Broken Sleep (40 page)

I tried to live my life as Salome the artist, not as mother of superstar. I thought about finally exhibiting the
Baddist Boys
collages, but my psychopomps’ undulating warnings whispered, “Too soon, too soon.” I listened.

I prepared a smaller exhibition for the Grand Dame of the L.A. art scene, Lily Fairmont. As the title of the show, I truncated the Diogenes quip, “It’s not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours,” into
My Head IS Different
. Using the garage in the Silver Lake house as a studio, I painted a series of portraits of other Collier Layne vacationers. I defined them with quasi-abstract squiggly profile lines, color, and brushwork. I can’t say I made one intimate friend during any vacation. I never had a single violent or sexual interaction with any other guest. I only watched and listened. I’ve purposely refrained from detailing the barbaric and profane treatments of group therapy, electroshock, and mind-raping drugs given to others. It is not my right to tell their story. I wouldn’t want any of them to reveal their version of mine.

Some days after the opening, Lily called. Her voice dripped with her sardonic tone, “Honey, two not at all amusing elderly gentlemen want to buy some pieces.” I asked her to describe them. They were standing right there, so she held out the
phone. I heard the unmistakable voices: Lively’s slow-winding-lariat-snap drawl and Teumer’s strident Teutonic grumblings. Lily, the anti-Gibbon, agreed that certain people should not have my work. I asked her to put them off and have them return the following afternoon.

The next day, nurse-nanny number one drove me to the gallery. She waited in the car.

I arrived before them and hid in the back room. I watched as she denied them the paintings. Teumer was bloated, rounder, and no longer even vulgarly sexy. Lively, hulking as ever, appeared uneasy. Teumer kept trying to change Lily’s mind and she kept insisting, “Honey, there’s not a chance.”

Unexpected reinforcements arrived in the form of Absurda, Mindswallow, and Pullham-Large, who had missed the opening—not that I cared. They were dropping by before going to a recording session.

I uncloaked myself and emerged from the office. I mouthed to Lively and Teumer, “Stay there,” while I draped the others with histrionic hugs. Absurda and Pullham-Large perused the pieces in the back of the gallery. Mindswallow leaned against the front wall, drinking a beer; art interested him about as much as football did me. I turned to face my nemeses.

“Pig meat sweat! I smell pig meat sweat fresh from the inferno.”

Teumer sneered at me. “This is how you welcome your old friend and lover?”

“Malcolm, if I could undo only one night of fucking, I’d undo the night alone with you.”

“Oh, it was more than one night. And our offspring lives here in Los Angeles. Would you undo that, too? Perhaps we should go visit him.”

The repressed vision of our son alive arose from the foggy years I was under Ruggles’s drugs. I almost believed him. I stared at Lively. “He’s lying.”

“ ’Fraid not.”

“Mr. Mindswallow?”

“Yo.”

“Do you understand the piety-filled corrupt language of liars? It’s the language of those who reek of pig meat sweat.” I heard my voice nibbling at the edges of hysteria. So did Teumer. Expecting me to hit, spit, or tackle, he slid back next to Lively. I edged toward them. Teumer raised his right arm. In a flash, Mindswallow snatched his wrists and arched his arms behind his back. “Not a smart move.”

Teumer whined, “Let me go!”

“I ain’t into hurting an old man, but I let you go and you try something, I’ll hit you so hard it’ll knock your gonads into your mouth.”

Lively pacified the situation. “No need, son. Let go of my friend, and we’ll be on our way.” Mindswallow released his grip. I stood between Lively and Teumer, put one hand on each of their arms, and walked them to the glass doors. “Never a pleasure doing business with you two.” I turned and smooched Mindswallow on the lips. “Absurda, you’re a lucky woman to have such a chivalrous killah bee by your side.” Mindswallow yawned.

Nurse-nanny drove me to the ocean. After a stroll on Venice Beach, on the way back to Silver Lake we detoured to the Sunset Boulevard recording studio. Pullham-Large paced nervously outside the control room. Without my asking, he fetched Alchemy.

Alchemy, smoking, looking displeased, slowed his walk from harried musician to concerned-and-in-control son as he approached me. “Mom, you all right?”

“The sand and salty air sanitized me after the filthy exhalations of Lively and his friend who came to the gallery. I’d like to move closer to the ocean.”

“What did Lively want? Maybe I can help.”

“His friend’s a collector and wanted to buy some pieces. I don’t need your help.”

“Okay. Dinner sometime later this week?”

“Yes. Go back to making music.”

So, you see, my seeming bratty ingratitude has warrant. Instead of gaining me my freedom, Alchemy’s fame tightened the noose of dependency around my neck. When a child becomes father to the mother,
the ceremony of innocence is drowned.

I Prefer Not To

Moses got up before 6 A.M. and took a taxi back to Bergamot to retrieve his car. When he got home, he turned on his computer hoping for an e-mail from Jay, but no. To his surprise there was an e-mail from Evie. She’d sent it at 5 A.M., probably when she was first getting to bed. She asked if they could meet the following night. Moses answered from his private e-mail. They met at the Marina Hotel, a somewhat run-down and inexpensive hotel used mainly by flight crews because of its proximity to the airport, and where there was scant chance of being noticed. They ordered room service, had sex, and watched
To Have and Have Not
, which Evie had never heard of, much less seen. Moses told her how the forty-five-year-old Bogart and the nineteen-year-old Bacall had met while making the film.

“That why you picked this one?”

“Partly.”

“I’m twenty-six, not nineteen. Guess she had daddy issues, too?”

“I don’t know.”

“Professor T”—she didn’t like calling him Moses—“you’re like an old guy, but I wouldn’t be with you if you were a clown.”
Moses looked confused.

“You haven’t heard that?” Moses shook his head. “C-L-O-W-N. Creepy Lecherous Old White Nympho. It’s what we call some of the teachers.”

“Well, I’m flattered, I think.”

Thus their afternoon encounter turned into an affair. He’d wait for her to contact him—which she sometimes did two days in a row and then not for four or five days. Still incapable of embracing any notion that life has a bottom, Moses allowed himself a dollop of hope that Evie’s arrival, however dubious their “relationship,” signaled at least a lull in his descent.

Things continued in this way—erratic, guilt-laden, yet invigorating. The attention of such a young and attractive woman began the repair of his frayed ego. Moses spent much of his time reading and going to the movies alone. One of his old college friends, who taught at Columbia, encouraged him to start writing down his ideas comparing the revolutionary years of 1848 and 1968. He never got past jotting a few notes and listing the books he’d need for research. He perused a long proposal that Alchemy had sent him outlining ideas for the Nightingale Foundation, which he envisioned as both beneficial for society and as the jumping-off point for entering the political arena. He wanted Moses’s input.

At the end of July, Evie and Moses met at the Marina Hotel—he still didn’t dare see Evie at his home or hers. They watched
The Palm Beach Story
from bed while Moses rhapsodized about Preston Sturges (he relished the role of cultural mentor). Then Evie nonchalantly put forth a question Moses had expected for some weeks: “You told your ex-wife about me?”

“I’m not officially divorced. Very soon, though. And no, not yet.”

“Hey, no prob. I’ve told none of my friends or other lovers about you.”

“Best way to go for now.” He was relieved not only by her circumspection but also that she had other lovers.

“How about your brother?”

“Who?”

“Isn’t Alchemy Savant your brother? Figured you might exchange, you know, stuff. Guys being guys.”

“My
half
brother and I are not exactly on a ‘guys being guys’ terms. I haven’t seen him in months.”

“Be a playa. Show me off to him! Show off my music! You got more PILF points than you know.”

“PILF?”

“Professor I’d like to fuck.”

He laughed silently, but with some pride, at the idea of Moses the Lothario. “Let me think about it.”

“If it’s so upsetting, forget it.”

AlchemyAlchemyAlchemy, his name compressed and shrank Moses’s balls. “Maybe I’ll send him a download of your music.”

“Great. Great.”

“No promises.”

Asking Alchemy for any favor was anathema to Moses. Instead he called Andrew Pullham-Large, who said to send it over. He also informed him that the
Enquirer
had “agreed” to leave him and Jay out of the story. They couldn’t substantiate
the innuendos about Alchemy and Jay. Alchemy had threatened a prolonged lawsuit regardless of the cost. This earned more of Moses’s gratitude.

Pullham-Large e-mailed within two days. “Not for us. Tell her to keep at it. Too much Bikini Kill/Sleater-Kinney, not enough Evie-Anne Baxter. If you have any other suggestions, always looking for exceptional new talent.” He forwarded the e-mail to Evie.

Later that night he checked his in-box and there was a reply from Evie. “Cum on, intro me to your brother. They’ll listen to HIM.” Just below it was an e-mail from Alchemy. He wanted to meet the following week to pick Moses’s brain about the Nightingale Foundation.

Moses didn’t answer either e-mail that night.

In the morning he found another e-mail from Evie. “C’mon, Moses. What’s wrong? Are we still good?”

Moses, despite his desire to help, couldn’t explain the situation to Evie. He had decided that when he and Alchemy met, he’d see if the proper moment came for him to slip her into the conversation. He didn’t want to tell her because it might unduly raise her hopes.

Evie, there are complexities in my relationship with my brother that preclude me from pursuing this with him right now. I want to support you, only in this specific request it is not possible. Please understand. I love your music and your company
.

Her peevish response: “If you really love my music, what’s so complicated you can’t send him a cd?” Moses answered with a brief e-mail saying he’d give her more details (although
he wasn’t sure what he would say) when next they saw each other. She answered “OK” without setting a date for “when next” they’d see each other.

Unlike previous years, without Jay and now not hearing from Evie, Moses relished the start of classes, so he was not displeased when he received a call in mid-August—a week since hearing from Evie—from the secretary to Robert Slocum, dean of the Humanities Department. The dean requested a meeting without giving a reason.

Immediately after hanging up, Moses’s regret over Evie’s recent silence escalated into runaway paranoia. He imagined that Evie had lodged an official complaint. He pored over and deconstructed all of the correspondences between them: no way to deny a relationship, yet nothing tawdry or disrespectful. They’d begun sexual relations
after
she had completed his course and fulfilled her BFA requirements in compliance with SCCAM’s notoriously lax faculty-student relationship policy. Moses supposed she felt betrayed and that his behavior would lead to dismissal, suspension or, at best, probation. The hope that his life’s descent would have a long lull was a gross miscalculation.

Freudian Slipper, 1999 – 2001

In 1999, we were at the top of our game as a live band and
Blues
was on the way to becoming triple platinum. We skip the group intervention, and Alchemy accompanies Absurda to a recovery tank in Minnesota. We postpone the video and the tour. I go to Queens for a few days for Nova’s funeral. When Alchemy gets back, me, him, and Lux do some recording and jamming in the studio while waiting for Absurda.

After ninety days, Absurda prances up to Beverly Hills beaming like a farmer’s daughter in a “Got Milk?” commercial. Her hair is growing out and her skin’s all peachy. Holding her hand is a guy who she hooked up with while he was rehabbing for Oxy, Perc, and booze. Claims he is a surfer. He hands me an embossed card that says “Hugo Bollatanski, Esquire,” which Alchy says is a fancy way of saying lawyer. He breezes around all tan and wearing a white suit. Dude surfs about as often as I climb Everest.

Absurda is raring to play, so we shoot
The Ruling Class
video and all but finish
Multiple Coming
. In the summer we head out for more months on the road supporting
Blues
.

Hugo buckles his belt to Absurda and hops on the tour bus. He and Alchy is always yack-yack-yacking about the upcoming election. I despise all the smarmy fuckers. Even though we play a benefit for Gore, I don’t tell them if I voted it would’ve been for Bush Jr.

In the middle of the tour, Hugo decides he needs to be Hu-Gone and will relocate to D.C. to work with some political types. Absurda acts like it’s cool. I know she’s bleeding, so I warn Hugo not to dirty-deal Absurda. The next day, Absurda, during the preconcert meal, pulls me over so no one can hear us. “Ricky, you surrendered your right to intrude into my personal life when you broke up with me. I can take care of myself, thank you very much.”

For the next few months, Hugo flies in and out regularly and Absurda seems good. When we arrive in D.C. for two shows at the Cap Center, Mr. Suavola is in the dressing room with flowers and chocolates. I’m thinking I may have to do some reevaluating. Then Absurda don’t show for the sound check for the second night. Can’t reach her nowhere, so we head back to the hotel and the chambermaid lets us into her room. The two of them is in bed and they ain’t moving. Towels laid out on the floor that stink of crack smoke, a few Percs on the bathroom sink, and empty bottles of bourbon and Tylenol PM. Alchy dials 911. Lux is trying to slap Hugo out of his stupor. I kneel by the bed. I feel Absurda breathing. I lift her and carry her to the shower. The paramedics show up and zip ’em off to the hospital.