Alchemy slowed the Focus as they neared the two-street town. He stopped in front of Trudy’s adobe-style house, which stood atop the mountain overlooking Sedona’s red rocks to the north and Prescott’s Verde Valley to the south.
Trudy greeted them in her kitchen, where she was cooking dinner. She was in her midforties, much older than Moses had imagined, with a pretty, kittenish face and brown-and-gray-streaked hair. She gave Alchemy a loud smooch. She served them two of Alchemy’s favorite entrees: buffalo burgers and veggie lasagna. After dinner, Trudy showed Moses to his room on the first floor, and then she and Alchemy mounted the stairs to Trudy’s bedroom.
Moses called Jay and got the machine. He left a message. Then he called his mom.
“So how are you feeling?” She asked in a taut voice.
“I’m good. Very, very tired but good. We should be in late tomorrow afternoon.”
“Jay told me. We’re all frayed and stressed. She’s so distraught that she didn’t even come over to swim and have dinner. She made your appointment with Fielding for the day after tomorrow.”
“Fine,” Moses said perfunctorily, now worried about Jay.
“Moses, are you still angry with me?” He heard her inhale deeply on her cigarette. He wanted to nag her about quitting but held back.
“I told you I wasn’t angry at you and I’m not now. But Ma, you need to control your nag genes.” Again came that poisonous word, genes, which had once bonded them but now divided them. Neither one responded to its new meaning. “I’m not going to let forty-plus years of love and devotion change anything because of this. Got that?”
“Yes,” Hannah said, not quite convincingly.
Too enervated, Moses refused to play the cajoling game. If he answered with a hint of uncertainty or impertinence in his voice, the conversation would continue in a circular fashion for hours. “Mom,” he said in an even but firm tone, “I need you to be strong for me now, the way you have been all of my life. Okay?”
Hannah, satisfied with Moses’s answer, allowed the conversation to end on a note that signaled a truce in this new phase in the war of parental territoriality.
At around eleven, Moses heard a commotion in the front room. He stumbled out to see Alchemy fully dressed and with guitar case in hand, while Trudy talked on the phone. “We’re headed over to the CopperPot bar on Main Street,” Alchemy said cheerily. “Come by, if you’re up to it.” Moses took the accompanying pause to the invitation to mean that Alchemy expected him to come.
“You go ahead. I’ll meet you down there.” Feeling both obliged and curious, Moses got dressed. By the time he strolled outside, half of Jerome’s four hundred inhabitants, like characters in a ’50s zombie movie, were marching in lockstep toward the CopperPot.
Moses sat next to Trudy, who had saved him a seat. Alchemy, perched on a stool on the tiny stage, Gibson guitar slung over his shoulders, gulped a beer and puffed on a cigarette. No doubt this appearance would hit the still-embryonic Net. Apparently, Alchemy couldn’t handle five weeks with no sex and no adulation. As the crowd in the bar swelled, Moses felt, as he had that night at the Whisky, the oceanic presence that was the public Alchemy, and what it promised: I am your dream, and in me our dreams merge as one.
He began abruptly, “My homage to Mr. Hemingway.” Alchemy started strumming and nodded slyly in Moses’s direction.
Irony and pity
Oh so witty
A little Aristotle
in a bottle
The son not only rises
it also surprises …
Was Papa havin’ fun
when he wrapped his tongue
’Round his gun, say … hey,
please blow me … away …
He spoke as if talking to an invisible presence. “Because I never thought we could do justice to Roky and Lou Ann, so now …” He effortlessly slid into a song called “Starry Eyes.”
When he stopped singing, Alchemy smiled glowingly at the audience. “As some of you know, I’d been in solitude for five weeks and five days until I was rescued. In fact, if anyone asks, I’m still not here. Tell ’em it was an impersonator, goes by the name of Dusky Goldplate.”
His fingers meandered on the guitar strings for a while before landing on a Leonard Cohen paean to youthful need and hope. Unlike Cohen’s husky Old Testament chastising drone, Alchemy’s voice flowed out like a hymnal with sweet and tortured resignation. He let the last notes linger before he addressed the audience again.
“I wrote this during my recent monastic vacation. I’ve never sung it aloud before so it’s a virgin ride for all of us. It’s called ‘Mystic Fool.’ ” He stooped, picked up his bottle and finished his beer. “For Absurda.”
Hey, careful there, pretty boy,
Let’s sturm und drang
Up the good brew
And take on the entire crew.
But don’t putsch me too far
’Cause when hugs turn to shoves
I’ll be making war and love
With my gun an’ guitar
She left without a good night kiss
Staring at the human abyss
I’m searching for the last note
Of god’s silent song
To carry me along
Carry me, carry me, carry me, please carry me …
The room pulsated with a man-on-a-high-wire tension. Alchemy closed his eyes and bowed his head, and almost everyone found themselves in their land of private laments and regrets, with the echoes of Alchemy’s voice to carry them along. A drunken guy yelled “Chicks and Money!” and another chimed in “I Wanna Be Seen!” breaking the spell. Alchemy unclipped his guitar strap. In seconds, a gaggle of women, young and old, surrounded him. Trudy tapped Moses on the shoulder. “Let’s go.” He arched his eyebrows quizzically. “I’m tired and he’s gone for the night.”
“You’re cool with that?”
“Have to be. He’s Alchemy.”
In the morning, more than a little concerned about Jay and why he hadn’t heard from her, Moses called and woke her up at 7 A.M.
“Hey, where were you?” Moses heard his voice dart out with a mix of accusation and fear.
“At the gym. A late Pilates class. I didn’t want to call you last night in case you were asleep.”
“My mom said you are distraught.”
“Distraught? What should I be, a happy idiot?” Now Jay’s tone was accusatory, petulant.
“No, I’m not saying that. But there’s some hope now.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just anxious. I’m so glad you’re coming home.”
“Me, too.” To lower the tension, and keep up some pretense of normalcy, Moses asked about Jay’s meeting with her latest demanding client. They made more small talk and Moses promised to call her later.
Alchemy strolled by alone while Trudy and Moses were having breakfast at the Flatiron Café. Trudy teased him with lighthearted jests unique to those who have had a long friendship punctuated by casual sex. “Did you play Romper Room teacher with the leetle girls?”
“You could say that. Gave them some, um, breathing lessons. I advised them to take your Tantric yoga class so they can learn new positions from the expert.”