Vexation Lullaby by Justin Tussing Page B

as Mariano Rivera walked from the bullpen to the mound.
    A pair of large guys squeezed between the doctors and ordered four pitchers of beer—they wore matching T-shirts and goatees.
    Peter glanced at the back of the room—maybe ten more men in goatees and T-shirts circled a table. A wave of laughter rippled through the group, and as it did Peter realized that they weren’t gathered around a table at all, but around Katie, his favorite shoulder bumper.
    When the men carried the pitchers to the back of the room, Peter told his colleague they needed to leave.
    â€œNot before Mo strikes out these cocksucking Rays.” Martin glanced at the back of the room. “Silver Surfer, you ever been in a fight?”
    Peter understood he wasn’t talking over drinks with Dr. Vinoray—he was out with the Steel Retractors’ impulsive front man. A sour taste blossomed in Peter’s mouth. “In fourth grade.”
    â€œHow’d it start?”
    On the TV, the batter took a defensive swing at an inside pitch. One out.
    â€œThis kid in my gym class pulled his arms in his sleeves so his elbows poked against the front of his shirt and he sort of made them go in every direction—”
    â€œLike boobs.”
    â€œLike Judith’s boobs.”
    â€œI take it Judith wasn’t a fan of bras.”
    Peter glanced at the back of the room. Nobody paid any attention to them. “His whole impression hinged on that fact.”
    â€œYou remember the kid’s name?”
    Peter could picture him, his face as round as a pie. “Danny Macanudo.”
    â€œAnd you defended Judith’s honor.”
    â€œSomething like that. Then he clobbered me with a rubber horseshoe.”
    â€œWhere’d he get a rubber horseshoe?”
    â€œThey were just there. Someone in the superintendent’s office probably bought a crate of them, figuring they’d be safe.”
    On the TV, the batter sent a pitch bouncing to the second baseman, who relayed the ball to first in time. A base runner scampered to second.
    The horseshoe had caught Peter in the side of the neck and dropped him as clean as a gunshot. The gym teacher, who’d been supervising the kids from his glass-walled office on the other side of the gym, had come loping over, pulled Peter to his feet, and told him to “walk it off.”
    â€œYou want to get in a fight now?” Martin asked.
    â€œWhy would I want that?”
    â€œIt’s hard to be depressed while someone’s kicking your ass.”
    â€œYou think I’m depressed?”
    â€œHow are you feeling about Lucy moving to Albany?”
    â€œWhen did I tell you that?”
    Martin pinned three twenties beneath his empty glass, pocketed the rest of the bills, and stood up. “You didn’t. She stopped by the house last weekend to say good-bye to Sheila and the kids.”
    After watching two cutters almost bounce off the plate, the next batter camped out on a fastball and launched it out, out, into the October night, where it died, just short of the warning track, in the left fielder’s glove.
    At the back of the room, the beer drinkers cheered.
    â€œThat’s the game,” Martin said. “Let’s get out of here before we get Macanudo’ed.”

21
    When I open my eyes I see a lightbulb burning in a tulip-shaped glass fixture beneath the ceiling fan. A white dwarf of a headache throbs at the base of my skull. The bed is beside me. At some point in the night, after dreaming I was suffocating, I relocated to the braided rug.
    My tongue is a fossil. I pull myself to the sink, where nausea shakes me. I shuck my clothes and climb into the shower, but though I turn the handles like an Etch A Sketch, the water doesn’t come. I make a rude orchestration on the toilet.
    E MERGING FROM THE bathroom, I gather up my few things, my camera, a duffle of clothes I had hoped to launder, and my Dopp kit. I leave the spare key on the counter