“Nathaniel’s been my mom’s main man off and on for years.” I’m guessing they’d met at a biddy-bip-bippers convention. “He’s been a leader in antiwar movements from Vietnam to Iraq. He just came back from Yugoslavia. It’s unconscionable that we’re letting that happen.” I got no inkling of what we’re letting happen. “He’s a great patriot and the most just man I know.”
“My dad and brother hate antiwar wimps. Me, too.”
“Re-ally?” he says, all sarcastic. “Do us both a favor, don’t argue politics with Nathaniel.” Alchemy takes a sec, then mutters, “Or maybe I should tell you to start an argument, since I’m beginning to see a pattern of contrary behavior that is all too familiar.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. So, why the fuck not?”
“If you want to spend the night listening to me and Nathaniel debate the intricacies of the failure of American democracy, be my guest.”
“Nooo thank you. Where’s the next stop?”
“Magnolia College. We lived here for a few years when I was a teenager. We, no, my mom was good here. For a while. Nathaniel took a position here because he thought it’d be a tranquil place for my mom.”
We turn down this tree-lined road, and he tells me about the school and the campus and how it was founded by some lady named Sylvia Lancaster in honor of her daughter who died when she fell off her horse and whose nickname was Magnolia. The girl, not the horse. We turn down a road, and I see these gigundo three-story houses. Brockton’s was painted with orange, red, and yellow boxes. Even then I could surmise that was a Salome job.
Brockton ain’t there. The door is unlocked, so we slip in and take a few beers and some slices of roast beef from the fridge. The place is like some minimuseum with paintings and photos covering the walls. I was staring at a black-’n’-white with Brockton and a real young Dylan.
“He hung out with him?”
“Way back. A little.”
“Ya meet him?”
“No.”
“Who’re all these others?”
He names the faces as we move down the living room wall. “Allen Ginsberg. Angela Davis. Abbie Hoffman in Chicago during ’68. Joan Baez. That’s a cover of Osawatomie, an underground magazine from the ’60s.”
I heard of Baez, she being Dylan’s babe in her prime. I had a vague idea about Abbie Hoffman ’cause Pete Townshend clocked him with a guitar at Woodstock, but that’s it. “Who’s the dogfaced old fart with the funny eyes and big glasses who looks so cum-fucking happy nestling with all them young titties?”
“Jean-Paul Sartre. In Paris. Not sure when. The girls? His groupies, I guess.”
I remember thinking, If a guy that butt-crack ugly could get chicks, so could I. Or maybe I should move to Paree. Alchemy was always giving me books, and he gave me some by that guy. Most of them are boring as a bologna sandwich except the one where the people get locked together for all time — sometimes I think that was us in the band.
Right next to the picture of the Frog was a black-an’-white of Salome in come-on-over pose. Her backside facing out. Man, she had a killer ass. Her face was turned profile with a beret tilted over her forehead. Alchemy nudged me. “Xtine took that. She took hundreds of photos of my mom. Some were for Life. She helped raise me, too. She did some great shots of the Dictators and Television at CB’s way back. You want the rest of the magical history photo tour?”
We start inching down the hall, and I catch sight of some major spiders crawling on the ceiling corners, creeps me out. Alchemy stops and raises both his hands and touches the wall with his palms and fingertips, slowly like he’s searching for an invisible portal. The wood is burnt and charred. “This is why my mom is now back in Collier Layne. She locked Nathaniel in his office”—he pointed down the hall with his chin—“and started a fire.” He shook his head, half laughing in disbelief.
“Alchemy!” Brockton blustered in an accent that was a mix of Foghorn Leghorn Southern and Manhattan clothespin-on-the-nose hoity-toity. He seemed like a pretty old dude by then even if he was only fifty or so. In them early photos he was real skinny, but now he was lumpy with a potbelly. His face was full of lines like a scruffy old basketball, and his hair going thin and gray. He reminded me a bit of this nerd in grade school, Ronnie Nadler, who never sat still. Drove the teachers nuts. We call anyone whose body parts were out of control “Nadling.” Brockton was a Nadling champ.
They shook hands, stopped, and then bear-hugged. In all the time I know Alchemy, there are only two guys I ever seen Alchemy bow down to — Brockton and Buddy Sheik. And, well, Laluna. I got plenty to opinionate about her later.
Brockton drummed his fingers against the wall. “I didn’t repair it because every time I start missing Salome and want to go get her, I look at this and accept I can’t take care of her anymore.” Alchemy looped his arm over Brockton’s shoulder.
“Nathaniel, my mom can make anyone feel horrible when she doesn’t get what she wants, but you’re the best thing that ever happened to her.” They both shrug in a kind of holy communion of helplessness.
“So, who is your uncivilized-looking friend with the jaundiced mien?” He smiles like he done paid me a compliment. He reaches to shake my hand. I wanna show him uncivilized by rearranging his damn crooked teeth. I’m ignorant of what he means by “jaundiced mien” ’cause I ain’t yellow eyed, so I don’t shake his hand. I only says, “Hey.” Alchy introduces me as “Ambitious Mindswallow, member of the Insatiables.” First time I hear my full moniker de rock ’n’ roll. I gotta admit, I took to it right away.
We move single file back into the kitchen, and Alchemy turns and tosses me a take-a-hike glance. I get the message. Magnolia is like some massive male fantasy camp. Seven hundred chicks.
This was my first up-close and personal view of the split between the truly rich and the rest of us. In the city you felt it ’cause of Park Avenue bullshit, but they don’t flaunt it in the same way. Even after we made it and I become one of them, I feel like the snotass from Queens. Only in America could a farting, cursing juvee degenerate like me crawl from the sewer and into a penthouse.
I pass by the tennis courts filled with blondes and bouncing boobs. I keep going, sticking to the path. I hear the girls squealing and splashing down by the lake. I sense this is snakeville. Snakes is my kryptonite, so I make a U-turn to see this goddess babe on her horse galloping down a dirt road. A sign points BARN. I head to the stalls, which is fuckin’ bigger than my folks’ apartment. The babe who was riding and two others are brushing their horses. I’m trying to think of something clever, but all I can think of is the time when I was about eight years old. I had a crush on Suzy Balboa, who was having a birthday party at the North Shore Country Club. What a joke! Place stank like a bowling alley bathroom. My dad, Mr. “Ricky, you ain’t nuthin’ but a useless good-for-nuthin’ and will always be a useless fuckin’ good-for-nuthin’ loser,” gives me his fatherly drunken advice. “Ya watch it when ya go inta the pool, ’cause they got a special dye that mixes with pee and chlorine, makes your bathing suit burn off and the lifeguard blows his whistle and everyone nyahs-nyahs at the dumb fuck with the tiny dick who peed in the pool.” I never go swimming the whole afternoon.
Alchemy comes swooshing down the road in this ’60s T-bird. It’s gonna be our new ride. Was once Salome’s. “How’d you find me?”
“A lone guy with shades, biker boots, and tattoos all up his arms is not blending into the local mountain foliage.”
“I was just gonna make my move.” I see he’s already scoped the babes.