Bruce Bauman - Broken Sleep

“Nope. Should I?”

“Guess not. He is my father. His relationship with Salome is a blank slate to me. He married my mom and then split on us when I was two. Never seen him since.”

“Mose, you got the double, no, triple whammy. No wonder you got cancer.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, it’s that Salome, she’s got these theories about disease. Don’t worry, she’ll tell you all about it.”

Moses didn’t respond right away. He wanted to meditate on cancer and his “whammies” and how Alchemy spoke with such equanimity about their crazy mother and his own barely known father.

In the enveloping sunset, the Focus hiccupped up the mountain pass from Sedona, which, in twenty years, had transformed from pristine landscape to a tourist town dotted with signs for the Vortex Inn and the Crystal Rubbing and Convergence Committee, before arriving in Jerome, a former copper-mining town. Jerome remained less New Age commercially corrupted than Sedona. As they neared Trudy’s home, Alchemy asked almost offhandedly, “Hey, you want me to see if I can hook you up? Trudy might have some friends.”

“Um, I—”

“Sorry, Mose, that’s trespassing. Upon a moment’s reflection, I sense it’s not your gig.”

“Nope. Not my gig.”

“I respect that. I’ve partied with musicians, athletes, politicians, and civilians like you, and they all were fucking their brains out before crawling home to wife and kiddies. I’m not into subterfuge.” Although he didn’t sound like he’d completed his thoughts, Alchemy paused. “I didn’t mean ‘like you,’ Mose.”

“No, I understood.”

“Okay, good. I’ve been to shrinks and I’ve always been exceedingly cautious when it comes to their analysis of me. Most accuse me of being a sexaholic or a hedonist with intimacy issues. Fine. I counter that they have a control problem and most of them are envious and the others are phonies. I’m just doing what most guys, and women, too, would do if they had the chance. I do my best never to hurt anyone. I never coax. You wanna dance? Great. If not, cool. They got to know I don’t promise more than one night of dancing before I bounce.”

“Bottom line, though, how many women … I mean all those rumors of the legions, they’re not an exaggeration?” Moses figured one injudicious question deserved another.

“Well. No. The answer is too many and not enough.”

“Come again?”

“Oh, hell. What BS.” He mocked himself. “That’s my standard response: ‘Too many who just wanted a quick fuck and not enough who were about love.’ Come on, who buys that? I get more love than anyone deserves. I got all the intimacy I can handle in the band. You get to know the other members better than you could ever know your wife. Being in a band is like being married. My loyalty is to Absurda, well, shit, was, and Ambitious, and Lux. My mom, Nathaniel, Xtine. That’s it. And now — maybe you.” He paused and let the promise or threat of that remark reverberate. “I’m thirty years old. Maybe someday I’ll change and want a wife and kids. Now, no way.”

Alchemy slowed the Focus as they neared the two-street town. He stopped in front of Trudy’s adobe-style house, which stood atop the mountain overlooking Sedona’s red rocks to the north and Prescott’s Verde Valley to the south.

Trudy greeted them in her kitchen, where she was cooking dinner. She was in her midforties, much older than Moses had imagined, with a pretty, kittenish face and brown-and-gray-streaked hair. She gave Alchemy a loud smooch. She served them two of Alchemy’s favorite entrees: buffalo burgers and veggie lasagna. After dinner, Trudy showed Moses to his room on the first floor, and then she and Alchemy mounted the stairs to Trudy’s bedroom.

Moses called Jay and got the machine. He left a message. Then he called his mom.

“So how are you feeling?” She asked in a taut voice.

“I’m good. Very, very tired but good. We should be in late tomorrow afternoon.”

“Jay told me. We’re all frayed and stressed. She’s so distraught that she didn’t even come over to swim and have dinner. She made your appointment with Fielding for the day after tomorrow.”

“Fine,” Moses said perfunctorily, now worried about Jay.

“Moses, are you still angry with me?” He heard her inhale deeply on her cigarette. He wanted to nag her about quitting but held back.

“I told you I wasn’t angry at you and I’m not now. But Ma, you need to control your nag genes.” Again came that poisonous word, genes , which had once bonded them but now divided them. Neither one responded to its new meaning. “I’m not going to let forty-plus years of love and devotion change anything because of this. Got that?”

“Yes,” Hannah said, not quite convincingly.

Too enervated, Moses refused to play the cajoling game. If he answered with a hint of uncertainty or impertinence in his voice, the conversation would continue in a circular fashion for hours. “Mom,” he said in an even but firm tone, “I need you to be strong for me now, the way you have been all of my life. Okay?”

Hannah, satisfied with Moses’s answer, allowed the conversation to end on a note that signaled a truce in this new phase in the war of parental territoriality.

At around eleven, Moses heard a commotion in the front room. He stumbled out to see Alchemy fully dressed and with guitar case in hand, while Trudy talked on the phone. “We’re headed over to the CopperPot bar on Main Street,” Alchemy said cheerily. “Come by, if you’re up to it.” Moses took the accompanying pause to the invitation to mean that Alchemy expected him to come.

“You go ahead. I’ll meet you down there.” Feeling both obliged and curious, Moses got dressed. By the time he strolled outside, half of Jerome’s four hundred inhabitants, like characters in a ’50s zombie movie, were marching in lockstep toward the CopperPot.

Moses sat next to Trudy, who had saved him a seat. Alchemy, perched on a stool on the tiny stage, Gibson guitar slung over his shoulders, gulped a beer and puffed on a cigarette. No doubt this appearance would hit the still-embryonic Net. Apparently, Alchemy couldn’t handle five weeks with no sex and no adulation. As the crowd in the bar swelled, Moses felt, as he had that night at the Whisky, the oceanic presence that was the public Alchemy, and what it promised: I am your dream, and in me our dreams merge as one .

He began abruptly, “My homage to Mr. Hemingway.” Alchemy started strumming and nodded slyly in Moses’s direction.

Irony and pity

Oh so witty

A little Aristotle

in a bottle

The son not only rises

it also surprises …

Was Papa havin’ fun

when he wrapped his tongue

’Round his gun, say … hey ,

please blow me … away …

He spoke as if talking to an invisible presence. “Because I never thought we could do justice to Roky and Lou Ann, so now …” He effortlessly slid into a song called “Starry Eyes.”

When he stopped singing, Alchemy smiled glowingly at the audience. “As some of you know, I’d been in solitude for five weeks and five days until I was rescued. In fact, if anyone asks, I’m still not here. Tell ’em it was an impersonator, goes by the name of Dusky Goldplate.”

His fingers meandered on the guitar strings for a while before landing on a Leonard Cohen paean to youthful need and hope. Unlike Cohen’s husky Old Testament chastising drone, Alchemy’s voice flowed out like a hymnal with sweet and tortured resignation. He let the last notes linger before he addressed the audience again.

“I wrote this during my recent monastic vacation. I’ve never sung it aloud before so it’s a virgin ride for all of us. It’s called ‘Mystic Fool.’ ” He stooped, picked up his bottle and finished his beer. “For Absurda.”