I have never given a damn if anyone thought me a “vicious virago,” “a cold cunt,” “crazy,” or “talentless” (though I have been called all these things). I cannot live with your condemnation of me as a heartless mother.
It is impossible for me to describe my lifelong travails, still I will see him if you desire it … Someday you will understand that my actions are justified.
And I will reach out again to Laluna.
I can’t bear you hating me this way. Or in any way. I can’t.
I waited. I told myself, Patience … Two nights later, I was talking on the phone to Xtine — she believed Alchemy would never desert me — when Laluna knocked on the door. “Xtine, I’ve lost. Call you later.”
Disoriented by my red cavern, Laluna sat in the black director’s chair. Alchemy was “worried” about me. She asked to come in his stead. Both of us donning a mask of deceit, we issued apologies that we didn’t mean. She for her insensitivity and seeking to intervene where she didn’t belong and I for overreacting. Laluna followed up with a further false olive branch.
“We’re leaving next week, but when we come back, I want us, just you and me, to spend time together.”
“Let me ask you this. Why do you seek my companionship?” She squirmed in the chair. Her lips scrunched in one direction and her nose in the other. I reminded myself that she was barely twenty years old and uneducated in the distorting mirrors that reflect one’s own, often ineffable, multiple motivations. “No need to answer. Let’s agree that I have never been that warm to you. Let’s also agree that you have been wary of me.” She nodded. “The reason you want to befriend me has little to do with your empathy for my situation. Or interest in my life or my art. You want to please Alchemy. That is good. It’s the same as if I see him — it will be to please Alchemy.”
“If you mean Mose, Alchemy hopes you see him because you want to.”
“I don’t. But I would see him to please Alchemy. And therefore, because that is the wrong reason, I won’t see him.”
I’m not sure she understood, but I continued anyway. “You and I getting along will make Alchemy happy. We both want that. If he is happier specifically because you and I have a relationship, that ultimately benefits you. But does your relationship benefit him? In the short term, yes. In the long term, I predict your relationship, if it lasts, will hasten his Gravity Disease.”
She gaped, perplexed. Gravity Disease would be inexplicable to her.
“Laluna, to paraphrase your own words from the other night, I will let you love me, for now. And I have begun by confiding this to you.”
She thanked me but volunteered nothing else.
The three of us ate dinner together, and our conversation consisted only of shallow, enervating non sequiturs. The morning they left, I found a note under my door.
I could never hate you. Often mystified, sometimes frustrated, always loving. I am glad you and Laluna talked. You have to give each other a chance. This will be our last tour. I need to spend time with you as a son and as Laluna’s mate and not as an Insatiable. Love, Alchemy
I found no solace in his words.
65 THE MOSES CHRONICLES (2012)
Selective Affinities
The Nightingale Foundation Prize hosted a funding soiree at the Palos Verdes home of Thessalia Bambucos, widowed courtesan — turned — queen of an Internet media empire. As the evening wound down, Alchemy tapped Moses on the arm and said, grave faced, “We need to a take a walk.” Alchemy’s one blue and one green iris seemed to have expanded, leaving almost no white in his eyes. Moses nodded and Alchemy went to thank Bambucos. They moved outside and silently began to walk down the street.
Moses assumed Alchemy wanted to continue their discussions for the transition from foundation to political party. Alchemy planned to use the foundation as the facilitator — affecting individuals’ lives with their programs while delivering their message that America needed a new path, a third way. Alchemy’s grandeur without grandiosity, his well-disguised drive that verged on monomania, and his total belief in e pluribus unum would eventually culminate in his running for the presidency in 2020.
Once they were far enough away from Bambucos’ home, under a darkness sporadically illuminated by lights beaming from behind the curtains of the wealthiest strata of America and the yellow-orange hue of Alchemy’s cigarette, he asked Moses, “Your phone still off?”
“Yes.” Moses, who as a kid imagined that the people on TV could see him through the screen, shared Alchemy’s paranoia that the government possessed secret technology that could hear conversations through any live phone. Alchemy had told him Loo and Freiberg were working on just such a technology.
Alchemy puffed hard and then spit a gob of phlegm on a manicured lawn, more like a lawless rocker than a political candidate. “Look, I needed to talk because, well, Laluna and I want to have a kid. Yeah, yeah, I know what I said years ago. Go ahead. Give me shit.”
“I will. Just not now, because that’s terrific. I’d love to be an uncle.” The longer Alchemy’s relationship continued with Laluna, the more Moses had anticipated a change in Alchemy’s no-kid plan.
“If things go right, and you have a lot to say and do in this, you won’t only be an uncle …”
“What?” Moses’s voice raised an octave. “You don’t need my permission.”
“This super sex god can’t make his zygote float.”
“Come again?”
“It won’t solve the problem if I do.” Alchemy snickered. “My zapper has no zip.” They reached an empty private tennis court, and Alchemy flopped back against the green fence.
“Mose, this is the most embarrassing admission … We’ve been trying. Fertility docs and mystical potions. All failed. Laluna is blaming herself — wrongly — because her mother had multiple miscarriages before having her and then never could conceive again.” He pushed back harder against the fence, which rippled around the court, and then he melted toward the ground. Moses crouched beside him.
“You once needed my help. Now, we need your help. I need you to come up to Topanga and do the herky-jerky. Your seedlings will be put in the doc’s test tube and implanted into Laluna.”
“What the eff? You want my sperm?” Moses felt as if he’d been slammed in the head and was suffering a concussion that left him bewildered and off balance. Deep emotional barriers impeded him from immediately processing the implications, the lifelong impact of becoming a surrogate donor.
“Yes, but I also want you to keep this between us.”
Surrogate donor and anonymous father. “Wow, this is beyond unexpected.”
Alchemy detected the ambivalence in Moses’s voice. “If you need time or aren’t cool with this, I get it.” He pushed himself up using the fence and stood tall. “Laluna doesn’t know the plan. I prefer to get your okay first.”
“Yeah, I can see that. But why me?”
“You’re my brother.”
“Half brother.”
“Given our respective fathers, our mother is the good half. How’s that for absurd?”
“Scary, too. You know me, I’m a deliberative thinker.”
“Sure. Take your time. But not too much.”
“I’ll answer soon. But please, sound out Laluna.”
“Mose, I’ve contemplated the enormity of this request. I still needed to do it. I’ll talk to Laluna. Only, if you decide no, tell me immediately. Please.”