Bruce Bauman - Broken Sleep

“Jay,” Moses interrupted him. None too thrilled with hearing Jay mentioned in the same conversation as a porn star, he clenched his fists and uttered the necessary assurance. “It happened before Alchemy and I met and, although I hope it doesn’t come up, if it does, it won’t be a problem.”

Alchemy flashed Moses a thank-you smile before interjecting, “No matter what the rumors say, I did not have sex with Absurda before, during, or after Ambitious and Absurda’s relationship.”

Winslow inhaled, his cheeks expanding and then slowly contracting. “There’s a story, apocryphal or not, but apropos. Early in his career, Lyndon Johnson spread the rumor that his opponent slept with pigs. Johnson knew it was a lie, but he said, ‘I only need him to deny it.’ Denial gives a story credibility and forces me to do plenty of extra contextualizing. Look at all the time and resources wasted on the idiocy of the Obi birther bullshit. The Kerry people totally misplayed the Swift Boating assassination. I follow the axiom, ‘Do unto others before they do unto you.’ My job is to find the best narrative to give you credibility by contextualizing her extensive sexual history—”

“Find another way. I liked to fuck. Absurda liked to fuck. We fucked a lot — separately. End of story. Equality in fucking without judgment is one of the reasons I’m doing this. Real equality in all forms — legal, financial, and moral — for all.”

Alchemy turned his gaze slowly to each of the people in the room so they fully understood: He makes the rules.

Moses pulled a paper from his briefcase. “Religion worries me more than sex. I took this from Jefferson in a letter to Richard Rush: ‘… religion, a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his maker, in which no other, & far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.’ ”

“Moses, that’s good but too heady for the everyday sound bite. It’s my job to simplify.”

Borden had been sitting mum. She eyed Winslow, who gave her the go-ahead. “Speaking of religion, your biggest liability may be Laluna’s budding relationship with Godfrey Barker and his church. What exactly is the nature of the relationship?”

Alchemy answered perfunctorily, “Jack Crouse persuaded her to do the music for a Cosmological Church video.”

An unsatisfied Borden continued, “It’s poison. You have to end it. If you don’t, I have advised Dewey that we cannot sign on.”

Alchemy, visibly bristling, got up from his chair. “You mind?” He lit a cigarette, took two puffs, and then stubbed it out in an empty ashtray.

Moses never anticipated Winslow turning them down for this reason. “Dewey, it hasn’t hurt Crouse’s career.”

“He’s not running for political office. There are certain things you can’t sell to the public as a politician.” He veered his gaze from Moses to Alchemy. “You both need to consider the extreme challenges of this undertaking, from every conceivable angle.”

“Challenges?” Alchemy opened his arms and held out his hands. “No problem. The impossible is the least that one can demand. I don’t know any other way.”

The meeting ended. Alchemy walked Moses out to the front of the house. “Thoughts?”

“He seems good. You checked him out thoroughly?”

“Yes, and still checking …”

“The one thing they didn’t, you know. Maybe there are other things?”

“There are and I will tell them over dinner.”

Moses understood that with Alchemy, everything was on a need-to-know basis — and there were things he didn’t need to know and was better off not knowing.

Unsure of himself, Moses still pressed the point. “Persephone.”

“You tell anyone?”

“No.”

“Not even Jay?”

“No one.” He suspected Alchemy would be unhappy but okay with him telling Jay, but he knew he would not be okay with Moses’s breaking his word. And so, betraying everything life and history had taught him, Moses deluded himself into believing that telling this one lie was less destructive than the truth.

“Then it’s only you, me, and Laluna.”

“Right.”

“Mose, we’re crossing the Delaware. You know the passwords.”

Driving back to the Laguna hotel, Moses reflected on his brother’s role as pop icon gone political. In our culture, he thought, stars live a far different reality from the rest of us, a reality where rumors become truths and where what is seen by others is the truth . All else happens in a vacuum where there is no identity without others to give one definition. Alchemy understood that he, as Alchemy Savant star , thrived in a public reality consisting solely of the external and the immediate. He constantly needed to reassure the public that his future was essential to our future. In this age of multiple, uncertain realities, stars are the existential heroes of our time, and stardom allowed Alchemy, and even the skeptical Moses, to believe in the reality of the impossible dream.

After a year and a half of touring with Ferricide, I get back to L.A. I don’t see Alchemy except on TV, so I don’t expect it when he calls me up and says me, him, Lux, Silky, and Laluna need to meet. He wants each of us to pick two older Insatiables songs and do an intro and we’ll release them off our Web site as a free download.

I show up early ’cause I’m interested in, well, snooping around. There’s a slew of cars in the side lot and I wonder if I got the wrong day. The huge room where the projector use to be is now a banquet room. Also they added on a small screening room. Waiters are serving drinks and hors deserves. I pop open a beer. Alchy is spieling, circled by a bunch of political groupies. “My aim is to usher in the postpatriarchal. I want the world to be a better place not just for my daughter, but for all daughters no matter their race, religion, or lack of religion. I don’t mean just by picking a woman for VP. Of course that is important. I don’t want to change biology. I love being a man. But I often wish I’d been born a woman …”

He meant all that crap. Only Alchy, if he’d been born a woman, she’d still be a control freak.

I see Hugo Bollatanski hovering over the buffet table. He got gray hair and a droopy face. I don’t care if Alchy has forgiven him for the shit he pulled with Absurda, I’m thinkin’ of giving him an old-fashion McFinn hello when some dude taps my shoulder. It’s Spencer Frieberg with Amy Loo next to him. We never met and they want to thank me ’cause Audition Enterprizes put up money for ritevway.com, the microblogging site. I ponied up for that one, ’cause I passed on riteplay.com, which caused me to make like five mil to Alchy’s hundred mil. I wonder if they’ll still be Alchemy fans when he starts taxing them at ninety percent! They introduce me to Elizabeth Borden and Dewey Winslow, who is Alchy’s political pals. They ask if they can conversate with me sometime about Alchemy. I say sure, but not today.

I excuse myself and check out the house. It’s the only place Alchemy has lived in for more than a few hours before thinking about moving. Laluna supervised some renovations like the glass patio and making the third-floor two bedrooms into one big one for them and building a playroom for Persephone, and her toys and shit is everywhere. No doubt about it, they love and spoil that kid. He moved the Select-o-matic and a couch into one of the downstairs rooms that has piles of books and magazines on the floor. Looks like he inherited Nathaniel’s filing system. Instead of his collection of old music mags like Trouser Press, Creem , and Punk , I now see politico mags.