Broken Sleep

by Bruce Bauman

  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.

  73

  MEMOIRS OF A USELESS GOOD-FOR-NUTHIN’

  Spittin’ Image, 2016

  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.

  I want to investigate my former room, so I start up the staircase when one of the ex-con security guards puts his up hand, “Sorry, off-limits.” There’s a photo of us on the wall from about ’98. “See that? Not off-limits for me.” He steps aside. For years, “my room” hardly been touched, but now I guess Laluna fumigated me out of there with a paint job. There’s nuthin’ in there but one double bed and a coupla dressers.

  I’m heading down the hallway when I hear Mose and Laluna coming up the stairs. They’re laughing and all buddy-buddy. Mose is saying, “I agree we have to act together, and do what is best for Perse.” They clam up the second they see me. Laluna gives me a hug. Me and Mose shake hands.

  Persephone rushes out of her room and jumps in Mose’s arms and kisses him. “Unc Mose, come in here, I want to show you my crayon box and crinkly paper Granmamma gave me.”

  “Okay, honey, but I only have a few minutes. Your daddy and I are working today
.” He nods to me and they go into her room.

  I says to Laluna, “You hiding out from the do-gooder I’m-better’n-you brigade?”

  “Not my kind of peeps.”

  “Mine either.”

  “I do have to make a brief appearance.” She sticks a finger in her mouth like she wants to gag.

  “How you dealing with all this shit?”

  “Mostly, I don’t. I do what I want. He’s always bouncing ideas off me. That’s fun.”

  “Yeah, he always wanted my ‘perspective.’ I knew he always wanted this but I still don’t get it.”

  “Like he says, if someone with his money and influence won’t do it, only the assholes will.”

  I prefer not to opine on that one, so I says I’m gonna go hang out in the studio.

  “Ambitious, give me thirty minutes and I’ll meet you. We can kick around some tunes. Figure out our choices for the promo.”

  On the way to the music studio I see Salome in the space between her cottage and her art studio. She’s relaxing on a lounge chair under an umbrella, reading a book. Her hair is gray streaked and not as long as it used to be. Her face got some old-age lines, but she’s looking pretty good.

  “Is that the still-infantile-but-no-longer-an-infant known as Ambitious Mindswallow? Sit down,” she orders and places the book under her chair next to her flashlight. I pull up a lounge chair. “What brings you up to our cozy hideaway?” I explain that I’m early for an Insatiables meeting, and ritzy politicos ain’t my type.

  “You know the only place to spit in a ‘ritzy’ man’s home?”

  I let loose on the ground.

  “No, you silly boy—in his face. Only this ritzy man is my son.”

  “What I hear, he may not be so ritzy after tossing his fortune into this political Dumpster.”

  “I commend him for it. It’s what he and Nathaniel always planned, had he stayed with us.” I know better than to talk politics with Salome, so I don’t say nuthin’.

  “I am upset with you, you know why?”

  “I thought you was always upset with me, so, nope.”

  “Specifically because I never heard from you after Nathaniel moved on. For all the teasing, he was quite fond of you.”

  I did feel shitty, only I’m not sure how to handle those things. “Alchemy said the funeral was private. And, Salome, Nathaniel died years ago and you seen me since.”

  “I could explain to you that there is no such thing as time.” She let out her loony tunes laugh goin’ up the scale. “There is no statute of limitations on expressing sorrow.”

  “Why is there no such thing as time? I’m starting to feel old.”

  “Tell me, how often do you think about Absurda?”

  I says, “How do you mean ‘think’?”

  She pats me on the head. “Nice to hear how you remember her, but that kind of fantasizing has nothing to do with time. I can’t divulge anything of such import to you.” She laughs loud. Salome is still as biddy-bip as the day I met her. And I still feel old, and Absurda is still dead.

  “Speaking of the once dead and still alive, is my son’s so-called brother here?”

  I’m perplexed for a second. “You mean Mose? Yeah, just seen him before I come over. Was with Persephone and Laluna.”

  “Damn it. I may have to go and put a stop to that.” She stops. Looks up. “Beware, we have an intruder.”

  Standing about ten feet away is a woman who looks like Salma Hayek. “Hi, I’m Carlotta, I planned today’s event and I’ll be supervising the annual Super Bowl party.”

  I wonder if she can get us a serious football pool, instead of Alchemy’s usual pools on the over/under on how many times the announcers call the players “heroes,” coaches “geniuses,” and compare football to war.

  “Laluna asked if there is anything special you would like to eat or drink today or on Super Bowl Sunday.”

  Salome waves her toward us. “First, my son should ask me, not you or Laluna. I don’t blame you. You don’t know better. I’m good today, thank you. I will not be partaking in the Super Bull festivities. You like football, don’t you, Ambitious?” Before I answer, Salome says, “What about you, Carlotta?”

  “It’s not my favorite sport. I have to get back, but if you change your mind anytime between now and the day of the party, I can bring you what you want.” She hands Salome a card and starts back down the path.

  “Cute, yes? Good smell, too. Hello, Ms. Solano!”

  “Shhh.” I’m shaking my head. Yeah, that worked.

  “Please come back!” A little startled, Carlotta turns around. “I want you to formally meet Ambitious Mindswallow. You know who he is?”

  “Of course.” She shoots me a party-planner smile.

  “I’ve known him since he was a teenage killah, and I can sense he’s got, to use his oft-stated phrase, ‘a hard-on’ for you.”

  I’m mumbling, “Oh, shit, Salome, shaddup.”

  “It’s no coincidence you arrived while he was visiting with me. Please, give him a chance.” She’s pushing me out of the chair. “Get up. Go with her.”

  I know better than to rile up Salome, so we start walking back to the house. I says, “I’m sorry. Salome is … different …”

  “Is she right?”

  “About what?”

  “Don’t play stupid.”

  “Well, yeah. I’d love to ask you out.”

  “It’s not proper to socialize while I’m working. Take my card.” She swallows me with her big brown eyes and big breasts, and I am a goner.

  74

  THE MOSES CHRONICLES (2016)

  The Revolution Will Be Digitized

  Securely reunited, Moses joked to Jay that he hadn’t been, well, less unhappy in years. They laughed at his reluctance to say the word “happy” without the prefix “un.” Whatever the reason, the passage of time or repression, the Jay-Alchemy affair no longer ignited his jealousy or feelings of inadequacy. When Jay attended a Nightingale function, she and Alchemy exchanged pleasantries and that was it. Mostly, Jay and Laluna sat together or hid in a corner. The two of them got along well, actually liked each other, but their differences in age and basic interests kept them from reaching out for a closer relationship.

  Moses threw himself full force into expressing the Nightingale Party’s philosophical and political goals as talking points for the press, or young candidates they hoped would vie for local positions, laying the groundwork for Alchemy’s 2020 presidential run. Professorially speaking, “philosophy” and “talking points” remained incompatible, and some of his former colleagues at SCCAM reproached him for crossing enemy lines from academic to political operative. He countered, or maybe rationalized, by saying they’re just different forms of educating.

  With Alchemy staking a huge chunk of his fortune on the party’s future, all other sacrifices became trivial. Moses remained both somewhat apart from and overseer of those who ran the analytics, local offices, advertising, polling and everyday PR flackery, Web and social media. All heads of the departments sent him weekly summaries, which he put into one-page summaries for Alchemy. The Nightingale Party occupied the same building as the reduced-in-size Nightingale Foundation.

  Laluna, who claimed no special interest in delving into the netherworld of Cosmological Kinetics, had finished the music for the video and bid Crouse and Barker adieu, which satisfied Winslow. Borden asked Moses for his permission to speak to Jay. Less than jubilant, Jay agreed. Moses asked Borden not to send him a copy of or even notes of the interview.

  The rumored Alchemy-Absurda relationship and the possible blowback from the unpredictable Mindswallow still rankled Borden. Moses asked what specifically worried her. Oddly, she clammed up. He took the bait and pressed Alchemy, who, exasperated, told Moses, “Get Cherry on it if you want to.” He called her. A few weeks later, she informed him she had a tape he needed to hear. Moses asked her to send it to his home.

  Alchemy and Louise Urban Vulter, who had jumped from right-wing media ra
bble-rouser to junior senator from Arizona, were in the middle of a ten-day barnstorming tour. Their next stop was at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and Moses decided to go.

  Vulter and Alchemy were vying to become the voice of the disaffected and disenfranchised. Vulter had tamed her belligerent style and presented herself as a representative of “my silent minority, working- and middle-class real Americans.” Of late, she’d made veiled references to breaking away from the Republicans and establishing the Reformation Party, which not only lessened the chances of Alchemy being branded the spoiler but also increased his chances for the future. Moses noted to Alchemy that the last time four serious candidates ran, Abraham Lincoln became the sixteenth president with thirty-nine percent of the popular vote.

  In the ten minutes before they appeared on the stage, Moses observed the playful rapport between Alchemy and Louise. They’d found common ground that surprised them both: Alchemy’s expertise in shooting guns, which he’d learned as a teenager in Virginia, Vulter’s Insatiables fandom, and her reputation along Prescott’s Whiskey Row as “one hell-raisin’ bawdy babe.”

  The audience’s questions showed a preponderant interest in all things Alchemy, from his opinions on other bands to his political positions. Vulter, sensing Alchemy taking over the evening, reverted to her go-to issue and jingoistic persona, unleashing an anti-Islamic fusillade.

  “Alchemy, your fandom is a nice subject, but what of your plans to dismantle our nuclear arsenal? How do you propose to stem the Islamic tide? One that would ban your music, prohibit your lifestyle? We’re idly witnessing this imminent peril threatening you and all the faithful. I demand we use all of our power to save our American way of life. The attacks on our institutions and governmental systems are not cyberterror—they are cyberwar waged by Islamic technojihadists. Suicide bombers without the suicide. I know how to win this war. Singing a nice song won’t do it.”