I head over to the upstairs private room at the Broadway Bar, which the owner keeps open for friends after the official closing time.
Alchemy’s eyes are high stepping to the biddy-bip-bip beat. He gets up from the couch and hugs me. I push him away. All-cuddly Alchemy gives me the creeps. “I missed you.” I don’t respond in kind. We get some beers and go out to the empty balcony that overlooks L.A.’s Broadway.
“So, ’sup?” I ask.
“You ever think back and wish we’d never made it so damn big?”
“Nope. Never.”
He laughed. “Of course you don’t. Once, when I was at Juilliard”—he stops for a minute taking his personal detour to Collidascope Land—“Absurda and I went to see Richard Thompson at the Ritz. We were standing in the back of a packed house while the first act was on, and Thompson slinks in and stands beside us. He’s so nondescript no one else recognizes him. An hour later he is blowing everyone away with his playing. I promised myself that that would not be me. Sometimes, I wonder if that wouldn’t’ve suited me better.”
I don’t think he regretted being him. Only he ain’t exactly lying neither. He always worried that whatever got Salome would get him, too. Maybe he didn’t have to be a rock star. Only him living a normal life was about as likely as me winning the Mr. Congenial award.
“You didn’t ask me here ta get my opinion on that.”
“Silky’s left the band. You hear Laluna’s joining?” I nod. “Lux and I want to do a free concert at the Grand Canyon. Then a farewell world tour. Call it quits after twenty years. We need you. We never found a permanent replacement for you.” This is true. They used session guys or friends in the studio and different hired hands on the road.
I don’t want to answer yet. “Whataya gonna do if you quit music?”
“I’ll always make music. No touring. Different stuff. I want to dedicate myself to the Nightingale Foundation.”
“C’mon, you’re going into politics.”
“Maybe.”
“Liar.”
“Yeah.”
“And you call me the ambitious one. Or maybe you was being sarcastic. Damn, taken me all these years to get it.” I’m wondering if the time is right for me to go back. He downs another beer in one go. From his pocket he takes out his iPod and hands it to me. “Put it on and listen.”
I do.
“Man, this ain’t saying enough, but that’s the most insane and beautiful three or four minutes a music I ever heard — fuck — I never heard nuthin’ like it before.”
“It came to me in my sleep and I woke up and just played it. Absurda gave it to me from out there …”
“I don’t buy that otherworldly shit.” I hand the iPod back to him. “When you are dead, you stay dead. No damn spirits is creepin’ around.”
“Probably. Only I don’t know what I don’t know … It’s eight years and I am still plagued by what we could’ve done for her.”
I keep it zipped. I learned that from him. Sometimes saying nuthin’ is as meaningful as saying something.
“Hey, look, I’m really sorry about what went down with us.”
I know he’s talking about the shit that went down at Madam Rosa’s. I just nod as if to say, so fucking what?
“Are you finally ready to listen and believe me instead of blowing up and punching me before I can finish talking?” He closes his eyes and opens them, expecting me to bust out all gooey.
“I never doubted what I seen and heard, and it means what I think it means.”
“Listen to me, Ambitious. Absurda and I were taking leaks outside. But you’re right, she was thanking me — she was grateful for all she believed I’d done for her. The band and all. And, well, for bringing you into her life.”
“This ain’t no Alchemy creation to make me feel like shit?”
“After all this time you don’t think I can come up with something better than that to make you feel like shit?” He’s trying to joke, but his eyes, his body got the look of helpless sadness that I seen that first day years ago when he had to leave Salome in Collier Layne. In all the time I know him, I seen that look maybe five times.
I finish my beer. “You and her?”
“Never.”
“What about, you know, what I …” I couldn’t bring myself to say it. I done beat myself up plenty over that night. “I’m sorry. I dunno—”
“Look, I get it. And neither of us will ever forget it. But we all have ugly shit in our heads. The guy I love as Ambitious Mindswallow — and I felt this from the day we met — is one angry motherfucker fighting against himself, who screws up … a lot, but in the end, you do the right thing.”
64 THE SONGS OF SALOME
The Holy Trinity
When the Insatiables returned home after their latest tour, Alchemy asked me to fly back to L.A. I thought because, with Nathaniel gone, he wanted me to be with him. No. He wanted to lure me into an ambush. Somehow he believed I remained unaware of his DNA infusion to this “Mose.” That I had not overheard conversations between them about the foundation. I regretted my necessary malevolence to the unstillborn son — I couldn’t embrace him. I awaited the mystagogue Margarita to give me strength and guidance while the polar forces of ether and gravity ripped me apart. By denying his existence, I hoped to force Alchemy to choose between us — I couldn’t imagine he’d side with him over me. I hadn’t anticipated the power of the third player in their newly formed alliance.
Laluna. A graceful faun bathed in the microbes of stealthy determination and youthful ignorance. She addressed me with cordial respect I didn’t want and quickly dismissed me. She enchanted him with her beleaguered smile hissing with a touch of the homicider, and her sullen eyes that demanded his protection. She possessed a spectral sensuality that didn’t suppress her soulsmell of a rag doused in lighter fluid — intoxicating and toxic. She rejected my initial offerings and made me a pariah in my son’s home.
In a grand gesture, a few months after she had ensconced herself permanently in Topanga, she decided to act like a concerned member of my family. She invited me for tea in the main house. It, too, was a trap. After small talk went nowhere, she zeroed in on her true reason for the invitation.
“I’m sorry if it didn’t go well when you met Mose.”
Of course, my son and the woman he lived with shared intimacies. “What business is it of yours?”
“It’s my business because I love Alchemy. You love him. Moses loves him. And Alchemy loves the three of us.”
“Do you love me?”
“I would if you’d let me.”
“Laluna, the real question is, Can you only love someone if they let you?”
The question flummoxed her. She answered with an indirect accusation. “Mose, he’s a great guy. Accepted me right away. Only, whenever your name comes up, his body clenches as if he’s preparing to be punched in the nose. I know that feeling, I felt it most of my life with my father.”
I now presumed Alchemy had instigated this meeting and conversation, so I decided to end it there and exile myself to my cottage, understanding that Laluna had usurped my position with Alchemy.
I got two guards to help me empty the bottom floor of all furniture except one black and one white director’s chair. I painted the walls, ceiling, and floor Savant Red. I couldn’t talk to Alchemy, so I wrote him a letter. My nurse hand-delivered it.