Broken Sleep (21 page)

“You’re a killah, right?”

’Course I put it on.

We’re standing just offstage and I see two hundred men in suits. Even if they ain’t in suits, they’re in suits with their shiny STDs—Silicone-Titted Dollfaces—on their arms. I see a few grungy crit types, and some who is old enough to be my father. Not our usual audience. I hear Alchemy muttering and repeating, “Failure equals death. Failure equals death.” Which kind of scares me.

When he’s ready, he leads us out. The lights is dim and we’re so fucking amped we hit the stage and never lose it. This big-shot critic, Zed Cone, who was a friend of Sue Warfield, wrote about the show for
LA Weekly
and really started the buzz.

(I read the thing about five hundred times. Sent it to my parents, who had asked for money. I toss in fifty bucks with a note that says, “Thanks for nuthin’.” Signed it, “Your useless son.” My bastid father writes back, “Figures, he don’t hardly mention you except when you kissed a nigger. You always was a nigger lover.” I wish I could’ve beat the fuckin’ crap outta him. I settle for ripping the note into a thousand fuckin’ pieces.)

Sue and Andrew had strategerized right. Lotta the big company dudes showed up. During “Face Time Is the Right Time,” Absurda skanked into the audience and pretended to give head to half the old fart execs. She spread her legs like she wanted them to suck her pussy, and poor Randy Sheik, no fuckin’ lie, spurted in his pants!

Man, the Sheiks, they were real beauties. Their rep is as bit players and hustlers with second-rate acts who had finally hit it big with the rapper MC Kreep, and Samureye, four nerds from Brooklyn whose gimmick was dressing up as the heavy metal band Samurais. They made a star outta Viviana Kerry, this teenage lollipop music slut queen, who was doing Buddy.

You had to love the Sheik’s chutzpah. They went from the Sheicksteins of Bayonne to the Sheiks of Venice, CA. Their offices was like Leonard’s of Great Neck meets an Arab oasis. Splashed out all blingy lamé and shiny shit and fake palm
trees and stuffed camels. The waiting area was designed in the shape and dirty brown color of a chopped-liver camel.

They was three brothers. Randy, who thinks he is a Jew Luca Brassi but he’s only the family water boy. Absurda used to jive him that if he lost fifty pounds and cut his ’stache she’d give him the best blow job in the world. Walter was maybe forty and stooped over like a Jewy bookkeeper with his black-rimmed glasses, short and skinny. I use to peek down and tickle his bald spot and tease him, “Walter, you forgot your pope’s cap.”

Buddy, though, he was one smooth alligator. All greasy groomed and expensive clothes but could snap your neck and never think twice. His extra-boldfaced gold watch sparkled on his dark, hairy-gazairy wrist. His voice raspy like an overheated seltzer bottle.

In the dressing room, we were kiss-the-sky high. We’d slayed ’em. I was spraying everyone but Alchemy with champagne. Andrew’d ordered plastic glasses that didn’t shatter, so I was stomping them with my boot. (Hey, I was young and doing what I thought rock stars should do.)

Alchemy, though, none of us dared enter his space until he gives the signal. He’d find a corner and cover his head under a towel. After a show, it was like he was some giant Thanksgiving Day parade balloon with the air hissed out and shrunk down. The energy he let loose was so atomic, and he needed time to rev up to be
Alchemy
.

He had finally uncovered his head and was gulping a bottle a bubbly when Buddy Sheik rams backstage, flanked by Randy and Walter. Buddy gloms on to Alchemy and Sue. Randy talks
to Absurda. Walter is on me, Lux, and Andrew. Then Buddy says real loud, “Deal?” and reaches to shake Alchemy’s hand. Alchemy nods and says, “Not yet.”

Buddy barked, “What? You don’t trust me?” We all turn to watch them.

“Why should I? Besides, all four of us have to agree.”

“Man, I could grow to love a boychick like you. You
shouldn’t
trust me. Yet. I’ll change that.”

Buddy paced around the space like a combo strip club pimp and used-car salesman. “Alchemy,
you
are like no one I’ve ever met—you’ve been kissed by God. And I’ll be blessed to have you as a member of the Kasbah family. The question you should be asking is: Why am I here? The answer: I want
Thee
Insatiables. I can feel how much I want you because it sickens my kishkes to think we won’t get you. We will give you ‘More’ than any other company …” He stops, waits, begins again, his voice calmer. “I know you’re thinking, Man, this schlemiel got nothing to say to me. Yeah, I’m a low-life
schmateh
peddler who never had a
class
act like you guys. You’ll see, you take risks. Me, too. If I didn’t, I’d still be selling rags. You got your dreams. I got mine.”

Buddy walks up to me and pinches my cheek. “Even you, you got class. Most of it low.” I slap his hand away and Randy inches up to me. Buddy keeps spieling. “Ambitious, here, I bet he thinks, and maybe the rest of you do, too, that we’re missing the boat on the ‘grunge scene’ and we need you.
No!
I want. I never
need
. Me and my brothers, we secretly been to see you twice. And we agree—you are
it
!”

Buddy keeps his focus on Alchemy and Andrew while slipping glances at the rest of us. Alchemy, who could keep a tractor beam stare on anyone, never takes his eyes off Buddy. They’re playing mind macho poker.

“Talent is not enough. Dedication is not sufficient.” His voice crackled now. “You need vision, need to see the lay of the land. Where the rat traps are and where the gold mines are. You sign with me and we’ll disarm the rat traps and find the gold mines.

“Anyone here know what
schvartz gelt
is?” He looks around. “No takers? Andrew, what’d they teach you at Cambridge?”

Andrew mumbles, “It means black and gold.”

“That’s kaiser-speak. In Yiddish it means …” He pauses ten seconds before whispering, “This never goes beyond this room.
Schvartz gelt
is Yiddish for T&E. The taxmen call it ‘Travel and Entertainment.’ Bull. It’s ‘Tits and Ego.’ Tastemakers make stars. Some need a massage. Every company will supply you with ‘party’ favors, but
we
best everyone in this business at giving the
right
people T&E. We’ll give you
ten
dollars less than anyone else … 
Less
, because I want you to be able to tell every mother-effing person who asks that artistic freedom is what
we
gave you. This comes from my heart and my pocketbook. I will personally write in an extra $50,000 T&E to promote
Thee
Insatiables.”

Buddy looks around, pleased with himself.

Alchemy says, “Ten dollars won’t do it. We’ll take ten thousand less.” I wanna scream, What the fuck? Sue and Andrew don’t look over the moon either. We all kinda know Alchemy is
testing them. “You give five K to the ACLU and five K to Bernie Sanders’s campaign in our name and Kasbah matches it.”

None of us in the room knows this Sanders dude is some commie congressman until Alchemy explains it later. I ain’t thrilled, but after listening to Alchy and Nathaniel, I ain’t surprised either.

“We can do that … And remember, you can call me or one of my brothers any time of the day or night. Can you do that with SONY? No damn way. We answer to no one but ourselves. Call me or any of us anytime.”

He walks up to me, stares at my shirt. “Don’t kill me just yet. Deal?”

“We gotta vote.”

He reaches for my neck and pulls out the chain with my eye. “Can I kiss it for luck?”

I nod. He does. “Decide soon.”

We sign with Kasbah. In no time, the tagline “When the Buzz Becomes a Scream” with pictures of us four, mouths open wide like we was screaming, is plastered all over L.A. In two years we zip from playing for free at family street fairs, beach parties, scuzzy unlicensed bars, and high schools to basketball arenas, to stadiums. When I think back how fast it happened, it’s like the genie granted me three hundred wishes that all came true.

What’s So Funny About Peace, Love, and Misunderstanding?

At the same moment Moses was in the throes of his reverie, Alchemy and his driver in his vintage 1963 Jaguar (refitted with an experimental biodiesel engine) rolled down Gracie Allen Drive. Alchemy caught sight of Jay’s long-legged, determined gait, with a slight hitch to her swaying shoulders. He asked the driver to pull over and he called to her as he stepped out of the car. Feeling ambushed, Jay took off her sunglasses and placed them in the breast pocket of her jean jacket, which gave her time to regain her bearings. “He’s still not ready. Call first.” She quickly added “please,” but there was no question that she was issuing an order.

Alchemy tapped the hood and signaled the driver to hang on. “Sure, of course. Call me later and let me know how he is doing and when I can come. But um …” He paused.

“Alchemy, what? Moses is waiting.”

“We should talk, about you know, I guess.” Mr. Savoirfaire sounded uncharacteristically maladroit. She nodded. “In here?” He pointed to the limo and they slid inside.

“So, talk.” Jay’s tone was brusque.

“When I walked into the doctor’s office and I saw you holding Mose’s hand. Whoa. Incredible coincidence.”

“I’d say incomprehensible karma trumps all other interpretations.”

“I’d say coincidence and karma are different words for the same thing.”

“I have no time for this.” Jay put her hand on the door handle, ready to get out.

“Hold on. It’s nothing like the path you have to negotiate, but it’s tricky for me, too. Besides, I was never proud of the way things ended with us.”

“Ended? With us? There was no ‘us.’ We had a few dates strung out over a few months until I met someone else.”

“Was it Mose?”

“If I cared enough, I would’ve called you.” She paused, allowing Alchemy to reevaluate the idea that he’d had her, rather than she had him.

“Jay, okay.” He stared right into her eyes. “It can’t be undone. The most important issue now is Moses. We need to protect him.”

“Too late.”

“You told him? Jay, why?” Vexed, he continued, “How much?”

“Very little but enough. He always says the cover-up is worse than the crime. I won’t lie to him. I’m not ashamed. I wasn’t a nun. He knows that. He won’t ask any more questions.
I
know him.” She paused as if to emphasize
and you don’t
. Not telling Moses about their affair would be, to her mind, unjust. Unlike Moses, for whom truth was subjective
and mercurial, or for Alchemy, for whom truth was situational but potentially knowable and informationally advantageous, Jay held fast to a belief in her objective, knowable, and universal truth. Once she admitted the affair, there was no lie. Jay believed that withholding certain information was never more inflammatory than a blatant lie, and saying little about a meaningless affair was more truthful than trying to explain it as meaningless.

“Alchemy, you and I can never be seen alone together, or he will drive himself mad. He may be forty-three and imagines himself a cynic, but he doesn’t really
live
cynically. I can’t bear the thought of hurting him anymore. Do you understand?” She drilled her stare into Alchemy’s round gold-flecked brown eyes, the same eyes that had entranced her years before but now seemed impenetrable.

“No. Not totally. But mum’s the word. He worships you.”

Jay’s tone and attitude remained arch. “One piece of advice: Watch yourself with Hannah. When it comes to Moses, she may not be his mother, but she is his mom.”

“Thanks for the tip.” He gave her a subtle yet visible once-over. “I’m sorry you’re having a tough time now. You’re wearing it well. You look as good as the night we met at the Dresden.”

She took pleasure in his remembering the party where they first met, and his compliment, which she refused to acknowledge with even the wisp of a smile. She wanted to believe that Alchemy wasn’t being a cad, that he wasn’t coming on to her, that he was genuinely concerned and was being open and penitent. With him, she decided, one could never be sure.
She closeted her ego. “Never, never say that or anything like it again. You call the hospital in two hours to talk to him, and he will give you a time to visit. This conversation never happened.” With that, Jay stepped out of the Jag.