Broken Sleep (25 page)

Mr. Akin arrives late. Right away I see this surly motherfucker owns a pair of ornery eyes and mean lips.

Absurda got up to greet him. They act nervous. They don’t sit next to each other at dinner. Most of the blah blah is about sports, the weather, local gossip. Alchemy as usual is talking politics. That might’ve been the first time I hear the name Louise Urban Vulter, who’s gonna be Alchy’s political rival in about fifteen, twenty years. She was just starting out doing her talk radio show.

The little demon known as alcohol is getting the crowd louder, and Mr. Akin is slightly riled up. He hollers across the table so everybody is listening in on this exchange.

“Mandy, my princess, what’s it like to travel the country and be famous?”

“Better than being here.”

“You always thought you were too good for this place.”

“No, I was too bad.” She laughed and so did most of the guests. “Dad, you should come visit me in L.A. You might change your mind.”

“Maybe I will.”

“I’d like that.”

That seemed to end it. After the main course and before dessert we go into the living room. Mr. Akin comes up beside me and says real low, “I can still eat punks like you for lunch.”

“Figures you like to eat dick.” I flick him with my fuck finger and turn away. From behind he grabs my wrist and tries to pulverize it. Coaches. Hate ’em. I says, “I promised Absurda I’d behave. It’d take me one second to misbehave. So if you want to go, you keep holding on and we’ll see who goes down.”

Alchemy slides over and he grabs both our wrists. Mr. Akin releases his grip.

“Ambitious, back off.” Which I do.

“I don’t want no trouble,” I says, not really meaning it. Alchy and Akin step out to the enclosed back porch and have a smoke. Mr. Akin don’t look at me again.

After dessert and some folks are leaving, Absurda nudges me. “Hey, all,” she lets everyone know, “we’re going for a ride by the lake.”

Only we don’t go by no lake. We drive to her dad’s house. Door is unlocked. A bunch of half-busted trophies is laying on the stinky living room rugs. She walks into his bedroom. We do a few quick lines. Then she starts undressing.

“Fuck me on this bed.”

Sounds appetizing to me. The asshole has already enemized me.

We are pumping away and just as I’m about to blow my wad, she feels it and she pushes me off her. I come all over his sheets. She takes his pillow between her legs and wipes it with her juice. She gets her lipstick and draws a heart on the pillow and inside writes “mandy & ricky” and tosses it on his bed.

I was impressed by her well-planned vendetta. On the ride back, one thing is rankling me. “Did he ever touch, like sexy, touch you?”

“Never. If he had, I would’ve done more than come in his bed.”

The last few folks is getting ready to leave when we get back. Her father is waiting and asks, “Nice ride?”

No doubt everyone believes we got high.

“
Great
ride.” We look away from each other so we don’t crack up.

Mellowed by the food and drink, everything seems calm. Even Mr. Gym Teacher, who puts his arm around Absurda. “I was just waiting for you to get back to say a proper goodbye. Mandy, my princess,” he says that again, not quite sounding sarcastic, “it’s time for me to return to my present, less than palatial home.”

There’s hugs and fake kisses all around as everybody leaves except brother Jeff (who came in his own car), Alchy, Heather, Absurda, and Mrs. Akin.

I’m curious if Mr. Akin will be sober enough to guess what we done.

Twenty minutes later, while we’re cleaning up, we find out. I hear a car door slam, and in flies Akin. Not even wearing a coat, with the pillowcase in his hand, foaming at the mouth. He lunges straight toward Absurda. “You’re a sick, perverted bitch.”

“I’m sick? What do you call fucking Jenny Heckendorf in
my
bed when we were sixteen?”

Then Mrs. Akin slaps Mr. Akin across the face. “Get out. Get out the hell out of my house.” Me and Alchemy are on either side of him. Akin surveys that this is not the appropriate moment to prove his manhood, so he flings the pillowcase at Absurda. It flutters over and she catches it. “Souvenir of my trip home.” I see in her eyes she wants to fold up and cry just like a little girl.

We, well, Absurda, decides we should leave the next night instead of Sunday, so we rent a car. As we’re standing outside, finishing packing the trunk, it’s so freaking frigid I’d’ve drunk blood to warm me up, Absurda collars Alchemy and me in the driveway. “Keep reminding me of this disaster if I start to go all mawkish about my childhood.” She tilts her head toward the sky. She’s shivering, so I take off the Green Bay Packers knit cap that her brother Jimmy give me. “Here.” I pull it down over her hair and ears. I put my arms around her. She whispers as the wind is whipping off the lake, “The next time I come back here, it will be for their funerals.”

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

No one could miss hearing Hannah’s ecstatic cry of “Thank God!” when Dr. Fielding pronounced that her son would live. The doctors refused to speculate for how long, but no oncologist would have bet on Moses’s thriving for another twenty years.

Yet beneath Hannah’s outward glow, the armor of her perfectly coiffed hair and meticulous outfits, hovered the penumbra cast by the unspoken volumes between her and Moses. She blessed each day that Moses survived, and yet, in the darkest circle of her hell danced the shadow of Salome. Hannah compiled a lawyerly list of reasons why she should not talk to Moses about her: His recovery was taking so long; the doctors had warned them that the process was arduous and that he’d be frail for a year, maybe more. He was weaker than before the operation.

Hannah had lured Jay into playing go-between. Jay did her best to reassure Hannah, who visibly winced at the utterance of the name Salome: Moses had zero intention of coming face-to-face with Salome anytime soon. Moses said he wouldn’t make any decision about Teumer until he’s, and she quoted him, “ ‘regained a semblance of physical and emotional fortitude.’ ”

Jay’s words only temporarily mollified Hannah. They did nothing to end the odyssey of hushed histories between mother and son.

Hannah and Alchemy began bonding when they agreed America needed to do away with all insurance companies in favor of a single-payer plan. Alchemy joked that it was good to have a lawyer in the family since the insurance company, with its usual audacity, had reduced Fielding’s hospital stay request for Moses. They were appealing, but if they lost, Moses would have to pay. This led to private cigarette chats, when Hannah and Alchemy would sneak out to the plaza patio connecting the hospital’s two towers. At first, they exchanged insignificant talk of the weather, or the guilty pleasures of smoking; at other times they spoke of the immensity of the calamity that had befallen New York. Eventually, Hannah had ventured into the realm of the personal when she thanked Alchemy for his “sacrifice.” His answer: “Never gave it a second thought.” Alchemy, deftly if indirectly, then raised the specter of Salome.

“This is unsolicited and presumptuous, but you did a great job raising Moses. There was always the prospect of a headline declaring I had a brother or sister who I’d find intolerable. I’d have no problem returning them to oblivion. Mose and me, we’re dissimilar in many ways, but he is a damn good man.” Alchemy’s grace and empathy disarmed Hannah’s psychic tripwire for silver-tongued boys.

“Thank you. I did my best under extremely difficult circumstances.”

“Difficult circumstances bring out the worst or best in people. In you, it brought out the best.” The look in Alchemy’s aquamarine eyes, saturated with the soft fluid of understanding, dissolved Hannah’s lingering qualms about his sincere goodwill toward Moses. “No question, he was better off with you than with Salome.”

“You think so?”

“Without a doubt.”

She felt a compulsion to reach out and embrace him. She saw now that Alchemy’s gift was the ability to raise either the maternal, sexual, or fraternal instinct so it precisely suited the needs of his audience, be it one fragile woman or one hundred thousand roaring fans.

“Without a doubt,” he repeated.

Never again would they speak of Salome.

After Moses returned home from the hospital, Hannah rented a furnished apartment in Beverlywood on a month-to-month lease. The doctors informed them: Moses must remain at home, and entertain few visitors, for up to six months. None of them were psychically prepared for the lengthy recuperation period. Hannah took quick trips to New York but did most of her work in L.A. This allowed Jay some respite from being the lone caretaker and also allowed her to give Geri Allen relief from carrying so much of their business load.

One morning while Moses dozed in his bed, surrounded by books, Hannah and Jay sat around the white wrought-iron table in the small backyard drinking coffee underneath palm
and pomegranate trees. They were looking over an article in the newish issue of
People
magazine with the ridiculous heading, “The Sexy Savior.” Worried that he’d be outed by any number of doctors, nurses, and orderlies who could connect him to Moses, Alchemy decided to preempt any sneak attack. He made a deal that
People
would get the first photos of the Insatiables with their new guitarist if they ran this article without any photos of Moses and without mentioning Jay, Hannah, or Malcolm. Alchemy supplied a few quotes about how happy he was to find his brother, who had been given up for adoption at birth, only he wished this wasn’t the reason. All of them, including Moses, were satisfied. It looked like Alchemy’s gamble worked; although the story was picked up by a few places, no more details or slanderous innuendos came out.

A call from Sidonna Cherry interrupted their perusing. “How’s our boy?”

“All in all, he’s doing very well,” Jay answered while holding up her hand, indicating to Hannah she’d explain in a minute.

“Super. It’s taken a while, but Lively got back to me, and he is game to arrange a meeting with Teumer if asked, and if Moses is willing to travel to Brazil. No guarantees, though.”

“I’ll speak to Moses. I’d say any significant travel is months away.”

“You ring me when he’s ready. Later.”

Jay cautiously explained the conversation, as Hannah’s lips curled with indignation. “I’ve never known that man to say ‘good morning’ without an ulterior motive.”

“I suppose you’re right. He probably has an angle.”

More than probable
, Hannah thought, although that was a lesser worry. “You think Moses will see him?”

Jay recused herself from the role of judge or accomplice in her husband and mother-in-law’s game of Tag—You’re Guilty. She did her best to alleviate Hannah’s insecurities regarding Salome, but frustration edged into her voice. “Why don’t you ask him?”

Hannah still couldn’t broach that subject. Instead, she delighted in the fantasy of mother and son embarking on a revenge trip. Moses would reject him outright, and Teumer would realize that she hadn’t needed him at all. She’d inform Teumer in no uncertain terms that she preferred living alone, being independent, focusing on her career and her son. It was a damn rewarding life. If, in the Book of Fame, her achievements were negligible when compared to Salome, the big-shot artist, at least Hannah was sane and proud: She’d become a prominent attorney. Her son loved her and was thankful for the love and care she gave him. He was kind. He’d faced his illness with courage. Above all, he was a mensch. What more could she want?

Peace of mind.

There’s No Place Like Home

Ruggles replaced Shockula, and after almost three years of extended vacation, he freed me on the condition I live under Hilda’s supervision. Ruggles believed the healthiest place for my soul was beside Alchemy. I sat uncomfortably buckled into the passenger seat as Hilda drove along Route 25 toward Orient. I felt oneness with the fallow fields streaking by. Before I even entered, I sensated the house vaporized with the same fallow air. Still, I was free to love my son. All summer Alchemy bounded about, almost giddy to have me around, the three of us living a near-ordinary life. I could walk anywhere in Orient whenever and wherever, eat when I got hungry, climb to the roof of the house and commune with the moon. Go to the movies. Have sex! Only, Hilda’s wary gaze seemed to follow me everywhere. I was not going to spend my life decaying in Orient, nor ever again would I part from Alchemy.

Nathaniel, “rehabilitated” and released from prison, remained on probation. In his letters, he’d been pressing me to move in with him to his apartment on 3rd Street between First and Second Avenues. Xtine had a steady girlfriend. Even if she hadn’t, full-time coparenting didn’t suit her, and the
Chelsea would not be Ruggles’s idea of an ideal home. Before we could move anywhere, I had to win Ruggles’s approval and find out from Bicks Sr. what legal rights Hilda possessed to keep Alchemy from me.

Another condition of my release ordered therapy with a New York mindsucker chosen by Ruggles, which afforded me an excuse to go into the city every week. I would vamp around for the day and take the last bus back. A few months after my release, I spent four days with Nathaniel. On our second night, he dressed up in his “courtroom suit,” hair patted down, gray-brown goatee trimmed neat. He planned an evening not exactly in keeping with the revolutionary who believed dinner at the Odessa verged on extravagant. We stopped at the Barclay for a drink and imbibed the waterfall-like playing of an underfed harpsichordist. As we strolled up Fifth Avenue to the Top of the Sixes for dinner, at a corner newsstand Nathaniel eyed a
Post
headline lauding Reagan. I waited for his usual tirade, but instead, he clapped his hands. “No politics tonight. Promise.”

Near the end of the evening, both of us tipsy doodle—he even danced with me during “Night and Day”—he placed his hands flat on the table. “Salome, we should think about getting married.” I gagged on my champagne. He quickly handed me a napkin and added, “for practical reasons.”