Bruce Bauman - Broken Sleep

Just as they’re serving the cake, Laluna tells me that Persephone isn’t feeling well so she is leaving early. Alchemy is sticking around. I got an idea that ain’t the only reason she’s gotta hop. Laluna gets that Salome was jabbing her as much as complimenting me, and she’s PO’d ’cause Alchemy don’t back her up that she is a great Sancho, which is the trap Salome set. No matter what he says, he can’t win.

Carlotta walks Laluna out to the driveway. Alchemy is off in the corner of the yard with Salome, who says real loud, “She’s now the leader of the Salome defamation league.” I start to go toward them. For once, I’ll play peacemaker.

Lux cuts me off. “Don’t, bad move.”

“Yeah,” I says.

Then he teases me, “Who would’ve thought a once skinny little shit like you, with two bucks and a torn T-shirt to his name, would one day land such a great woman as Carlotta?”

“Who you callin’ ‘once’ skinny?”

He pinches my belly through my shirt. “Okay, okay.” I say, “but I know the real reason you shaved your head, and it ain’t just for the look.”

He says real stern, “What’re you implying?” Then he cracks up. But he got me thinking, since I left home, I do got one wonderful fuckin’ life.

My ancestors deserted me when I most needed them. To complete or abandon my Margarita mission was my question. Why? Why must I be the one? Yet, although I could not reach him through my DNA, I had sensated that night in the office that he was my son — and Margarita was right, his reappearance boded ill for Alchemy. I forced myself to drop by a few political or foundation events at the house. He was never there. I made an effort to be more solicitous of the entity known as “LAlunamy,” hoping to glean more insight. When they rehearsed and recorded their album Chansons , often with Persephone by my side in the studio, I offered only kudos. I never criticized or asked if I could contribute. Or admitted my hurt when Alchemy allowed Laluna to choose another artist to do the art accompanying the text after I offered to help. I began to think that never seeing him again was no coincidence, and the completion of the mission might be unnecessary.

That changed after Mindswallow’s wedding. Before we dressed for the festivities, I went to fetch Perse for a morning constitutional. Laluna was in the kitchen talking on the phone. I got a cup of coffee and sat across from her at the butcher block counter. She pulled at her lip piercing, her anxiety tell. “Okay, Got to go, Jack. Send me the download.”

Sometime back, Laluna had come to my studio with Crouse and Godfrey Barker. Barker was a bloated-cheeked, potbellied blowhard whose uniform of silver-gray silk kurta and white pajama pants gave him the look of an irony-free ’60s TV sitcom hippie, an unctuous purveyor of airy-but-not-airy-enough “science.” I faked serenity as I showed them around. He paused in front of a Baddist Boy collage of the Pretender and Malcolm. “Ah, yes, I remember seeing them at your Hammer retrospective. I don’t remember this particular one. Is it for sale?”

“I didn’t exhibit it. And no, not to you.”

He bared his teeth and smiled haughtily. “It’s not for me.”

“Who?”

“Someone I think you would approve of. Can I take a cell phone picture?”

He did. I never heard from him and never gave him another thought — not until that morning in the kitchen on the day of the wedding. Sounding a bit defensive, Laluna told me that Crouse wanted her to try scoring his new film.

“That’s nice.” I said. “Where’s my granddaughter?”

“Alchemy is driving her to Mose and Jay’s for the night. She loves being with them.” She sounded far too self-satisfied. “Alchemy will drive us to the wedding.”

I let it drop.

Except for the petulant Laluna, who left early to pick up Persephone, and maybe Ambitious’s Neanderthal father, everyone had a swell old time. Alchemy beamed, elated for his true brother. In the car ride home, I broached the necessary topic. “I’ve been considering, maybe, that night in the Nightingale office — I may have let my myopia overtake my empathic impulses, with, you know”—his name choked in my throat—“him.”

“You mean my brother, your son, Mose?”

“Yes.”

Instead of compassion at my suffering over the turmoil of my lost child, my attempt at making peace elicited an accusatory question. “And now, years later, how do you intend to correct that myopia?”

“You and he are close. His wife seems to be friendly with Laluna. He spends time with Persephone. Maybe a family get-to-know-you session.” My tactic was clumsy — I hate clumsy — my words sounded like someone else was speaking them. I backtracked. “I’m sorry. Maybe this is the wrong time. We can talk again and I’ll explain how, from the moment of his conception, his life affected mine in only the most excruciating ways.”

No sympathy. Only a lifeless, “I’ll talk to him.”

Alchemy never spoke his name again in my presence.

I forget about Elizabeth Borden ’til she e-mails me about a meet. I double-check with Alchemy. For a guy who spent so much energy fogging his personal life, this told me how much he wanted to do this shit. And wanted it from day one.

I meet Borden at the Kasbah offices. Right away she sticks a confidentiality agreement in my face that “prohibits” me from “disclosing to any individual” what we talk about. I sign it Ricky McFinn, which ain’t been my legal name for years.

She starts with Nova’s death and shows me phone records that I called Alchy before I called the cops. “Fuck, this was like a hundred years ago. He told me to call the cops and I did.”

“What were Alchemy’s relations to Ana Perez, who you knew as Falstaffa, and Martin O’Malley and their drug business?”

“He never did no drops. You gotta know he believes all drugs should be legal but that don’t mean he supports using them. Matter of fact, he threatened to boot my ass out over my intake.”

She’s like a zombie with a voice that sounds like it’s giving GPS directions. I got no patience for her bull, so I volunteer that I been in jail, punched people out, been banned from my share a hotels and restaurants, ingested boatloads a drugs, and who knows what the fuck else she would disapprove of, but I ain’t running for nuthin’, and it got nuthin’ to do with Alchy.

She asks if Alchemy ever propagated the idea of a revolution. That’s a laugher. I tell her that from the first day I met him he says how much he loves America. Since he made three, four hundred million bucks, even if he’s gonna piss it away, I says, “What the fuck is he revolting against?”

Borden don’t smile. “Do you know he met with Malcolm Teumer when you toured Brazil in 2006?”

“Nope. He was always meeting all kinds of people that I passed on. That some relative of Mose?”

She don’t answer. Next up is “some of the women” in Alchy’s life. This subject does not thrill me. “Judging by his relationship to Laluna, would you say he has an attraction for very young girls?”

“Who don’t?”

She frowns. “Did he ever have relations with underage girls?”

Her attitude sounds like she got some info. “What do you think?”

“I think I asked you a question.”

“Young ain’t underage. And if you know Laluna, she was never young.”

“What about Miranda Wright? Did he have relations with her? Mr. Mindswallow, why are you laughing?”