“I need this interview,” Maya said, “but I’m afraid if I go behind Alistair’s back he’ll be vindictive. Is that like him?”
Peter said he didn’t have much to go on.
“Aren’t you friends?”
“I met him two days ago.”
Maya rubbed her forehead. “Why did I think you’d known each other longer?”
Concerned that their conversation could be on the verge of ending, Peter changed subjects. “I’ve got a question for you: Why, when I’ve never really cared for Cross’s music, do I suddenly feel like I’m becoming a fan?”
Maya looked at him, smiled. “Had you ever watched him play before?”
“Does that matter?”
“Hugely. I have a whole chapter on the power of the stage. We’re social animals. Put us in a crowd and we fall in line. The expression ‘Preaching to the converted’ is misleading. The audience, not the preaching, is the real agent of conversion.”
“How does that work?”
“You must have studied the autonomic nervous system in medical school. That’s the mechanism.”
“Are you associating musical tastes with perspiration, respiration, heart rate, and reflexes?”
“You left out sexual arousal. Sometimes I tell people that my research focuses on how and why we fall in love.”
“As a physician,” Peter said, “it’s fascinating to hear how a sociologist understands the autonomic nervous system.”
“Maybe I’m a metaphysician.” Maya smiled. “Did you talk about the soul in med school?”
“I don’t recall studying the soul.”
“If I were to go looking for one, the autonomic nervous system is the first place I’d check.”
“Where are you from and are there more people like you there?”
She blushed. “I’m a Kiwi.”
“That’s funny.”
“Why?”
“Your eyes are kiwi-colored.”
She shook her springy hair. “Would you want to get something to eat?”
He’d put on his serious-business face, a guy who’d been watching television on a bus. “I’m waiting for Bluto.”
“But you do eat food sometimes, don’t you?”
“You’ve got very bad timing.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Do I?”
What he’d meant to say was that her timing was bad for him, but he didn’t trust that he could explain the difference. “I would like to eat with you at some point.”
“At some point,” she parroted him. “If you see Alistair, tell him I was looking for him. Don’t tell him that I’m getting frustrated.” She turned and started to walk off.
He called after her. “Enjoy your food.” He deserved nothing.
WAYNE AND BLUTO didn’t show up at five. Or five-thirty. Peter flipped the channels on the TV, but nothing held his attention. He tried closing his eyes for a few minutes, which, instead of relaxing him, made him feel like a blind idiot. The only person he’d ever met from New Zealand was off exploring Columbus while he sat waiting on a bus. Time passed right through him. He couldn’t sit another moment. He needed to do something.
He walked to the front of the bus and asked the driver to let him off.
The evening had carried a damp earthy smell into the city. Where, he wondered, did the cornstalks start, or the wheat? He’d barely given Ohio a thought since fifth-grade geography.
He came across a two-way pedestrian path. Just beyond the path a big, slow river shone metallic pink. Peter was constantly being overtaken by a parade of joggers, the occasional bicyclist knifing through their ranks. Since when had women’s shorts become so, well, short? The jog bra craze had caught him off guard a few years ago, but now he was seeing hamstrings. Those teeny fucking black shorts. He’d just made peace with yoga pants.
Plump songbirds flitted about the underbrush bordering the path. He scanned the bobbing, hypoxic faces in the oncoming lane. A skiff gouged a white line up the river, disappeared beneath an overpass. Wasn’t it weird, Peter thought, that the same rivers that once enabled cities now girded them. That sort of penetrating intelligence would have knocked Maya’s knickers off. Watching the water corrugate around the cement pilings of a bridge, the doctor took out his phone and paged Martin.
A few seconds later, his phone shook.
“Tell me you’ve got good news.”
“I’m ninety-nine percent certain nothing’s wrong with him.”
The joggers kept brushing past Peter, pushing him aside. There must have been some innovation in Lycra, some breakthrough.
“We’re not having a conversation about your instincts. I’m drawing a line in the sand here. Either you get him in the tube tonight, or I tell Peg about his fall and she’ll do that thing where her mouth looks like a cat’s asshole.”
Who was being bullied now?
“I’ll get him to the hospital.”
“Seriously? You’ll bring him to Wexner Medical Center?”
“Right after the show.”
“Silver, you and I are a couple of forward-looking motherfuckers. Don’t jerk me around.”
“Make sure that tube is empty. He won’t hang out in a waiting room.”
On the opposite bank, a huge bird glided along the tree line trailing a gang of crows.
57
While we wait for our food Rosalyn tells me more about her tumor, which is slow-growing and about the size of a cocktail olive. I ask if there’s anything doctors can do. She says her oncologist recommends “snipping out all my plumbing.” While she’s sleeping on the operating table, the surgeon will evaluate tissue samples and decide if anything else needs to be done.
“But?” I say.
There’s a small white vase on our table and Rosalyn reaches out and touches it. “I like my plumbing. If I were younger, they might consider an alternative course of treatment.”
“Are you thinking about the alternative treatment?”
She shakes her head. “Not at all. Bring on mainstream medicine.”
“It’s nice that you’ve got that guest bed,” I say.
Such an odd look flashes across her face. “What do you mean, Arthur?”
“If you’re not feeling up to the stairs.”
“People usually feel okay by the time they leave the hospital. That’s what they told me.”
“Well, it’s got to be better than chemotherapy.”
But it turns out she’s going to have chemotherapy, too; it’s part of her treatment plan. This news is a flapping malevolence I’ve released into the room.
The waitress delivers our food. She wears a fabric wrist brace on her left hand, which makes me think that she’s been at this a long time. Who does she see when she looks at us: me in my blasted duster and Rosalyn cocooned in cashmere? Could she mistake us for one of those couples who, despite decades of domesticity, still manage to differentiate? Or, as I suspect, are we Lady and the Tramp? I fold the hem of my shirt to conceal a jagged line of ink, like a seismograph’s record of a catastrophe.
Neither Rosalyn nor I have much of an appetite. We pick at our food in silence. Though I feel responsible for the quiet, I can’t figure out how to change anything.
When the waitress delivers our bill, Rosalyn has her credit card out.
Finally I ask her, “When do you think you’ll have the surgery?”
“In ten days. Ten days from today.”
INSTEAD OF GOING to our seats, I pull Rosalyn into the LeVeque Tower lobby. As a rule, I don’t like frescoes, but the vaulted ceilings in the LeVeque Tower lobby offer a different sort of fresco. The blue, cloud-dappled heavens and pink gods have been replaced with art deco designs rendered in real American colors — clay browns and yolky yellow.
While I’ve wandered through the Louvre and stood in the shadow of the Great Pyramid, neither of those places speak to me like Tacoma’s waterfront or Chicago’s Carbon and Carbide Building.42 I’m an American. This country is my only home.