He ambles out of the car. “Go for it.”
“Hey, these yours?” I ask suavishly.
They keep brushing, hardly looking at me, so I step closer. “I had a dog once, a German shepherd named Uzi.” The girls don’t react. Not sure they get Israeli firearms. “He do not live too long.” (I’m trying to talk with no accent.) “My brother took him up to the roof of our apartment building and he threw his bone as far as he could off the roof, and Uzi chased after it, and phfft.” I wave my hands like I was reaching for him.
The girls look like they’re gonna barf. Alchemy laughs and says, “He’s kidding.” He slouches up to the superbabe’s horse and starts to pet it. “Big guy. How many hands?” I’m thinking, hands? Since when do horses have fuckin’ hands? They start talking horse poop. He asks, “Will you be at the Magnolia Patch later?” The girls giggle and glance at each other. He says, “We will. Around ten. See you.”
When we get in the car, he is amused. “That was one classy bit of seductive reasoning. Uzi for a German shepherd? Why not Lugar?”
“Like it. Maybe next time. Truth, man, that’s what happened to Uzi, though I left out that my brother spiked Uzi’s food with PCP.”
“And you listen to his advice on foreign affairs?”
“Hey, he been to war. Have you?”
“Yes and no.”
“What the fuck’s that mean?”
He don’t answer right away. Then deep from one of those moments I come to call “Alchemy in Collidascope Land,” he says, “Depends on how you define ‘war.’ Some people need to leave home to escape war. Some need to leave to see war. In the end, no one ever really leaves home and you’re always at war. You’re only rearranging the furniture.”
At the house, Brockton cooks about the best BBQ I ever ate. We’re getting drunk and riffing on cars, movies, sports, only it keeps swerving to the serious-politico, and Brockton and Alchemy rant about the L.A. riots and President Bush being a WASPy sub rosa racist. Brockton’s face is sliding from easy rolling to mean-motor-scooter drunk, and his eyes and lips go school-nun stern and his body stops bouncing except for him clicking his teeth and he finally asks me, “What do you think? You a Republican?”
“I’m a nuthin’.”
“You’re apathetic?”
“Let’s say I’m noncommittin’.” Alchemy, he forgets zilch and hears everything, ’cause years later he comes up with The Noncommittal Nihilists for Nuthin’ record. It’s sharp mouthed, none of Alchy’s hookie-dookie or political stuff, just us as a band.
Brockton looks like he’s ready to explode on me. Alchemy sees it, too. “Nathaniel, cut it. He’s only—”
“Nah, man, I can handle myself.” Brockton’s too old to smack, so I take an empty beer can and crush it in my hand. Brocton snorts at me. “Look, pals, I don’t know all this crap like youse two, what I learnt in that shit hole where I come from is if you ain’t committed to saving your own piddly ass, zero else means squat. Most of the people ain’t got the dough to be committed to nuthin’ but making their rent, and no one is sending them to ‘horse-grooming college.’ The way I see it, it’s on such highly educated ass wipes like youse to make the world a better place for us dumb-as-nails lowlifes.”
“Good rap, kid. You’re no fool. In fact, you’re pretty savvy. How much TV do you watch? How much tobacco and dope do you smoke? And your folks? Do they vote?”
“My dad says he’s gonna vote for that Pro guy if he stays in the race.”
“You mean Perot?” Nathaniel asks kinda snotty. “Why him?”
“ ’Cause he’s different. He ain’t one a them.”
Nathaniel don’t talk to me but to Alchemy. “See? Third parties, it almost doesn’t matter what you stand for. Perot is a weasel with the money to promote himself. He’s funny looking with a squeaky voice and announced his candidacy on CNN. He has no serious policy but, like the kid says, he ‘ain’t one a them,’ and he’s neck and neck with Bush and Clinton.” Alchemy nods and Nathaniel turns to me again. “So, Ambitious, will you vote for him?”
“I tolt ya, I’m noncommittin’.”
“Nathaniel, he’s not even old enough to vote.”
“Am so. Am eighteen now.”
“Hang on, guys.” Alchemy decides to change the course of the conversation and disappears from the kitchen. He reappears with a book and starts reading:
“Let’s get the stones a throwing and the bombs a bursting and punch some holes in the souls of the monsters running the Military Industrial Oedipus Complex. It’s no time to lay back, because if you do, you’re going to GET FUCKED instead of getting laid. It’s time to turn off the tube, turn on your heart, and change the world. Let them eat fire and burn!”
“Alchemy, stop.”
He closed the book and laid it on the kitchen counter. “I’m still waiting for the return of Bohemian Scofflaw. Or, at least, your memoir.”
“You’ll have to keep waiting. The powers that bemoan the death of literacy do not care one whit what a dinosaur like me has to say.” Brockton hangs his head and reminds me of Larry Bird when he was washed up and couldn’t play no more. “I sent out the memoir to some agents at Distinguished Writers International who once represented me. The top agent of DWI called me all excited. They wanted salacious gossip. Not my thing. The self-indulgence trip leads to degradation and gracelessness.” (In that regard nothing’s changed in the thirty years since ’92, ’cause they ask for plenty of gossip in this particular masterpiece. Only I got less scruples than Brockton.)
“Nathaniel, you think that’s true of Rousseau, Nabokov, or even Fitzgerald in The Crack-Up? They wrote great memoirs.”
“It was a different time and I am not them. I can’t read The Crack-Up—it’s both pathetic and bathetic.” He runs his hands through his hair and ties it up into a ratty ponytail with a rubber band. “I’m a guy who, almost by mistake, wrote a book that caught the zeitgeist. Guys like James Simon Kunen or George Jackson, we’re not true writers. I’ll keep working the front lines. I’m going back to Sarajevo during the Christmas break, but as a writer, I’m done.”
Alchemy gulps his drink and sits down next to him. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this defeatist line from you. You always insisted that the personal is political.”
“I said that all politics is personal. But all that is personal is not political. Your personal life can make you political, but that doesn’t mean it has any meaning to anyone. It has meaning in our life choices: How we spend our money, who we vote for, or who we work for. It does not mean squawking about your mother’s drinking problems, the finicky sexual diversions of your father, or your mate’s emotional crises. My personal life is not for public consumption.”
“I agree on that principle. What about a follow-up to Tag? Everyone loves Scofflaw.”
“I can’t get the voice right. Besides, I was full of hope back then. Now I’m a fifty-three-year-old earnest secular preacher who believes the bad guys are winning.”
That self-analysis sounded perfecto to me. Alchemy cups his right hand into a loose fist and then rubs his nose with his knuckles, a sign I come to recognize meaning he is displeased. He takes another hit of scotch. Brockton ain’t finished yet.
“Alchemy, you have it alclass="underline" musical genius, business sense, beauty, and integrity, a true American mutt heritage. Use it wisely.”
“I hope you’re right. And I will. My word.”
They stare at each other. I see that Brockton idolizes Alchemy, and Alchemy, well, he worships Brockton and becomes all smush-brained when he’s within five miles of this good-for-good’s-sake bullshit, like Brockton’s his damn dad or the dad he wished he had.