Vexation Lullaby by Justin Tussing Page A

at Cal Tech, but she hadn’t enrolled because her husband didn’t want her turning into an egghead or hanging out with astronauts. Peter would have preferred to eat in the cafeteria, but it didn’t seem fair to leave Mrs. B. alone with the other boy. If you gave him a four-digit number, Anatoly knew, to the second decimal place, the number’s square and cube roots. He’d also memorized the armor class and hit points of every creature in the Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual . Staring at the pink creases in Anatoly’s neck, Peter wondered if the boy’s head weighed more for the things it contained.
    Sometimes Mrs. B. would give the boys brainteasers from a pulpy workbook, but she preferred to talk about personal stuff: where did Peter go to church; what had Anatoly’s parents done in Russia (when the boy appeared to hesitate, she said, “Starve, I suppose”); if they had girlfriends; if Peter’s mother had a boyfriend; what they liked to watch on TV—TV gave Anatoly migraines. The questions never felt invasive to Peter because Mrs. B. always managed to turn the answer back to herself. One time she asked Anatoly if there were lots of orphaned children in Russia, but before he could answer she told him there were, that she’d been dreaming about them. When she told her dream to Mr. B., he’d cried, despite the fact that Italian men don’t cry, as a rule.
    Peter didn’t laugh when Anatoly got in trouble for rollerblading between classes, or when the boy recited pi at the talent show (the anti-valedictorians at the back of the auditorium cough-shouted, “Sixty-nine”). Peter respected Anatoly, how the boy always carried a book, and not a textbook but something from the town’s library, maybe a history of the French and Indian War or a guide to martingale betting.
    Every day Anatoly brought the same lunch, always one hard-boiled egg, a boiled potato, and pencil-thin pickled carrots; his mother packed his food in a heavy plastic bag from RadioShack—instead of blue gel packs, she kept his lunch cold with balls of wet newspaper that she refroze each night.
    It was Anatoly who pushed Peter toward medicine. One day, while Mrs. B. reheated her lunch in the teachers’ lounge, Anatoly said, “You’re not as good at math as she pretends.”
    â€œWhat’s that supposed to mean?” Peter knew exactly what Anatoly meant.
    â€œI think you should consider making a doctor. People want to please you—because of your face.”
    Peter tried to give the boy a hard look.
    â€œI don’t mean that homosexually.”
    â€œWhat are you going to do?”
    Anatoly smiled. “I am always doing.”
    â€œThanks for clearing that up.”
    â€œI will make big sums of money and have intercourse with models and women newscasters.”
    W ITH HIS CAR idling by the curb, Peter needed a plan. He thought about contacting someone in Human Resources, but he also thought that might be the worst thing he could do. Would they be on his side? The hospital’s side? Were he and the hospital at odds?
    If he needed to prostrate himself before the powers that be, he wanted to know what he was up against. He paged Martin, who called back immediately. “They’re waiting for you in the conference room on Six West.”
    â€œThey?”
    â€œPeg, Bucky Katz from H.R., Martinez, Ray Cooper. I usually attend these sorts of things, but I asked to sit this one out.”
    â€œWhich department is Cooper in?”
    â€œDon’t ask. Did you really auction your services to a certain Grammy Award winner?”
    â€œThis is all a big misunderstanding.”
    â€œSo Tony Ogata blew up the switchboard over a misunderstanding?”
    â€œDon’t kid.”
    â€œOne of his assistants left a message on my machine at a quarter of five. He spoke with Peg.”
    Exposure , Peter thought. “I was told Ogata might make some