The Doctor and Mr. Dylan (12 page)

“Some great tail here on Saturday nights,” he repeated. “You could get fat just grazing on my leftovers, Doctor.”

“I’m happy for you, but I’m not ready for that.”

“You’re ready. I saw your wedding ring go bye-bye tonight.” He looked down his nose at my jewelry-free left hand. “I saw you checking out the local talent, and I don’t blame you one bit. If you want me to introduce you to Peggy Stimac, just let me know.”

“Who’s Peggy Stimac?”

“The babe in the red sweater. Just left her old man last year. She likes to party. A handsome doctor from California…, she’d be happy to make your acquaintance.”

“She’s got a great body. She moves like an eel on the dance floor.”

“Mmm mmm. She’s the best this town has to offer. Your son wouldn’t have to know, and no one else cares. A man’s got needs, you know. A man’s got needs.” Dylan’s eyes crinkled. Water droplets condensed on his moustache. I was intrigued by his mercurial nature: he was a Bible-quoting marital philosopher, a rollicking reefer-madman guitarist, a trembling nurse over his head in an emergency, and now an all-knowing rock n’ roll pimp on a Saturday night.

Dylan stubbed out his cigarette butt against the brick wall and said, “I’m tired of watching all the women around this place hanging their heads in sorrow. Let’s get back in there and let it loose.” I followed him inside. He made a direct line to Peggy Stimac’s table and said, “Peg, my buddy here wants to buy you a drink.”

Peggy looked up, one eyebrow cocked, the corner of her mouth curious. “Who’s your buddy?”

“Meet Nico Antone. Dr. Nico Antone. New in town. New in the band. Nico, meet Peggy.”

The seat next to Peggy was open. I sat down to admire her from close range. She was ten years younger than Alexandra. Her rosy cheeks were baby doll smooth, and the pink pillows of her lips oozed toward me. Her long eyelashes dropped as she checked me out. After a quick up-down, her tongue flickered across her top lip again. She approved.

“I’ll have a tequila if you’re buying,” Peggy said. I beckoned the waitress, who delivered two shots on a tray. Peggy wrapped an arm around my shoulder. She held a wedge of lime in front of my face and said, “Open your mouth, babe.” She fit the lime between my teeth, sprinkled salt on the side of my neck, and lashed her raspy tongue across my skin to lick off the salt. She drained the tequila shot and fit her lips over the lime slice in my mouth. Darling Peggy sucked so hard I thought both the lime and my tongue would disappear down her throat.

“Nice,” she said when she disengaged. “Now it’s your turn, babe.” She bit into a second wedge of lime, rubbed the salt across the top of her cleavage, and handed me the second glass of tequila. I knew the script. I sunk my face against her breasts to lick the salt, downed the tequila in one swallow, and sucked the lime juice from between her lips. While our lips met for this encore visit, I let my mouth linger and enjoyed the wetness.

The alcohol swept through my brain, and I felt wicked and omnipotent. Up on the stage, the keyboardist hit the opening chords to “
“
Rainy Day Women #12 & 35
.”
”
Bobby Dylan hollered into his microphone, “Let’s go, Doctor. We need you up here.”

“I have to play. Talk to you later,” I told Peggy.

“I’ll be here, Doctor,” she said. She ran her finger over the rim of her glass, and traced the same finger across my lower lip. “I’ll be here.”

I rejoined the band, and Heaven’s Door was rocking again. The crowd chanted the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s classic along with us: “But I would not feel so all alone, Everybody must get stoned.” It didn’t get any better than this—leading a jam-packed barroom through the chorus to Dylan’s anthem, in Dylan’s hometown, on stage with my new friend, the Dylan impersonator extraordinaire. My California life seemed a faraway prison framed in palm trees and pain. Peggy Stimac smiled up at me, raised her empty glass in homage, and I sang only to her.

How did it feel? It felt terrific. Tonight, I did not feel so all alone.

CHAPTER 10

BLONDE AND BLONDE

I slept until noon the next day, a feat I hadn’t accomplished for decades. My head was pounding from an evening of tequila shots washed down with Budweiser. My throat was Sahara dry from hours of screaming out lyrics to countless Dylan songs. Peggy Stimac came up on stage for the final encore, the taffy of her frame draped across my back, her perfumed hair tickling my nose.

She wanted me to take her home. I’d been too drunk to try. She was a dream girl, but at this point I was window shopping, not buying. If Peggy Stimac was to be my salvation, it would have to be another time, another place. This day was for sleep and for redemption. For the first time in years I hit the pillow without a thought about Alexandra Antone.

It felt great.

At the breakfast table, Johnny peered at me over a plate of steaming pancakes. He’d slept in ten minutes later than me. Breakfast was a word-free zone. I was nursing the worst hangover of my life, and Johnny was playing the part of a mute teenage boy after a late Sunday awakening. At last Johnny broke the silence. “Can I ask you a question, Dad?”

“Sure.”

“People at the hospital were talking about a patient from a car crash who almost died in the operating room. I guess you put a breathing tube in through the guy’s nose? Is it true that if you hadn’t been there, the guy would have died? Did Echo’s dad fuck up?”

“Echo’s dad?” The sick feeling in the pit of my stomach doubled.

“Yeah, Echo’s dad. Bobby Dylan, that nurse anesthetist.”

“You’re kidding. I met Echo’s mom at the hospital. Her name isn’t Dylan.”

“Echo and her mom, their last name is Johnson. Echo said her dad changed his name from Johnson to Dylan. He started playing gigs two nights a week and telling everyone he was Bobby Dylan, the rock star, come back to Hibbing to play out his career. Then two years ago he moved out, left his wife, and bought the Zimmerman family home for more than it was worth.”

“That’s bizarre,” I said. I rubbed my temples and tried to process what I’d just heard. There were a lot of overlapping relationships: Echo dating Johnny, Dylan and I in the band, Lena cooking for us tonight, Dylan and I and Lena all at the operating room together. Bobby Dylan’s family and my family were intersecting.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Johnny said. “Would that patient have died?”

I rolled my lower lip inside out and chose my words with care. “It’s possible,” I said. “Probable even.”

“Is he a hack? Dylan? I mean, he’s not a doctor. He’s a nurse doing a doctor’s job, right?”

“I don’t know if he’s a hack. I can tell you he didn’t have a clue how to handle that case. Dylan may not have any problems on the next thousand cases he does, but he didn’t know what to do with that patient.”

“Why is a nurse doing a doctor’s job?”

“A state governor can opt out of the requirement for a physician to supervise anesthetic care in that state. The Minnesota governor opted out years ago.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I presume it’s because there aren’t enough M.D. anesthesiologists to staff every little hospital in every tiny town in this state. I don’t agree with the idea. Anesthesia is the practice of medicine, not a nursing pursuit. But according to the laws here, Mr. Dylan can give all the anesthesia care he wants.”

“But you think he’s incompetent.”

“I don’t know what I think. I’ll need to make up my mind over the course of time.”

“It bugs me,” Johnny said, “because I really like Echo.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Our dads both give anesthesia, but you’re a class act and her dad is a poser.”

I decided not to fuel the comparison. Instead I bent the conversation in the direction I was most curious about. “How’s Echo?”

“She’s great. Nothing like the girls back home. She’s so … nice. She laughs at everything I say, and let’s face it, Dad, she’s beautiful.”

Beautiful.
I’d chosen a beautiful wife, and what good had it done me? I shuddered and said, “Don’t lose your head over physical beauty, son.”

“It’s not just her looks, Dad. She’s chill. We hung out together until eleven last night. Then after I got home, I called her and we talked on the phone until 3 o’clock this morning, Dad, she’s great. Trust me.”

Trust me
. My 17-year-old son had it all figured out. My 17-year-old son understood women. Maybe I should take lessons from him.

“Her mom is chill, too,” Johnny said. “She watched a movie with us last night. Lena says she’s cooking a meal for all four of us tonight.”

“Yep. Sounds like an excellent idea. No frozen pizza for the Antone men tonight.”

“It’ll be great, Dad.”

Great
. Hibbing High was great. Echo was great. Dinner would be great. I smiled.
Great
. An athlete’s cliché gleaned from the hundreds of post-game interviews Johnny and I had watched together on ESPN.
Great.
A simple syllable, an overused syllable, but right now the word was spot on.

Our life was great.

Lena Johnson stirred spaghetti sauce with one hand and cradled a glass of Merlot in the other. She wore a lime green Patagonia fleece top with the collar zipped up to her chin. Her jeans were black Levis, one size too small, but I appreciated the fit. Johnny and Echo were in the next room watching television and laughing together, oblivious to the fact that their parents were in the same house.

“I heard you played in Bobby’s band last night,” Lena said.

“Word gets around fast.”

“It’s a small town. In a small town, people tend to keep score about what happens to their cast-off spouses.”

“I didn’t know he was your husband until this morning.”

“He didn’t tell you?”

“Nope. You didn’t tell me at the hospital either.”

She took a long pull on her wine. “I don’t talk about him much. This town is too tiny for both of us.”

“When are we eating, Mom?” Echo hollered from the next room.

“Five minutes,” Lena answered. She refilled my glass, and picked a small piece of white lint from my shirt collar.

I watched her flick the lint into the garbage, and couldn’t help but contrast her to Alexandra. My wife would never have wasted two seconds grooming me. Alexandra’s time was spent cultivating the glory of Alexandra. My wife’s body language oozed narcissism:
I’m special.
I’m better than you
.

Lena’s mannerisms oozed comfort. Her body language said,
Make yourself at ease. You’re in a safe place
. It was foreign territory for me, and I liked it. She was a delight to look at, and Johnny was right—Lena Johnson was a delight to be around. She was charming and gracious. This was the same woman Bobby Dylan ran away from? This was the same woman he couldn’t live with? Witnessing Lena’s homemaking comforts made me certain, once again, that Bobby Dylan was bonkers. I couldn’t imagine Lena Johnson driving her husband to live on the corner of a rooftop. If Dylan moved to the crest of some gable, it was because he had a few shingles loose.

“What do you think of Bobby?” she said.

“I didn’t like him at first. He was pretty fun last night, though.”

“That’s Bobby. He’s all about fun.”

“What happened to you two?”

“He snapped. He was Bobby Johnson when I met him. I was in nursing school at the University of Minnesota, and he was doing his nurse anesthetist training there. We got married young. I wanted to have three or four kids and move to the suburbs. But right after Echo was born, Bobby enlisted in the Army reserves and got shipped off to Afghanistan as a nurse anesthetist. A suicide bomber blew up two of his best friends, and Bobby lost it. He came home in a straightjacket. He was hospitalized for a year in an inpatient mental hospital in South Carolina with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. I moved back home to Hibbing. My mom helped me raise Echo, and I worked full time at the hospital here. When Bobby was discharged home, the doctors said the PTSD had resolved and he was OK to resume life in the real world. But he wasn’t the same anymore. He’d changed his name to Bobby Dylan. Bobby Johnson was gone.”

“How did he seem to you?”

“He was messed up. He convinced his doctors that he was sane, but I knew he wasn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Bob Dylan thing is no ruse to him. He thinks he is the rock star, returned to his home town to retire as a part-time nurse and a part-time rock n’ roll performer at Heaven’s Door.”

“You don’t think it’s an act?”

“No, sir. He’s read every biography about Bob Dylan, and he’s memorized every detail. He’s convinced he’s the real Dylan.”

“He seems a little shaky in the operating room. Is he safe there?”

“I think he’s safe. I mean, he hasn’t killed anyone.”

“He almost killed that car crash guy last week.”

“You bailed him out, so we’ll never know.”

I nodded my head toward the other room, where Echo and Johnny were watching TV. “Is he a decent dad for Echo?”