“Good, maybe. Cool, don’t think so.” They laughed. In that moment, Moses decided to hand Alchemy a piece of near-sacred information. “Can I tell you something? Will you keep it in confidence?”
“My word.”
“Before we met, Jay got pregnant by a boyfriend she wasn’t serious about and she had an abortion. Sometimes I think she regrets that, only when I ask her, she insists it was the right choice and the discussion ends there.”
Moses didn’t mind if Alchemy pondered the possibility that it might’ve been his child. It wasn’t. Moses and Jay occasionally ran into the old boyfriend, a businessman, whom she had met at an art auction that she had organized for Doctors Without Borders, and for whom Moses felt barely a trickle of jealousy or resentment.
Feeling a bit nervy, Moses probed deeper. “How about you, are you so sure you never knocked someone up?”
“As sure as the paternity tests I’ve taken. I fully expect there is a legitimate kid out there as opposed to all the wannabes. Andrew has bullied and paid, and I mean bank account balloons, for abortions for women who were with Ambitious or Lux, and they each got at least one unplanned kid they pay for.”
It struck Moses as “normal” that rock stars would be propagating machines. He was surprised that Alchemy had produced no progeny. “So what you said when we were driving, you really don’t want to settle down and have kids.”
“Highly unlikely. Although I have to say I don’t want to end up like Mick or, worse, Hef. Poor guy looks like a brine-embalmed blue mummy. Kids? I don’t need that affirmation. I get what you say. Almost everyone has to fight their way out from some family curse or escape a parental tendril. Lots of people have grown up with what they consider lousy parents. Half the marriages end in divorce. Half the ones that stay together suck. Still, none of them had Salome for a mom.” Moses nodded agreeably. Alchemy leaned forward in the chair; beneath the mask his soft, feminine lips pursed, his nostrils tensed, and his usual pliant posture stiffened. “My father, I told you I met him. You know the song ‘Fast Enough’?”
“Sure, was a big hit back in the ’70s. The Baddists. British band, right?” Moses sang a few bars, “Why ain’t I fast enough for you …”
“The lead singer, Phillip Bent — he’s my father. He and Salome had about a twenty-minute wham-bammer during a Central Park Summer Stage concert in the artists’ Porta-Potty. That is either the crudest or the most perfect place ever to conceive a rock star. Maybe both.”
“She admitted that?”
“Admitted? She boasted that it was the second-best time she ever had in a portable bathroom. I never asked what was first. Bent cared as much about me as I do about”—Alchemy scanned the room and pointed—“that water pitcher. So Mose, maybe not finding your old man isn’t the worst outcome.”
“Was it that horrible when you saw Bent?”
“I saw him twice. The Baddists had a minor hit with Chain Saw Disco Massacre and were touring in ’77. I was about six and met him with my grandmother during Salome’s first time in Collier Layne. I remember zip except that he kept repeating in his Cockney accent, ‘So, you’re the fuckin’ lit’l swine.’ Seven or so years later, we were living in Berlin, Salome finally persuaded him to see me.” For the first time, Moses heard Alchemy lose control of his perfect-pitch voice. “Nathaniel flew with me to London so I could meet him. Stone-cold junkie. I’ve known dogs that make more sense.” He took out a cigarette and twirled it in his fingers. “I’ve never told this to anyone but my mom and Nathaniel, not even Ambitious, so if I hear it anywhere …” Moses nodded. “Fucker kept calling me ‘Mimi’ and ‘Chemistry.’ After five minutes I realized he was not worth the piss in the toilet. All Salome ever said was, ‘He was so gorgeous.’ ” Alchemy shook his head and flicked the unlit cigarette against the window. “The prick ‘sold’ me to a squishy lord who had a hard-on for teenage boys. I kicked him in the nuts and got my ass outta there and back to the hotel where Nathaniel was staying. We flew back to Berlin.”
“I’m so sorry.” Moses, feeling guilty for his little ploy earlier, reached to give him a loving pat on the back, but he couldn’t quite make it. Alchemy extended his hand and they slapped five in a jesting, congenial display of brotherhood. “You ever see him after you became famous?”
“Nope. Andrew made arrangements with him so he stayed away and quiet. I look at it this way, the people who raised and loved me, I’d do anything for any of them.”
“You sure you don’t want kids? For a shiftless rock ’n’ roller, you sound pretty damned sensible to me. You wouldn’t be like Bent.”
“I wouldn’t do that. I have no idea what I’d be like. None. Uncle seems like the perfect role for me.”
Alchemy’s cell rang. “It’s Bruce. Have to take it for a sec. It’s about the concert for 9/11.” Moses gave him the thumbs-up and Alchemy stepped out of the room.
By the time Alchemy returned, Moses had flipped on the sound to the blabber-blatherers and was “arguing” with Louise Urban Vulter, radio and TV host, who was bloviating as a self-anointed Middle East expert. “An expert would know it’s Osama bin Laden and the blind sheik, not Hussein.” Moses mumbled and again tapped the Mute button on the remote control.
“Mose, who’d you say did it?”
“I’m betting it’s Al Qaeda, the same people who went after the WTC back in ’93. Hussein and bin Laden are enemies.”
“You sure? I think Hussein wants revenge because Bush Sr. tried to off him.”
“I’m not saying he wouldn’t like to see either Bush dead. Hussein’s a megalomaniac whose prime directive is self-preservation. This kind of attack guarantees that someone will pay. Even if it is the wrong someone, or millions of someones.”
Alchemy pulled a paper from the inside of his sports jacket pocket and handed it to Moses. “Take a look. I scratched this out over the last two days.”
“It’s poetic, but from my perspective, it lacks historical context,” he said when finished.
Alchemy appeared taken aback by Moses’s frankness. “How so?”
“Before I answer, what’s this for?”
“Op-ed piece. I’ve been in contact with the New York Times for a while about penning something. Tragically, this is the right time.” Alchemy announced with unmistakable determination, “Someday I’m going to get more involved in politics. Nathaniel wants me to start a real third party. He claims all we have now are two different sides of the same coin. Not sure what I’ll do. Eventually, when the time is right …”
Moses tilted his head.
“What? Rock stars are excluded from politics when movie stars and athletes are not?”
“No — no.”
“Rock ’n’ roll has always been not just the soundtrack but the agent of change. Look at the best of it: Cooke, Baez, Lennon, Marley, Fela. I got everything materially I could ever want. Building houses and giving to charities, that’s all for the good, only I can do more.”
Moses decided that the outrageous events of this last week had taught him it’s never wise to underestimate the possibility of the remotest, most far-fetched idea becoming truth.
“Mose, tell me where I’ve gone off course.” There was no air of defensiveness in his voice, only genuine inquisitiveness.
“First off, it’s a bit too glib for what you want to achieve. More important, it’s historically inaccurate and a woeful American conceit to think that this ‘is unique in history.’ Great cities — from Rome to Delhi, Moscow to London, Baghdad to Jerusalem — have been plundered, burned, and bombed. Innocent people have been raped, maimed, and killed. It’s not even unique in our history. Washington, D.C., was burned to the ground by the British in the War of 1812.”