss dispenser, a pump bottle of toothpaste, a coral-colored scrubby, and a selection of body washes, shampoos, and conditioners, plus body lotion, face lotion, and a ceramic cube holding a few dozen cotton swabs. Stepping into the shower, I systematically attack each appendage with the appropriate product. I lather and scrub, rinse and condition, gargle and floss, dry and moisturize. Once again, I’m gone too long. I emerge, wrapped in a towel, my body glowing like a feverish child.