Broken Sleep (48 page)

Alchemy puffed hard and then spit a gob of phlegm on a manicured lawn, more like a lawless rocker than a political candidate. “Look, I needed to talk because, well, Laluna and I want to have a kid. Yeah, yeah, I know what I said years ago. Go ahead. Give me shit.”

“I will. Just not now, because that’s terrific. I’d love to be an uncle.” The longer Alchemy’s relationship continued with Laluna, the more Moses had anticipated a change in Alchemy’s no-kid plan.

“If things go right, and you have a lot to say and do in this, you won’t only be an uncle …”

“What?” Moses’s voice raised an octave. “You don’t need my permission.”

“This super sex god can’t make his zygote float.”

“Come again?”

“It won’t solve the problem if I do.” Alchemy snickered. “My zapper has no zip.” They reached an empty private tennis court, and Alchemy flopped back against the green fence.

“Mose, this is the most embarrassing admission … We’ve been
trying
. Fertility docs and mystical potions. All failed. Laluna is blaming herself—wrongly—because her mother had
multiple miscarriages before having her and then never could conceive again.” He pushed back harder against the fence, which rippled around the court, and then he melted toward the ground. Moses crouched beside him.

“You once needed my help. Now, we need your help. I need you to come up to Topanga and do the herky-jerky. Your seedlings will be put in the doc’s test tube and implanted into Laluna.”

“What the eff? You want my sperm?” Moses felt as if he’d been slammed in the head and was suffering a concussion that left him bewildered and off balance. Deep emotional barriers impeded him from immediately processing the implications, the lifelong impact of becoming a surrogate donor.

“Yes, but I also want you to keep this between us.”

Surrogate donor
and
anonymous father. “Wow, this is beyond unexpected.”

Alchemy detected the ambivalence in Moses’s voice. “If you need time or aren’t cool with this, I get it.” He pushed himself up using the fence and stood tall. “Laluna doesn’t know the plan. I prefer to get your okay first.”

“Yeah, I can see that. But why me?”

“You’re my brother.”

“Half brother.”

“Given our respective fathers, our mother is the good half. How’s that for absurd?”

“Scary, too. You know me, I’m a deliberative thinker.”

“Sure. Take your time. But not too much.”

“I’ll answer soon. But please, sound out Laluna.”

“Mose, I’ve contemplated the enormity of this request. I still needed to do it. I’ll talk to Laluna. Only, if you decide no, tell me immediately. Please.”

They walked back in silence. Moses still reeling.

The more he thought about it, the more Moses realized he’d abhor living as a father not just in absentia but not as a father at all. He couldn’t articulate or justify his feeling that there was something unseemly in the request. He tried to convince himself he should be honored that Alchemy had chosen him. And, of course, he owed him.

Alchemy relayed to Moses that Laluna was shocked by his admission and his plan, but that once it sank in, she was all for it. For now, she preferred not to talk about it, which suited Moses just fine. Moses felt Alchemy’s urgency and desire. And he also understood his desire for ultimate secrecy.

A week after the initial conversation, Moses, still not totally committed to agreeing but leaning that way, made an appointment to have his sperm tested at a Pasadena clinic, where there would be no way to trace what he was doing back to Alchemy. The doctor happily reported to him, “You’re a lucky man. Your sperm seem undamaged by the cancer or chemo. They’re plentiful and spry for a post-fifty-year-old.”

The following Wednesday, Moses drove up to the Topanga compound. Alchemy ambled out to meet him in the driveway. “Save a life. Give a life.”

“Let’s hope.”

He masturbated in a downstairs bathroom. His semen safely in the prepared cup, he placed it on the sink counter and swiftly left the compound.

Alchemy slipped into the bathroom and fetched his brother’s seed. He passed it to the new fertility doctor, who believed it was Alchemy’s. Laluna got pregnant on the first try.

Hello, I Must Be Going, 2009 – 2012

You know by now I ain’t no philosopher and I see life as mainly about some chicks or dudes, some family shit, having money or no money, and then you die. You can dress it up in fancy duds, but that’s the deal. Alchemy ain’t no different.

Before I meet Laluna, I peg her as another hungry honey trap. When I meet her at the Kasbah offices (though they is owned by the Germans, the Sheiks keep the offices) and I give her the once-over, I’ll never forget it, ’cause she looks
different
. Wearing a yellow sundress with smiley face apples and oranges on it, a big floppy yellow old-lady hat, no makeup at all, and sparkly-faced like Courteney Cox in the Springsteen video, only with the piercings in her lips and a space between her two front teeth—she bangs the bell as the hottest ten possible. And whew, when she catches me gawking, the sparkly smile goes to a glare that could’ve shrunk Johnny Wadd’s dick from twenty paces. Alchy introduces us and she acts like our stare-down never happened. At first, I was suspicious of her and sometimes I’m thinking she is jealous of me and Lux because of our histories with Alchemy. Nope. She’s too hip for that. I seen Alchemy and Laluna when they
was practically babies, I mean she was a teenager, and if I believed in reincarnation they’d be the reason ’cause they was wiser and understood more shit at twenty than most people ever do no matter how long they live. I ask myself, “Why them?” It’s not just being smart. Lucky is better, and they was, but that’s not it. Neither is having messed-up folks, ’cause that’s
normal
. I met her father, who is an Armenian gang guy from the Valley, and her mom, who he whomped on for years until Laluna and Alchy got her to divorce him. She was a really nice lady who came on tour with us for a while. She made us homemade meals and acted, I dunno, like a real mom. Unlike Alchy, who has his Collidascope Land moments, and he always acts like he can fix everything, Laluna always has at least one foot planted firmly on earth, but inside she also got a Collidascope of her own, so to speak. At first, that combo worked for them.

Still, Salome master mindfucked Laluna from day one. Any moron could see Laluna loved and idolized Alchemy. Guess that was Salome’s problem. She makes a rare drop-in to a ProTeans gig at the Smell, wearing a T-shirt with Absurda’s face on it, which is most def a shot at Laluna. Alchy keeps Salome away from most of our gigs after that.

I told Laluna that it was great to play with her. Best since Absurda. She answers so serious, her voice so low, “I’m happy to hear that. Only I wish not this way. No one can replace Absurda.” Maybe not, but Lux and me understand we done recaptured that special connection where Alchemy sees what each show, each audience needs, and without ever having to
say a word the three of us
feel
how to follow him. We record
The Great Awakening
and then hit the road and we bank mucho dinero. It was almost heartwarming to see Alchy head back to hang with Laluna. Raunchy rock partying didn’t appeal to her. The rules of their relationship is a mystery ’cause Alchy, I don’t think, ever fully quit floozying and I got an inkling she sneaked her share on the side though I never caught her, and she sure never came on to me.

I’m the only one not in a steady relationship. Lux has settled down with Leanne, who is a TV producer. One night after a show in Stockholm (Alchy always insists we stay at the Grand Hôtel there), Laluna is in bed already, so us three is sitting in Lux’s room drinking when Alchemy says, “So guys, what’s it like having kids?”

Lux taps his hands on his legs like he’s preparing for a drum solo. “Ball-bustin’ hard, you want mine?”

“Fuckin’ goes double for me since I came late to the party.” Then we crack up and give the thumbs-up. Lux says it’s the best thing he’s ever done but it is also the toughest. He and Leanne, who don’t want kids, have had some major throw-downs about how to deal with his kids from other women.

“Why?” Lux asks. “You and Laluna thinking of hitching and diversifying your portfolio?”

“I don’t need my mother’s lectures on the evil power structures of marriage, so no to that. Kids? I’m thinking about it. My mom says she’d like a grandchild.”

That don’t surprise me about Salome as much as you might think. Feeling naughty, I volunteer, “Wit’ all the fucking you
done, I can’t believe you don’t got one already. You playing the secretive Alchemy? Like you hid your father all them years.”

I been giving him shit about the big clam-up over his father and how he guilts me ’cause
I
don’t see my folks hardly at all. He was so pissed when Salome showed paintings of his dad and Moses’s dad without telling him first. He admits nuthin’ in public about Bent or Mose Sr., only kind of hints that it is all just “one big Salome fantasy.”

“No. No secrets. Just lucky, I guess. One other thing, Sue’s got interest in us doing the halftime show at the Super Bowl. Before you get excited, I’m voting no.”

Him and Nathaniel, even though they like football, they also hate it. Salome calls it “Super Barbarian Day.” Still, I says, “Why the hell not do it? That’s like two billion eyeballs watching us. And you watch the damn thing!”

“Yes, and I am mad at myself for watching.”

Lux is revved, too. “C’mon, Alchemy. If this is our last go-round, what a way to go out.”

He is ready for us. “We’ve never sold our music for ads, and this is a secular holiday that’s bigger than Christmas, only it sells the religion of American corporatism and false patriotism. And the NFL owners have a plantation mentality.” And yackety yack. When he gets on that high political horse, there is no knocking him off. Even though me and Lux are so into it, it’s a no-go unless we can change his vote.

Alchy gets a call from Laluna, who wants him back in the room. I start wagging my finger and I mouth, “Come home to Mommy, little boy.” He smirks, but he seems happy, so what the fuck, right?

The next night I says to Laluna, with Alchy and Lux standing there, “You also voting to pass on the Super Bowl?”

“I’ll vote yes if I can sing ‘Fuck Like a Woman.’ Uncensored.” It’s one of the few songs Absurda used to sing lead. Laluna never asked to do it before. It got the lines “Preachers say I’m gonna end up in Hades / only it’s them jocks-of-all-trades / who got the morality disease / ’cause I will fuck who I please …”

Laluna is acting more rock ’n’ roll than any of us. Alchemy, grinning, says, “See, that’s why I love her.”

Funny, though, later that year when we’re back in L.A. for a hiatus between tour legs, he invites me and Lux up to the Topanga house to watch the Super Bowl to see what “we’re missing out on.” That what you call irony? That year, the party is only like ten of us. It starts what becomes his and Laluna’s Super Bowl party tradition.

We changed the sked so the Grand Canyon gig is our final show, which Alchemy says is a true celebration of America, and we make the show free for the two hundred thousand people who show up. HBO broadcasts it live. We take a helicopter up to the top of the mountain and I remember Andrew teases him, “I can see the multitudes … Alchemy, are you going to consume them all tonight?”

“Maybe yes.”

We open with a new song, “Beat Attitudines”:

Some rabid believers call that song blasphemous. Me, I think it was blasphemy that we burned through so much money on that concert ’cause with all the permits, lawyers, and cleanup, it cost us like three million bucks.

When we return to L.A., I am still hoping Alchemy’ll change his mind and we’ll do another record, and then, who knows? I don’t see him much because I’m hangin’ with Ricky Jr. in New York ’til I get another death call. Falstaffa passed from the hep C. We knew it was coming, but it still sucked. I wasn’t even forty yet and I buried too many good people. The funeral is one major-league bummer. Me, Lux, Alchy, and Marty are the pallbearers. (A week later, Alchemy pays off Marty with $250K and asks him to “retire.” He never forgot Marty’s trashing Absurda to me all them years before.)

I think it’s kind of strange, ’cause even though she don’t know Falstaffa like us, Laluna don’t show and I’m questioning if they broke up or she caught him, well, being Alchemy. Before we head out, he asks me and Lux if we can come up to Topanga the next Monday.

We meet in the studio. Laluna ain’t there. He has three bottles of Cristal on ice. He’s almost beaming, which is not what I expect. “Laluna is pregnant. She’s had a tough few weeks. Doc came yesterday, and it’s three months and all looks good. We’re announcing it soon.”

Congrats all around and we pop the bubbly and we each take swigs from our bottle. He puts his down and picks up his guitar. “I got a new one. Come to me last week. It’s called ‘Know More.’ ” He starts playing before singing. It has a real slow, bluesy feel. Me and Lux get what it means, but he says it anyway. “When Laluna is up to it we’ll record a coupla more songs. And that’s it, I’m done. No reunions. No nuthin’.” He takes a few giant gulps from his bottle. “I’ve accomplished
everything I ever wanted to do in music as the Insatiables, and I couldn’t have done it without you two.”