Bruce Bauman - Broken Sleep

Moses paced around the office, occasionally glancing at the tantalizing Suzan Woodruff abstract on the wall. He’d hired Jay as a consultant to furnish and decorate the offices, in hopes of keeping her close to him. Foolish move. Of course she was sympathetic when he relayed the events of the Teumer meeting. But she glided over his hints at attempting reconciliation. Whenever she left to meet someone — he couldn’t ask who — the wound breached and bled.

Although they e-mailed a few times a week, and spoke on the phone erratically, they’d last met at the office three months before. He had told her about the upcoming “Salome summit.” How he wished she were beside him now.

His friends pushed him to end all contact with Jay, to lower the unattainable standards set by his rose-colored vision of her. They encouraged him to start dating. He placated them by going on a few setups, which “didn’t work out.” After the Evie misfire, he understood that he couldn’t approach sex as a good meal, gratifying yet disposable. He was terrified that, literally, he wouldn’t survive another failed relationship. So Moses made one simple decision: He would remain alone. It never occurred to him that his emotional retreat imitated his mom’s behavior. Hannah, too, had forsworn the risk of romance after the rejections by her first husband and Teumer. With no child to love, the Nightingale Foundation became the recipient of Moses’s adoration and passion.

Ten minutes before Salome’s scheduled arrival, Moses began to feel faint. He texted Alchemy: “Call it off.” No response. Moses paced— I should leave. I should call Jay. No. I can’t . He scurried into the bathroom, doused his face with cold water, and took a Xanax.

He decided to wait in the conference room. It was bigger and safer than his office. Moses stood in front of a wall where a series of Jasper Johns prints hung. They’d been donated to the foundation by Salome’s onetime dealer Murray Gibbon, after he met with Alchemy’s lawyers, who’d uncovered some dubious accounting practices. In time, they would be auctioned off.

Moses heard the front office door open. He peeked out from behind the door. “In here!” he screamed too loudly. His eyes focused on his mother, dressed for the winter cold of New York in a camel hair coat. She rewound a flaming red scarf around her neck before slowly removing her tan leather gloves and stuffing them in her coat pockets. Alchemy said something to her that Moses couldn’t hear. With the elegant Savant sashay, which had bypassed Moses, they entered the conference room. Moses retreated to the far side of the marble table.

“Mom, I want you to meet Moses. He is the driving force as well as day-to-day operations runner of the foundation.”

Moses planted his hands flat against the tabletop to still his trembling. The maneuver didn’t stop the fast-spreading schvitz stains under the armpits of his light blue button-down shirt.

Salome began to sing: “I just saw the devil and he’s smiling at me …”

Despite weeks of role-playing with his newest therapist, Moses’s armor melted away. Past became present. He stood in front of his mother at the age of fifty-three, suddenly an infant — defenseless and bereft of language.

“What? Stop.” Alchemy recognized the tune. Indignant, he glared at his mother, who glared at Moses, who looked bewildered. Salome unfurled the scarf from her neck and wrapped it around her fist as if loading up to land a right cross.

“You think I don’t know about your blood sucking?”

Moses and Alchemy glanced at each other. Alchemy mouthed, “Oh, shit.” Her ability to keep her awareness a secret flabbergasted Alchemy — and rendered him momentarily speechless.

“Alchemy, how did this Moses ”—Salome’s voice was witheringly derisive—“beguile you?”

“We’re brothers. It’s an incontestable fact.”

“If I taught you anything, you know that there are multiple truths, but there is no such animal as an ‘incontestable fact.’ ”

“Mom, listen to me,” he pleaded, “he is my brother and your son.”

“I’ve lived fifty years with the loss of my child and lost he shall remain. I’m leaving.”

Alchemy stood beside Moses as they watched their mother make her way toward the door. Alchemy patted Moses on the back. He said resolutely, “You are my brother.” Moses wished he could dissolve and fade into a faraway cosmic soup. He managed a what-can-you-do? shrug.

“I’ll be right back.”

Alchemy followed Salome to the car and asked the driver to take her home. She got in the backseat. “Traitor,” she hissed.

“Mom, we can talk about this later.”

“Not to me you won’t.” She closed the door. The car drove off.

Alchemy returned to the conference room holding a bottle of Grey Goose taken from the office fridge. He held the bottle by the neck in one hand and two glasses in the other.

“Mose, I never suspected …” Still unable to find any words, Moses waved away Alchemy’s placations. “She’s a fanatical maker of myths that become even more unshakable when the myth is exposed.” Alchemy poured a glass and swooshed his vodka like mouthwash before he swallowed it. “It’s small consolation, but at least you had Hannah and she loved you.”

“It is more than consolation. It was a treasure and I’m so grateful for that.”

“Mose, you understand quantum physics?”

“Only sort of.”

“I thought I did. I just met Amy Loo and Spencer Frieberg, from riteplay.com, the music site, and we’re investigating making quantum computers. When they whip out their equations …” He smiled sardonically. “I love the idea that anything can appear one way and then another depending on how you look at it. Salome is right about this — all truth is subject to interpretation.” Moses flinched, unable to suppress a sudden feeling of betrayal. “When we first met I was really laid low by Absurda’s death. Remember, you asked me if I believe in God?” Moses nodded, not sure where Alchemy was going with this. “I didn’t answer because, well, I had no answer. I spent many hours meditating on that question in the monastery. No matter how I looked at, I couldn’t make that leap of faith.” He finished his vodka and poured another one. “Ambitious, searching for a reason, blamed me for Absurda’s death. In the monastery I realized that when reason fails — and it always fails when tragedy hits — everything and anything can be blamed on someone else or the ‘mysterious ways of God.’ Shit, Salome is proof that reason is irrational and the irrational is reasonable.

“Mose, even with everything I have in life, the emptiness, the terror of the nothingness, it can paralyze me. I realized my aim is finding meaning in life in a world without God.”

“I’ve always struggled with that. When the cancer hit, the struggle to understand why became as hard to comprehend as the cancer itself. I accept I may never grasp the reasons for my cancer or Salome’s behavior. Or plenty of other things.”

“Maybe. I didn’t try to find you, but I’m sure lucky you found me. Look at your situation and your bad health. What if I hadn’t been born? Or you couldn’t find me? Was it worth finding out all of this shit? If you hadn’t …”

“… I’d probably be dead.”

“So is the pain of tonight worth being alive?”

“Right now, not so sure. Last week and next week, yes.”

“Drink, please. It’ll get you to next week faster.” They both took a gulp. “I’m not sure what any of this means ultimately—” Alchemy’s cell rang. “Can I take this?”

Moses nodded and half listened. “Yes, still at the foundation. Laluna, I’ll see you tomorrow. Promise.”