Bruce Bauman - Broken Sleep

“Mose, you need to slow down or maybe speed up on the vodka. You look a little peaked.” Alchemy moved closer. “Relax. You can leave now if you want.”

“I think we’ll do that.”

“I’ll explain everything in detail tomorrow. It’s all for the best.” Looking over Moses’s shoulder, Alchemy spotted Crouse and Laluna side by side, clinking their beer bottles as if making a toast. “Call me tonight if you need to.”

Alchemy walked over to Laluna. Moses was scanning the crowd looking for Jay when Barker cut him off. They’d never officially met. “I’m Swami—”

“I know.”

“So you’ll understand my, let’s say, advice. If you’re smart, you’ll reason with Alchemy to stop that restraining order and allow me to see Laluna without his interference.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because you’re the good German, and good Germans know when to change sides.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I think you know exactly what I’m talking about.”

Moses answered, quietly assured, “I’m smart enough to know that threats and unfounded smears are the weapons of the desperate and the vanquished.”

“I agree.” Barker bowed slightly. “It is not I who made the first threats. As a historian, you’ll also agree that truth is a powerful weapon for the victorious.”

All night I’m stewing. Don’t sleep. I go first to Malibu with Carlotta to the party she’s working. At halftime, I zip down to Topanga. Laluna catches me right away, huddles me away from the crowd. “You Maria or Laluna today?” She enemizes me with the dick-shrinking glare like she done the first day I met her at Kasbah. “Hey, was just joking.”

“You’re going to behave, right?”

“Yeah, yeah.” I get me a beer or three. I go commiserate with Silky ’cause we’re having a problem finding us a lead singer for our tour. Silky says she seen a lady who has chops.

Some young babes snuggle up to me. I’m a dopey dick-for-brains male, only when I’m an article, I am a faithful one-woman guy. Can’t help myself, though, I still charge my rocks with some harmless flirting now and then. I was too antsy to even play.

I find Lux. I tell him I have questions and he best not lie to me.

“Ambitious, I’m hurt.” He’s only being half sarcastic. “I don’t ever lie to you.”

“Did Alchemy and Absurda ever, you know?”

“Christ, man, no. I told you before, NO.”

“That night at the after-party at Madam Rosa’s, when all the shit went down with my brother at the Plaza, before I left with the girls … I seen the two of them outside with his wang dangling and she was squatting down wimping, ‘Thank you …’ That’s when I lost it and, well, ya know.”

“Look, man, it’s years ago, and if they did, they did. Absurda’s gone. Carlotta is terrific. Alchemy’s with Laluna. Let it go. Let … it … go.”

He eyes Laluna talking with Barker and Crouse. “What’s up with that?”

“I seen her yesterday and she’s trying to figure some shit out. She don’t wanna be ‘Laluna’ no more. She and Alchemy, they’re both different but not the same different, ya know what I mean?”

“I hope she figures out to stay away from those guys.”

Laluna waves and wishes a “ta-ta” goodbye to Barker and Crouse. Alchy appears outta nowhere and fucking hugs me. He’s acting strange, too. Tells me he’s so glad I made it, that I’m still his “brother,” and sometime me, him, and Lux should sneak in to see this new Insatiables cover band. I’m nonchalanting like nuthin’s wrong. His eyes is open too wide, them brown pupils is spinning their netherworld dance. I figure something is gestating, and I’m guessing he knows something is up with Laluna. He gets a call he “has” to take. I yell after him, “Bet life was easier bein’ a plain old rock god.” He laughs.

I tell Lux I’ll catch him later ’cause I need to talk to Salome. I’m not ten feet down the path when Laluna races up. “Don’t bother her today.” She says Salome’s been behaving extra biddy-bip, even for her, and they’re moving her to her own place. “We’ll all meet in the studio after everyone clears out. Come by then.” Laluna ain’t her usual unflappable superhip chick self. As pissed as I am, I try to be a good guy. “It’ll work out. Ya know Alchy, he can fix anything. He’ll fix this.”

Most people are only half watching the game. Mrs. Mose is so drunk that Mose has to hold her up as they stumble over to the house. All the shit that’s gone down with them, I’d start drinking, too. Well, drinking even more. I call Carlotta, who don’t answer. Must be working. I leave a message I might be home late. I’d bet five grand on the over/under, so I watch the game with some guys who is also actual football fans. And wait.

Parnell Palmer and I, with Bellows by my side in her office, held a computer TV chat because he still has more questions and I had more answers. Screens are hindrances to any sensate morphologist, but I acceded when Palmer agreed that Persephone could soon visit with me. There is a not so minor catch. She is somewhere in Eastern Europe. I tried to wheedle Perse’s exact whereabouts and the time of her expected return. He stonewalled.

Palmer began this cross-examination by asking if I’d heard Alchemy and Laluna arguing about her consorting with Godfrey Barker and Jack Crouse. I hadn’t. Crouse was so bland and inarticulate — worth maybe one fuck.

Through the screen, I recounted to Palmer what transpired on the day when, a few days before their football party, Laluna brought Crouse and Barker to my studio for a second time.

Barker began by apologizing for the collector he thought might want a Baddist Boy collage, who had passed. This was news to me and gave me a taste of his entitlement, since I’d told him I wouldn’t sell it. He suggested I do a commission for their new church in Hollywood. I said thanks but no thanks, which provoked an attack from Godfrey the Enlightened. He said the antipsycho drugs “stulted” my artistic growth and caused me to become even more “unstable.” “Truthfully,” he said, “I offered the commission as a favor to Laluna.” He smiled arrogantly. “You haven’t done anything exceptional in years.”

Laluna blanched.

“Barker, I don’t need favors from her or from you, and I take insults from vulgarians like you as compliments.”

Too self-absorbed to notice Laluna’s discomfort, he lectured me on the benefits of Cosmological Kinetic therapy, which would “purify” my demons and “open” me up to create “monumental” art again.

Crouse chimed in too enthusiastically, “It’s great! Really great! You should try it!”

I paid no attention to him and addressed Barker. “Exorcisms of any kind do not intrigue me. I am my demons.”

“It’s not an exorcism. Purification puts you in touch with those demons and then you’ll embrace and control them. Ask Laluna. You two would become much more simpatico and mutually supportive of each other, and of Alchemy, instead of jousting rivals.”

The only impediment to improving my relations with Laluna was her imposing upon my relations with Perse. If she’d stopped that, we’d have been just groovy.

Palmer had listened through the screen without much comment. I heard his muffled voice speaking to someone off-screen. Then he swung his axe.

“So you didn’t say to Barker that you’d burn his church before you’d ever create art for it?”