Vexation Lullaby Read Free Page A

the other side of a door someone coughed and a toilet flushed. Peter heard water splash into a sink.
    â€œ Billions Served , that’s the title.” The woman dropped the magazine on the bed. “Jimmy and I are writing an opera.”
    Did people still write operas? Peter wasn’t sure.
    â€œHave you been to the Arctic?” Kiki asked, hopefully.
    The bathroom door opened and out walked a compact man in a shiny gray suit, his head covered in silver stubble. Heavy-lidded squinting eyes looked out from above a pair of frameless bifocals.
    Peter had twice before had brushes with celebrity. In the fourth grade, Randy Owen, from the band Alabama, came into his mother’s store and bought a jelly-bean-sized emerald, peeling seven hundred-dollar bills from a roll as thick as a soda can. Later, during his residency, Peter ducked into an examination room and came face-to-face with a television actress. In her intake report, she complained of soreness in an elbow she’d had scoped two months earlier. “I’ve been playing tennis against doctor orders.” She turned her lip down in an exaggerated pout. In the closeness of the examination room, her beauty made him feel goofy. He started to write a codeine scrip. “Also,” she said, “I may have contracted gonorrhea.” “The risks of tennis,” Peter said. He was relieved when she laughed. He’d thought of her last fall, when she was nominated for an Emmy for her portrayal of a fertility surrogate who learns that the child she’s carrying is the genetic clone of an eccentric billionaire.
    Unsure of protocol, Peter found himself bowing to the man in the suit. “It’s an honor to meet you,” he said to a pair of burgundy wing tips.
    â€œHoney,” Kiki said, “this is Peter.”
    â€œI’m Mr. Kiki Beals.”
    â€œI don’t like that joke, Nicholas.”
    Peter felt sure he’d embarrassed himself, but the couple didn’t seem to notice.
    â€œAre you a musician?” Nicholas asked, pursing his lips.
    â€œHe’s Jimmy’s doctor .”
    â€œYou’re a psychiatrist, Peter?”
    â€œI’m a hospitalist.”
    Nicholas turned to his wife. “Do you know what that means?”
    â€œI studied the delivery of medicine in a hospital setting.”
    â€œI was just telling Peter about the opera.”
    â€œDo you know Charles Leale?” Nicholas asked.
    Peter recognized that eternal cocktail party game of establishing common ties. Unfortunately, the name didn’t ring a bell. Which milieu was the man reaching out to? Was Leale from Rochester? A friend of Cross? “Remind me.”
    â€œLeale was the first physician on the scene when Lincoln was shot. He published a book about his experience.”
    â€œThe opera concerns Lincoln’s assassination,” Kiki explained.
    â€œOh,” Peter said. He wanted to ask what the Arctic had to do with anything.
    Kiki stood up from the bed. “We really ought to get going. It was nice meeting you.”
    This time Nicholas bowed.
    A FTER THE COUPLE walked out, Peter checked in with his apprehension. He found it substantially increased. He’d left his condo intending to engage in a little noblesse oblige, but circumstances had changed in a way he didn’t fully understand. He wanted to slip out, but how does one slip past a bodyguard? He imagined himself getting tackled, tasered. He’d wait.
    Almost silently, hidden machines recycled the air.
    The room phone rang twice, quit. Peter read a laminated card detailing instructions for operating the suite’s electronic blinds. At some point, Peter realized, he would need to use a bathroom. He set his backpack down on a dark wood card table, beside a tray of Jordan almonds. He picked one of the candies up and popped it in his mouth.
    â€œYou got a sweet tooth?”
    The speaker’s heavy-lidded, bloodshot eyes peered out from behind a pair