Broken Sleep (50 page)

I said, “Shut up, Dad. I got no more patience for your dumb-ass ignorant shit.”

“Oh, look at my liberal son with his Negro, homo, and Jew friends. You talk like some faggot girly man.”

“Dad, I said shut the fuck up. The best thing I ever done was get the hell away from you. You fucked me up good with your ignorant bullshit.”

“I always knew you was a pansy-ass pussy who wishes he was a nigger. I was too fuckin’ soft on you. I should whip your ass right now.”

I’m ready to shut the fucker up for good when my brother’s girlfriend starts screaming words that ain’t even words ’cause she’s so wasted. Lenny claws her into their bedroom and two minutes later she wobbles out. “Lenny’s dick gone plurp. Ricky, ya wanna fuck me?” Lenny starts cracking from the bedroom like a typical no-sense-making drunk. “Ricky, ya better not fuck my woman.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t.”

“Why not? Ya too good for her? We’re gonna settle this like real men.” He passes out before he can crawl five feet.

It’s clear why I done my best to ignore them all these years. I drive back to the city the next day and, surprise, I discover my father “borrowed” my credit card and cell phone and bought $15K worth of computers, phones, and big-screen TVs online. I can’t press charges, so I pay.

Back in L.A., I meet Alchemy and Lux for dinner and I ask about reuniting. No chance. They bug me to regroup Ferricide. I figure I’ll try it. I get two former members and two new kids and we write songs and some covers for
Performance-Enhanced Death Drugs
, which we call
Pedd-o-file
, and pisses lots of people off—which was fine by me. We end up having an indie hit with a cover of Mott’s “Rock and Roll Queen,” which the music blogs say is my subtle shot at Alchy. As he might’ve said, “not consciously.” Anyway, Sue and Andrew set us up for a tour, and we hit the road.

About six, eight months into the tour I run into Lux at a hotel in Austin. He’s drumming for Buddy Guy. I miss him, and after my show I head over to the blues club where he’s at and join the jam. Then me and Lux retire to the bar and we’re BSing about the best and worst times, the bomb scares and near riots. I ask why he is doing this because he can’t be making much money.

“Yeah, but playing music is all I ever wanted to do. Some guys are doctors or roofers. I’m a drummer.”

“Music’s the only thing I’m any good at. I wish Alchemy didn’t give us up for politics. Why can’t he be like Bono or even Billy Bragg, speechify about peace and brotherhood bullshit, donate money, and still make music?”

“You’re asking me to explain Alchemy?” No one can explain him, I get that. “He loved being famous and the girls and shit, but I’m not sure he enjoyed the success the way we did. The band, in its way, was part of his bigger plan. He’s not a musician, he’s
Alchemy
.”

He spoke truth. I drink up and get another beer. “Lux, the worst was Absurda dying.”

“For all of us. The night of the funeral, after you went to bed, Alchemy asked me to stay up with him. He was having, I guess, a minibreakdown. I’ve never seen him so vulnerable, before or since. He couldn’t stop shaking, saying he was as weak and nuts as Salome and
he
was going to check into Collier Layne. He kept saying, ‘It’s all my fault. I should have seen this and fixed it.’ And shit, when Heather came over—” I shook my head. “Yeah, I know. I wished I could’ve stopped them. What was creepiest of all, he kept calling her Amanda.”

“Why didn’t ya ever tell me this?”

“Didn’t seem right. If he wanted, he would’ve told you.”

“Think him and Absurda was in love? Like really
in love
?”

“Falling in love was not part of Alchemy’s big plan back then.”

Seeing Is Disbelieving

Almost naturally, as if there could be no other outcome, Jay and Moses once again became a couple. They took beach walks, went to movies and art events, and spent most nights at her condo. Only the barrier of meeting his new family, which he’d erected after the evening at the theater, stayed the cementing of their second-time-around relationship.

That afternoon, Jay was picking Moses up at noon at his acupuncturist (almost sheepishly he had begun a regimen as part of his recovery: acupuncture, a strict diet, yoga, and weight training). They were driving up to Topanga for lunch with only Persephone and Laluna, which suited Jay just fine. Alchemy had zipped off to San Francisco to meet with Frieberg and Loo, the Internet whiz kids behind riteplay.com. Alchemy’s Audition Enterprizes had supplied the seed money and became a major stockholder, and Google was making an offer to buy the company. Salome was in Chicago, accompanied by Tryx, where she was giving a lecture and receiving an honorary degree at the Art Institute.

They entered the hidden drive located about seven minutes up Topanga Canyon Boulevard from PCH. Fifty yards deeper
into the woods, they stopped at the guardhouse manned by graduates of a Nightingale jobs program for former convicts, before driving up the half-mile private road. Jay parked the car in the large circular driveway.

In the garden, on her knees with a beer bottle by one side, Laluna tended to her flower bed. Dressed in woolen leggings that looked as if they were patched together from thrift shop sweaters, a thigh-length orange flannel shirt, short hair porcupining chaotically, no makeup on her smooth, tanned skin, Laluna struck Jay as carefree, young, and successful—yet her large, oval brown eyes seemed to deflect the gaze of anyone who stared too long and exuded an almost defiant aura that warned the uninvited to keep their distance. Jay guessed that it was the tension between vulnerability and stubborn independence that attracted Alchemy so ineluctably to Laluna.

Jay couldn’t balance her fluctuating emotions. Jealousy, because Laluna and Moses shared a child, hesitancy because Laluna seemed to float in her own world. Yet Jay found herself wanting this young woman’s approval.

Moses picked up and hugged Persephone, who settled happily in his arms. “Say hi to your auntie Jay.” The greeting instilled a special sense of security in Jay about her future with Moses. Persephone tucked her head shyly into Moses’s chest. Jay noted Persephone’s pale skin and light brownish hair, like Moses’s, and her hazel eyes that looked like neither Moses’s, Alchemy’s, nor Laluna’s.

Laluna waved to Moses and washed off her hands with the water hose. She and Jay shook hands. Moses carried Persephone as the four strolled along the gravelly paths
winding around the grounds, until they stopped in front of Salome’s studio.

“Jay, Mose says you’re a fan of Salome’s art.” Jay nodded. “You want to peek inside?”

“Love to but …”

Moses had never been inside. His eyes darting anxiously, he muttered, “I don’t know.”

“C’mon, Mose.” Laluna glanced at Jay, her first sign of kinship. “We know you want to. We’ll protect you from her evil spirits.” Laluna turned to her daughter. “Perse, honey, you want to visit Granmamma’s studio?” She nodded emphatically. “Perse sits or naps with her while she’s working.”

Laluna dropped her empty beer bottle into a recycling bin and took Persephone from Moses, and with her free hand pushed open the two glass doors. “I call this her ‘mad room.’ She gets mad when anyone goes in without her permission, but when you do, it might drive
you
mad.”

Laluna held the door. Jay, then Moses, stepped gingerly into the first of three 750-square-foot spaces with twenty-foot ceiling and multiple skylights. They were engulfed by scores of clocks. Clocks with numerical signs and in languages ranging from Old English to Arabic to Chinese. Clocks with no numbers at all. Some hand-carved in wood, some one of a kind, some purchased at Ikea. Others made of cheap plastic or various forms of cast metal. Two clocks made out of rocks. One sundial on the floor. A seven-foot-tall wire spiral clock. A slew of wristwatches side by side: Salvador Dalí with his mustache as the hour and minute hands, Annie Oakley with six guns as the hands, Smokey the Bear and another with Jesus
on the Cross. A replica of an ancient Greek water clock. From hundreds of years old to digital. Three cuckoo clocks. Not one clock ticktocked. Salome set and then disabled each clock to the moment she got it. In bold two-foot-high letters, scrawled across the floor in red chalk:
THE END OF TIME STARTS NOW
.

“Got no idea what she intends to do with this stuff. She’s told me she doesn’t believe in time. I look at this and, hmm … Who am I to question her?” Laluna led them behind a black curtain into a space of equal size, without windows or skylights. Paints, brushes, signs, books, rocks, twigs, stacks of torn wallpaper, coins, movie posters, piles of newspaper and magazine images, Kewpie dolls, Indian Ganeshes, an old, empty gumball machine filled with tiny pebbles.

Laluna clicked on a remote control and a TV nestled in the corner started playing. The images began with Salome’s youthful, near-perfect face morphing into its present profile, marked by the vicissitudes of age and madness, followed by images of her creations melting and distorting in a distinctly trippy fashion through various stages of her career. The soundtrack played splices of the Insatiables’ “Savant Sensation Bluz,” Miles Davis’s “Blue in Green,” and Davis’s version of Lauper and Hyman’s “Time After Time.” A half-delighted, half-frightened squeal erupted—it sounded as if it might be coming from the video, until they heard “Unc Mose!” They hurried through another black curtain to the back room, where Persephone stood beside a nude life-size body caste of Salome, and was staring at the never exhibited collages, done in
Baddist Boy
style, of Salome and a man dressed in Nazi uniforms. They were holding a baby that they were either throwing into
or pulling from a fire pit. The baby’s head was a photo of Moses taken off the SCCAM Web site. Across the top, in skeletal letters, she’d scrawled “Child Sacrifice?” Moses eyed Laluna and signaled,
Time to go
.

Jay clasped Moses’s hand as they speed-walked back to the main house. They avoided speaking of what they’d seen. They ate a late lunch on a glass patio that overlooked the Pacific. Laluna kept nudging Persephone to eat her lunch instead of play with it. Moses offered support. “My mom said I never ate much until I was ten or so.” Laluna’s stare fixed on her caprese sandwich. Moses quickly changed the subject. “I hope Alchemy gets what he wants from Spencer and Amy. Those teen titans of the tech world could really help the foundation.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Laluna opened another beer and took a gulp. “So, Mose, you’re Alchemy’s political guru.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“I would. I got a question, and don’t bullshit me. Is what he wants to do with the Nightingale Party a total waste of energy and money? He’s so obsessed. I start out talking about what to eat for dinner or rewatching
Battlestar Gallactica
and he finds a way to talk about ‘the third way.’ ”

“If I thought it a waste of time, I wouldn’t be so involved.” Moses started to list their agenda: changing the health system from “Medicare for the aged” to “Medicare for all,” taxing all religious institutions like businesses, redefining the Patriot Act. Laluna quickly looked bored. “I’m not exactly sure how or if we can do it, or what he expects. Not exactly.”

“I guess that makes two of us. When you know, please tell me if you think he’s going to make a fool of himself. You’ll tell me? Promise?”

“Promise.”

After they finished lunch, Laluna unexpectedly announced that she had to leave. “Got a meeting in town with Jack Crouse. He’s a fan.” Crouse, perhaps the most famous movie star in the world, possessed charisma and appetites equal to Alchemy’s. “His friend, who calls himself Swami Barker”—she rolled her eyes as if to say
whatever
—“wants me to do some music for his video.”

“Godfrey Barker? High priest of the Church of Cosmological Kinetics?” Moses tried to repress his distaste.

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “If he’s a jerk, I can pass. Stay as long as you want. Take a swim. Or a spa. I’ll be back in a few hours. The nanny can watch Perse. Enjoy the sunset. There’s plenty to drink.”

Jay wanted to take a swim, so Laluna showed her to a room with a selection of bathing suits.

Laluna swung back to the patio where Moses, paying no heed to the majestic views of the Pacific, was checking his iPhone for the latest news. “Hey, Mose, you’ll know if the world explodes.”

“I guess I’m as obsessed as Alchemy. Always was.”

“Look, I’m sorry I talked you into going in, you know, there.”

“Should’ve been prepared when entering Salome’s Fun House without a ticket.”

“Sooo right. What’s with Salome and that guy in the uniform? Hadn’t seen that before.”

“That man was my father.”

“Holy shit. Was he really …”

“Yes. Alchemy never told you?”

“Neither did you, and he said he doesn’t know that much about him. Since he doesn’t know that much about his own father, it made sense.”

“Neither of us know that much.”

“Jay looked so upset for you. She’s cool. So, you guys getting married again or what?”

“Don’t think so. No need. I’m keeping my own place. I think it’s better for now. Mine’s small and a mess, but I like it. She’s okay with that.”

“I got this feeling that you and Alchemy, well, you have the same idea that a house is a place to sleep and take cover, but you kinda live elsewhere.”

“I’ve gotten more like that.”

Laluna took off. While Jay swam in the heated pool, Moses sat beside Persephone in her room and she showed him her drawings. After which Moses sat with her while they ate dinner. They returned to Persephone’s room and Moses read her a bedtime story. When he kissed her good night, she meowed, “I love you, Unc Mose. Come back soon.”

Back at Jay’s condo in a quiet pocket of Century City–Rancho Park, while Jay slept, Moses fretted deep into the night over what he’d seen inside his mother’s studio.
Get over her denial.
I’m fifty-seven years old. I can’t get over it. I tried. When I saw her studio, I thought I was going to have a heart attack. Why is she treating me like this? Why? Because she is NUTS. What did I ever do to her—except live? Maybe if she knew the truth about Persephone she’d change. Love me. No—she’d hate me more
.