Broken Sleep (15 page)

“Salome, you are right. I wondered, after our session yesterday, if you remember the time we discussed your mother’s passing.”

I didn’t recall that session. But I had read about Greta’s death later, in the papers.

Ruggles’s face said he was appalled by my lack of reaction.

“Am I supposed to care? I don’t.” Unlike when Dad or Hilda or Nathaniel passed away and the weight felt like it was severing my heart from my body, I felt nothing.

Maybe We Ain’t Us

It is no profound revelation to posit that we experience days or weeks or months in our lives that we remember as if they took place five minutes before. There are years that meld and dissolve as the memories race over us in seconds. Perhaps they stay fresh because we continually relive and reinterpret them. What is bewildering, often frightening, are the moments that we relive like cancerous lesions on the unconscious that turn a dream to a nightmare, or strike capriciously while lolling down the street. One would think that it was Alchemy’s selfless act that Moses would remember most fondly or most distressingly from those first few months of their initial meeting. But no, it was not that at all.

Moses immediately got swept up as another passenger on the juggernaut that was Alchemy’s life from the moment the Insatiables became an essential phrase in the cultural grammar in 1994. A ride that Moses would jump off and on for many years hence.

The fiery speed at which Alchemy lived his life was antithetical to Moses’s contemplative nature and slow dialectic of reason, where he could spend hours deliberating whether to
give a student an A or A–. Even though he had long accepted chaos and uncontrollability as the determining forces thwarting one’s will and intentions, he always did his best to foresee the vicissitudes of life. The cloistered safety of a tenured job perfectly fit his self-image. Unlike too many denizens of the academy, he accepted that he was, at best, a concubine to the central culture. Even with the looming imminence of death, Moses speculated his worldview might change under the optimistic sway of Alchemy, of Alchemy’s lightning-fast processes of both calculation and instinct. Could he rediscover the momentary, youthful adventurousness that had once led him to Israel?

As the Focus passed through Albuquerque and sped west along I40, Alchemy began assessing and planning the days ahead. “I have to call my managers.” Moses dialed the number and handed Alchemy the phone. “Hey, Sue, I’m out … No, it wasn’t exactly jail … Listen, I’m coming to L.A. tomorrow … No, to my brother’s … Yes,
brother
 … No, he doesn’t want money.”

They glanced at each other, smiling, while Alchemy held the phone in one hand and the wheel in the other.

“Not a cent,” Moses said.

“Just my blood … Yes, I am sure. He’s a professor. Sue, any change on Nathaniel?… Tell him to stop worrying and I’ll either take him or go to the WTO protests for him … Sue, fuck my image … Yes, time meditating made me want to be more active … I’ll see Nathaniel as soon as I can, but he can’t tell my mom I’m out … I don’t care about anyone else’s e-mails or calls. Tell no one else for now.” Moses flinched as the car
swerved to the right. Alchemy didn’t stop talking. “Right, not Ambitious or Lux. I can’t deal until we fix up my bro here. Later.” He hung up. “I assume it’s okay to stay at your place in L.A. One night. If I go anywhere near my home, a snapping finger of stalkertude will be nearby.”

“Of course. Um, I’m a little tired.”

“No problem. Take a nap.”

Moses tilted the seat back and gazed out the window. He regretted having spent so little time excavating the history of this part of the country. He envisioned a scene directed by John Ford, written by John Steinbeck, scored to Woody Guthrie, and photographed by Walker Evans—his mix of western myths conjoined into a false majesty. The true director of the early twentieth-century West was not John but Henry Ford, and the real producers were Harry Chandler and William Randolph Hearst. Maybe one day he’d even write an essay about this mix of myth and history, Moses thought.

Soon, he dozed off. He didn’t awaken until they entered Gallup, a sun-scorched and desolate, mainly Native American town, whose streets and storefronts of liquor, pawn-, and gun shops were interspersed alongside the ubiquitous McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and Burger King.

Alchemy flicked on the radio and bypassed the harangues of Rush Limbaugh and Louise Urban Vulter. He settled on a station with Native American music, which the deejay interrupted to speak words neither of them understood except for the hyperenunciated English “Big Sale at Gallup Ford” and “NO Money Down” repeated about seven times. At the same second, they both cracked up. It was one of those seemingly
insignificant moments that made them feel like brothers who had shared a childhood of birthdays and Christmases or Passovers, silly games and arcane TV shows, lost toys and cracked bones, angry fights with sorrowful partings, first loves and ruptured hearts, and alliances with and against their parents.

“We need gas. Way, way back we played two high schools around here, and there was a great Mex restaurant we ended up finding at three A.M. after doing peyote. No time to look, I guess.” They pulled into the station. Alchemy ambled inside to get supplies and Moses pumped the gas. Then he called Jay. “Hey, I found him!” His voice burst out with a rare effervescence.

“Good, no, great. How are you feeling? Where are you?”

“New Mexico. We’re driving. And I’m fine. Better than fine.”

“Oh, Moses, I miss you.”

“In less than twenty-four hours I’ll be home.”

“I’m so scared.”

“I don’t know why, but I’m less scared now. You’ll see. He wants to stay at our place. Can you call Dr. Fielding? Tell my mom, too. I’ll call her later. The phone service goes in and out.”

“Alchemy’s staying with us?”

“Yep. Tidy up my room, okay? He can sleep on the futon in there.” He was talking too fast and out of character; he didn’t absorb the meaning of the beats between her silences or the tremulous cadences.

“Moses, it’s such a—”

“Look, it’ll be fine. Jay, I’ll … Shit, there’s a small mob gathering inside the gas station. Love you, and see you soon.”

Someone had a digital camera, and then everyone in the minimart wanted a picture with Alchemy. Moses stepped inside and Alchemy mouthed to him, “Wait in the car.”

A few minutes later Alchemy came jogging out. He hopped in the car and tossed two plastic bags filled with water, Cokes, Gatorades, chocolate bars, doughnuts, potato chips, and pretzels into the backseat. He placed a copy of the
Star
on Moses’s lap. It was open to two gruesome pictures of Absurda, one of her gaunt body, half naked with a needle by her side, dead on her bedroom floor and another photo of the obviously grieving Alchemy slumped beside her casket. The headline read, “The Tragic Last Days of the Nightingale.”

“This is exactly what I wanted to get away from. Guy handed that to me so I could autograph it for him. I do autographs, and most of the people in there were respectful, but that is too much.
Too much
.”

“It’s ghoulish.”

Alchemy lifted his hands off the steering wheel and then grasped it hard with his long, agile fingers, his voice pleaded to no one but himself. “What the fuck do they want me to say? I couldn’t save her. I tried. I fucking tried.”

“I’m sorry,” Moses said. He closed the magazine and put it under his seat. Alchemy pressed his foot down on the gas pedal as they sped back onto the 40. “Is this kind of crowd reaction typical?”

“Goes up and down. Depends where I am and if we’ve been in the news. It’s part of the bargain and I accept it. I despise mewling celebs, but sometimes you just want to buy a few Cokes and potato chips in peace. Or be allowed to die in peace.”

Or grieve in peace
, thought Moses.

Alchemy lapsed into a turgid silence.

Moses didn’t know the extent of Alchemy’s tangled relationship with Absurda. He assumed that they’d had some kind of affair. They sped along for a long while with no radio, no talking, just the sound of the Focus’s hissing engine and the roars of eighteen-wheelers.

Alchemy broke the silence by asking Moses to grab him another water. He drained the bottle and asked Moses pointedly, “So, what did you think of your new mom?”

“I didn’t really meet her. I saw her. What I know comes from Dr. Ruggles. I wasn’t prepared to confront her.”

“Understood. If I’m still trying to get my head around the idea that you weren’t stillborn, no telling how she would react.”

“With what little I know, I can’t separate the various dueling mythologies.”

“Fabricate, bro. Family tradition.”

“I sort of have done that, but now that needs to be refabricated. If I don’t, I figure I’ll have some kind of nervous breakdown. If I even survive this other shit.”

“Mose, nervous breakdowns are also part of the Savant heritage.”

“You? You worry about that?”

“Hell, yes. Sometimes I feel like I’m in a state of
perpetual
breakdown.” Moses, unprepared for this admission, didn’t know if Alchemy meant it or was just trying to make him feel comfortable in his new clan. “It’s not just me or the genes. Famous people are the most unstable bunch you can ever meet. You said you’re a history prof, right?” Moses nodded.
“How many of the people who had a tangible effect on the world were nuts?”

“Highly neurotic, most. Nuts, too many.”

“See? And with a mother like Salome … how can I not worry about a breakdown every now and then?”

“Great, I’ll add that to my list.”

“Ah, Mose, yours spiked in your body. You’re steady upstairs, I can feel it. You still have to meet our mother. After the operation, when you’re stronger”—Alchemy’s innate confidence that they’d be a match did not derail Moses’s pessimism—“we’ll both go see her. I need to spring her from Collier Layne again.”

“I’d appreciate that. You said before that about fifty guys have claimed to be your father. You don’t know him?”

“I guess you don’t tread in the gossip troughs much.”

“Depends what you call gossip. I read history books that are filled with academic-jargoned polysyllables dissecting Lincoln’s possible homosexuality or Hitler’s getting off on erotic asphyxiation while having someone defecate on him.”

“That’s what I mean about famous people being nuts. And politicians are the most craven ’cause they have the most power. Who was more twisted than the Adolf? Him getting dumped on makes sense to me. Was it a guy? Girl?”

“Supposedly it was his niece who did the dumping. I believe it.”

“Me, too. And Abe, a lover of
man
kind, that figures. Why he’d have the balls to free the slaves. I bet being a repressed gay guy back then was like being an invisible Negro. Who knew that you history guys were such a lurid bunch? Good thing
they didn’t have the
Enquirer
or
People
back then, or you’d be out of business.”

“It’s not exactly a lucrative calling now.”

“Back to your original question, I do know who my father is. We met when I was six and then again when I was thirteen. And neither of us had any desire to keep up the relationship. It’s the one secret I’ve been able to keep from the predators.”

From Alchemy’s hard-edged tone, Moses understood that this subject was off-limits. But then he continued, “Our mom was pretty active and they had a one-night stand and, as she says, his sperm won.” His voice was once again relaxed, intimate.

“So you don’t know anyone named Malcolm Teumer?” Moses asked, not sure he wanted Alchemy to answer yes.

“Nope. Should I?”

“Guess not. He is my father. His relationship with Salome is a blank slate to me. He married my mom and then split on us when I was two. Never seen him since.”

“Mose, you got the double, no, triple whammy. No wonder you got cancer.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, it’s that Salome, she’s got these theories about disease. Don’t worry, she’ll tell you all about it.”

Moses didn’t respond right away. He wanted to meditate on cancer and his “whammies” and how Alchemy spoke with such equanimity about their crazy mother and his own barely known father.

In the enveloping sunset, the Focus hiccupped up the mountain pass from Sedona, which, in twenty years, had transformed from pristine landscape to a tourist town dotted
with signs for the Vortex Inn and the Crystal Rubbing and Convergence Committee, before arriving in Jerome, a former copper-mining town. Jerome remained less New Age commercially corrupted than Sedona. As they neared Trudy’s home, Alchemy asked almost offhandedly, “Hey, you want me to see if I can hook you up? Trudy might have some friends.”

“Um, I—”

“Sorry, Mose, that’s trespassing. Upon a moment’s reflection, I sense it’s not your gig.”

“Nope. Not my gig.”

“I respect that. I’ve partied with musicians, athletes, politicians, and civilians like you, and they all were fucking their brains out before crawling home to wife and kiddies. I’m not into subterfuge.” Although he didn’t sound like he’d completed his thoughts, Alchemy paused. “I didn’t mean ‘like you,’ Mose.”

“No, I understood.”

“Okay, good. I’ve been to shrinks and I’ve always been exceedingly cautious when it comes to their analysis of me. Most accuse me of being a sexaholic or a hedonist with intimacy issues. Fine. I counter that they have a control problem and most of them are envious and the others are phonies. I’m just doing what most guys, and women, too, would do if they had the chance. I do my best never to hurt anyone. I never coax. You wanna dance? Great. If not, cool. They got to know I don’t promise more than one night of dancing before I bounce.”

“Bottom line, though, how many women … I mean all those rumors of the legions, they’re not an exaggeration?” Moses figured one injudicious question deserved another.

“Well. No. The answer is too many and not enough.”

“Come again?”

“Oh, hell. What BS.” He mocked himself. “That’s my standard response: ‘Too many who just wanted a quick fuck and not enough who were about love.’ Come on, who buys that? I get more love than anyone deserves. I got all the intimacy I can handle in the band. You get to know the other members better than you could ever know your wife. Being in a band is like being married. My loyalty is to Absurda, well, shit, was, and Ambitious, and Lux. My mom, Nathaniel, Xtine. That’s it. And now—maybe you.” He paused and let the promise or threat of that remark reverberate. “I’m thirty years old. Maybe someday I’ll change and want a wife and kids. Now, no way.”