Broken Sleep (44 page)

About a month after Absurda’s funeral, we hold a memorial concert at the Troubadour. I’m reeling like someone stabbed me in my good eye. I get high. It don’t help my ornery mood and I get in an argument with Salome. Hugo Bollatanski shows up, and I’m on my way to throw him out when Alchemy steps in. “Let it go. He’s trying to make amends. We all have to let the bad blood go.” He means me and him, too. But his speechifying during the show—he makes her drug use and dying into a reason to legalize all drugs so the government can tax and control it—fuckin’ pisses me off.

After the show, me and Alchy get in a stare-down duel. I wait, and then I says, “You making Absurda a poster child for drugheads wasn’t right. Not tonight.” He lights up an American Spirit and the match flashes and it’s like it lit his eyes on fire, a voodoo doll gold and brown. Lux pulls me away. Me, Lux, and Bryn walk to my car. I’m wondering if Alchy told him anything. I ain’t said zip. Not even to Bryn. Lux asks Bryn to get in the car while me and him talk. He says, “Ambitious, you and Alchemy, man, I don’t know what went down in Fond du Lac, but whatever it was, you guys need to make peace.”

“Yeah, it’s on him, too.”

“No doubt. But Absurda wouldn’t want the two people she loved most in the world to stop talking because of her.”

I mumble, “Lux, I need some time. Me and Bryn are going to Cancún.”

“Take whatever time you need.” He opens his arms and bear-hugs me.

The trip away was a good escape, but I still ain’t sure what my next move is gonna be. The Topanga place is near deserted when I return. Salome is back in Collier Layne after getting caught leaving the compound with Alchemy’s Beretta to do who the fuck knows what. Nathaniel is confined to the guest house with his nurses. Alchemy’s disappeared into a freaking monastery. His version of a biddy-bip-bip farm.

I feel jumpy staying in Topanga. The Rampart house is too fucking packed with boogeymen. I put it on the market and rent a place in Hollywood Hills for a few months. Bryn kinda moves in with me but also keeps her condo ’cause she don’t want to stay alone in my new place after we hit the road.

When Alchemy reappears in L.A., he tries to keep under the radar ’cause of the shit with his new brother, Mose. But the media catches on and makes Alchemy a bigger hero for saving Mose’s life. Alchemy plays it all modest in public. To me, he brags how “intelligent” his “professor brother” is. For months I keep asking to let me meet the mysterious Mose, and he keeps avoiding it. I figure he’s embarrassed by me.

We’re also dealing with the Sheiks selling Kasbah to the Germans for gazillions. That kinda helps reunite us, ’cause we gotta decide if we are going to continue as a band, and if we are, how we deal with this takeover. Lux invites me and Alchemy to his parents’ place for dinner so no outsider will bother us. I’m kinda nervous about going there. Feeling ashamed, but I got no choice.

We eat dinner with the Bradshaws in their dining room. It’s kinda tense. I ain’t saying much. On the wall across from
me is two pictures. One of MLK and one of a sorta black, dark-eyed Jesus. Made me think of the pictures of JFK and a white blue-eyed Jesus that Granny McFinn kept on her dining room wall. Lux was about as religious as me, but he was trying to be the peacemaker.

After dinner, Big Lionel and Mrs. Bradshaw go to their bedroom.

Lux steps up. “Straight out, I want us to continue. Not for the money or the women. For the music. For what we’ve done and can do. It’s not going to be the same without Absurda. I’ll never stop missing her. But you two need to stop acting like bratty teenagers.” Lux was never afraid to call out Alchemy (or me, for that matter), and Alchy always took it from him. “I love being an Insatiable. Or we can all go do our thing elsewhere.”

I realize Alchy has said nothing to Lux. Still, I want him to speak first.

“We have to continue as a band. I have to continue now.” He turns to me. “Ambitious, what I did with Heather was flat-out wrong. I wish I could undo it. And maybe you wish you could undo some things, too. But we both did what we did because we hurt so damn much and acted in ways destructive to each other and to ourselves.”

That don’t get to the heart of it, but if I start in again about Madam Rosa’s and what happened in the hotel in Fond du Lac—I can’t live with Lux hearing any of that—that’s a road with only one way out. I don’t answer them directly. “Okay, guys, what’s our strategy on this merger bullshit?”

For what feels like forever, we have all these dumb-ass meetings about our new deal. The chill between me and Alchy has warmed, especially after we start jamming. We’re looking for a new guitar player after I decide to stay on the bass.

After the German takeover is done, we all have our gourds full of lawyer bullshit. It takes us a while to get going, but I’m excited to hit the road for a U.S. tour, which will bank millions. We settle on Silky Trespass as guitarist. Everything is first class. We’re as popular as ever, only we don’t hang out that much. Me and Alchy get into it big time one night in front of Lux and Silky, ’cause he wants to add a bunch of lefty antiwar songs to the set list. I am one hundred percent against it. We don’t agree about the war in Iraq or even Afghanistan. I says, “What the fuck? They blew up the Trade Center, and you ain’t no pacifist, so what’s your problem?”

He gives me some spiel about war is not the way to make peace and because they kill innocent people doesn’t mean we should. He wants the world to love us. I don’t give a damn what the world thinks as long as they keep their bombs to themselves. Suddenly, he gives me this condescending smile. “Sometimes, we have to think about how things affect more than just ourselves.”

“Just because you think you doing good for others, don’t mean you ain’t doing it for yourself.”

He sighs overloud and says, “Okay, say that I’m doing for myself. I’m also doing it for others.”

He writes “Dyin’ to Be Your Hero,” which is a good song. We play that one the rest of the tour. Only I’m feeling it ain’t really settled between us.

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

Alchemy gallivanted across the world’s stages for much of the year as I prepared for the Hammer retrospective. Xtine flew out to help with the assistants I had hired to build the
Pillzapoppin’
and
Electroshocked Ladyland
installations. Nathaniel argued against exhibiting the
Baddist Boys
. I had to because I knew that, like a curse I must expunge, no longer could they remain repressed in the unconscious attic of my studio.

Before the show opened, the spate of publicity certainly alerted the spawn of Malcolm. As the day approached, I felt myself teetering, unsure of where I might fall considering some of the eruptions at previous openings. Alchemy, with an uncharacteristic lack of intuitiveness, sniped at me for acting histrionically when I threatened to boycott the various openings. I dared not reveal that I’d found a picture and profile of the Pretender on the Web site at the university where he taught. I kept it undercover in my studio and spent far too many hours trying to commune with him through our DNA, hoping one of our mutual ancestors would bring us into contact and prove he was of my blood. He remained apart from me.

During one of the preopenings, from the Hammer’s second floor, I watched as the crowd entered. He slithered into the lobby by himself. I recoiled when he and Alchemy shook hands like … old bros. I made my way unsteadily to the exhibition hall and started my talk right in front of the
B Boys
—and the two of them.

I saw nothing of me in his face. I inched closer, and closer still when he asked a question. I hesitated before answering, for in his eyes—not the luminous optimistic multicolors of Alchemy’s eyes, but ominous hazy gun-smoke gray—I sensated his innards crumbling as the vision of my assignation with Teumer and my relief at his unbirth unfurled within him. His palpable pain flustered me. Again, I tried to commune with him. He fled the museum.

The morning of the official opening I awoke at sunrise. Haunted by my failure to carry out my Margarita mission, I’d slept little. As Alchemy began his cooldown walk after his morning jog around the compound, I joined him. I asked him about the man quizzing me about the
Baddist Boys
.

“An acquaintance. Collector. Why?”

“I got a whiff of a familiar, unholy fragrance. Pig meat sweat.” I lied to gauge his reaction. He frowned but didn’t take the bait.

“He’s a very smart guy. History professor. I think he and Nathaniel would get along.”

“How did you meet him?”

“His wife used to work with Kasbah. I met her first.” His answer turned out to be perfectly true and perfectly untrue.

“I didn’t see him with anyone.”

“I guess she had other plans.”

He wiped his forehead with his T-shirt and his eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “I have to shower before you impugn me with having an unholy fragrance.”

I sniffed the air. “No, just man sweat. Go. I have to help Nathaniel get ready.”

The opening completed the reversal of my art world reputation from the misogynistic imprecation as hysterical woman artist who fucked her way through the world to what became, in Scoggins’s validation, “an underappreciated, often misunderstood visionary worthy of our veneration and awe.” I attempted graciousness and welcomed his plaudits, as my atoms attempted to flee my corporeal body. I hid behind Nathaniel and his wheelchair, which he needed for longer outings, most of the night. I only insulted a few people. During the four-month run of the exhibition, other opportunities to move the show presented themselves. I committed to nothing.

When it was over, with the Insatiables preparing to tour again, despite my embracing by the L.A. art community, Nathaniel and I preferred to return to New York. I never sensated how foolish that move would turn out to be.

Going, Going, Gone, 2003 – 2006

Back in L.A. after the tour, I’m hanging at Kasbah. I see Alchemy in a face-off with a slinky familiar-looking lady in the corner by one of the fake oases. I intrude. He introduces her as “Jay, my brother Mose’s wife. We’re discussing his long-term follow-up treatment.” His way of telling me to get lost. I was about to bounce when Randy shouts, “My brother needs more art!” Whoa! I remember her. Me and her never talked much ’cause we had nuthin’ to offer each other.

Later, when me and him is relaxing in Buddy’s office, I says, “Man, that is wazoo wild shit. Your bro know youse two did the shimmy an’ shake?” I ain’t sure they did, but it’s a good bet.

He rubs his fist under his nose and he says, dead cold, “There is nothing to know. L.A., within its various circles, is a small town. They’re both in the art circle.”

“What the fuck’s that got to do with anything? I bet she got into artfully circling her limbs around all things Alchemous.”

“Don’t be a jerk. I’m telling you we were friends. She was more interested in my mom’s art than me.”

I’m thinking he is protesting too much, and being his “friend” didn’t mean shit. Soon, I find out why I’m right about them and why he don’t want me to meet Mose. I was at the Key Club jammin’ with some local L.A. guys. After the show, some scumsucker paparazzo tracks me down in the bathroom. He says he’s pitchin’ a piece to the
Enquirer
on “The Insatiable Sexual Appetite of Alchemy Savant.” I says, “So?”

He says, “I need you to ID some of the women in these pics and tell me if he had sex with them.” He shows them to me and one of them is Mrs. Mose and Alchemy all lovebirdy-like back in the ’90s. I tell the fucker to get very lost. Fast. Not that I care much about Mose or his wife. I just hate them paparatzi.

Then the pap threatens me: “If you don’t help me, I’m going for a story that you’re a no-show cheapo father.”

I should’ve told you this already. I got a son from a trampoline break in St. Louis about six years before. I don’t even remember the girl’s name when she contacts me, which she does after the kid, Ricky Jr., is already born. The test proves he’s mine and I pay child support but, I dunno, I never seen him.

I clench my fists so the pap sees, and I say to the ratfuck, “Run the damn article. ’Cause I will never, ever help you.”

Sue and Andrew have already heard about this guy trying to dirty me if he can’t get to Alchy. They advise me to see Ricky Jr., who lives with his mom, a nurse. It turns out to be a great thing. Thankfully, he’s a cute kid. Nuthin’ like me. His mom married a decent guy. I spend lots of time with Ricky Jr. over the years and we are now pretty close. He’s getting ready to go to law school next year. Ain’t that a sweet switch.

I tell Bryn about Ricky Jr. and she is cool, until I say maybe we should have a kid. She is so not into that. I propose that she quit her job, come on the Euro tour, and we get married. She don’t say nuthin’, just scrunches her nose. I fucking offer to quit the band. She not only smacks me down, she breaks up with me. I was her
trampoline
.

I dive into a drug and drink binge the second we land in London and don’t quit all through Scotland and Scandinavia. I don’t give a rat’s ass that everyone is “worried.” We go to Paris for a show at Parc du Catherine Deneuve or something like that. At the after-party, this actress, Camille Javal, who been in the film
Paris by Night
, says she is going to audition for the
Friendsy for You
video, which we are going to come back and do at end of the tour, ’cause Alchy wants this young French kid to direct it.

Camille has these juicy lips and a deep-throat voice that’s so sexy I got a hard-on listening to her coo my name. While we’re touring the rest of Europe, me and her talk all the time. I dunno why, but she’s the first person I feel okay to tell about the Madam Rosa’s shit. And how bad I feel about everything. It was a good choice ’cause she don’t condemn me or nuthin’. “It’s good to love so hard that it nearly breaks you,” she says.

I start staying at her flat when we get back to Paris. The Frenchy director rejects Camille for the main female part. I put it to Alchemy, “Since when do we, meanin’ you, let anyone else call these shots?” Alchemy says it was a mutual decision with him and the director. I say, “C’mon, give me this one.” He’s kinda embarrassed, but he tells me Lux, Silky, and Andrew don’t want her neither.