“I know that. But I can tell, just in the way you were at the play, I can feel even in our e-mails — you have changed in some way. Somehow seeing your father helped you.”
“I guess so, as horrific as it was. I’m sleeping better. My daymares, they’re much less frequent.”
“It’s not like you ever kept your, um, daymares a secret. I just didn’t think they included me.”
“If I could control them, I would have.”
“Moses, whatever it was that made us work so well for so long, to be silly and feel safe, I never found elsewhere. With us, I never felt alone. Not until, you know. And Moses … You?” Jay pressed her lips together, awaiting his response.
“I pretty quickly adapted to being alone. My life mostly revolves around the foundation and my brother and — you know they have a daughter?”
“Sure. Your niece.”
Moses bowed his head and moved the bread crumbs and bits of spilled rice in a circular motion on the white tablecloth. He knew he must tell her, even if this truth reopened the wound that helped destroy their relationship, even if he risked losing Alchemy’s trust in him. Moses unbowed his head and stared into Jay’s eyes. “Persephone is my daughter.”
Her expression transformed from quizzical to shock when she realized he wasn’t joking. Moses explained the sequence of events. Jay nodded ever so slightly, still half disbelievingly, until Moses pronounced, “I am not delusional. I am not making this up. Persephone will never know. I am now complicit in my family’s, all of my families’, cycles of deception.”
“My God. Moses, this must be impossibly difficult for you.”
“It is and it isn’t.” What he wouldn’t admit to Jay, and only belatedly admitted to himself, that the least flattering of his reasons for agreeing was it allowed him to feel superior to Alchemy in this one way. “Laluna and Alchemy don’t make me feel like an outsider. So far, at least. Persephone will get all the advantages of being rich and enjoy the love of a mother and two fathers.” He shrugged. “Jay, I don’t know how to say this or if this is the wrong time or what is going to happen, but when I was so scared and lost, I always looked to the time with you to keep me awake and alive.”
Jay clasped Moses’s cold and shivery hands in hers, thinking, My Moses, abandoned by his parents, and yes, abandoned by me. We only wanted to love each other and failed. And so she said, “Moses, come home with me tonight.”
69 MEMOIRS OF A USELESS GOOD-FOR-NUTHIN’
Flushing Flashback, 2013 — 2015
In my second Insatiables afterlife I don’t see Alchemy or Lux much, and one more time I’m trying not to drown in a shit hole of my own making. I gigged with other dudes, but it don’t have the same fire. If Ricky Jr. ain’t visiting, all I do is play video games, watch sports, and try to stay away from losers who only wanna get high. I can’t find no woman I want to stay with for more than two days. Or maybe they don’t want to stay with me. I’m so bored I visit my brother and father in upstate New York so I can see the house my money bought and what they do with the $2K a month I still send them.
I hardly recognize my dad slothing around with a belly and balloon-size face and like three strands of gray hair. He still spits and snarls like he wants to stick thumb tacks in your eyes. My brother is a massive mashed potato blob of tattoos and half his teeth are gone or chipped. The two of them and my brother’s girlfriend all got DUIs so none of ’em should drive. We take a few days’ vacation in Lake George. My treat. We’re cool until we get back to the house. We’re all pretty wasted and watching some story about the pervey priests on TV, and my brother’s girlfriend says it’s a Jewish conspiracy against the Catholic Church. My father laughs, “Ya idiot, they just followin’ tradition because Jesus and his pals was a buncha Jew fags and Mary Magdalene was the first fag hag.”
I said, “Shut up, Dad. I got no more patience for your dumb-ass ignorant shit.”
“Oh, look at my liberal son with his Negro, homo, and Jew friends. You talk like some faggot girly man.”
“Dad, I said shut the fuck up. The best thing I ever done was get the hell away from you. You fucked me up good with your ignorant bullshit.”
“I always knew you was a pansy-ass pussy who wishes he was a nigger. I was too fuckin’ soft on you. I should whip your ass right now.”
I’m ready to shut the fucker up for good when my brother’s girlfriend starts screaming words that ain’t even words ’cause she’s so wasted. Lenny claws her into their bedroom and two minutes later she wobbles out. “Lenny’s dick gone plurp. Ricky, ya wanna fuck me?” Lenny starts cracking from the bedroom like a typical no-sense-making drunk. “Ricky, ya better not fuck my woman.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t.”
“Why not? Ya too good for her? We’re gonna settle this like real men.” He passes out before he can crawl five feet.
It’s clear why I done my best to ignore them all these years. I drive back to the city the next day and, surprise, I discover my father “borrowed” my credit card and cell phone and bought $15K worth of computers, phones, and big-screen TVs online. I can’t press charges, so I pay.
Back in L.A., I meet Alchemy and Lux for dinner and I ask about reuniting. No chance. They bug me to regroup Ferricide. I figure I’ll try it. I get two former members and two new kids and we write songs and some covers for Performance-Enhanced Death Drugs, which we call Pedd-o-file, and pisses lots of people off — which was fine by me. We end up having an indie hit with a cover of Mott’s “Rock and Roll Queen,” which the music blogs say is my subtle shot at Alchy. As he might’ve said, “not consciously.” Anyway, Sue and Andrew set us up for a tour, and we hit the road.
About six, eight months into the tour I run into Lux at a hotel in Austin. He’s drumming for Buddy Guy. I miss him, and after my show I head over to the blues club where he’s at and join the jam. Then me and Lux retire to the bar and we’re BSing about the best and worst times, the bomb scares and near riots. I ask why he is doing this because he can’t be making much money.
“Yeah, but playing music is all I ever wanted to do. Some guys are doctors or roofers. I’m a drummer.”
“Music’s the only thing I’m any good at. I wish Alchemy didn’t give us up for politics. Why can’t he be like Bono or even Billy Bragg, speechify about peace and brotherhood bullshit, donate money, and still make music?”
“You’re asking me to explain Alchemy?” No one can explain him, I get that. “He loved being famous and the girls and shit, but I’m not sure he enjoyed the success the way we did. The band, in its way, was part of his bigger plan. He’s not a musician, he’s Alchemy.”
He spoke truth. I drink up and get another beer. “Lux, the worst was Absurda dying.”
“For all of us. The night of the funeral, after you went to bed, Alchemy asked me to stay up with him. He was having, I guess, a minibreakdown. I’ve never seen him so vulnerable, before or since. He couldn’t stop shaking, saying he was as weak and nuts as Salome and he was going to check into Collier Layne. He kept saying, ‘It’s all my fault. I should have seen this and fixed it.’ And shit, when Heather came over—” I shook my head. “Yeah, I know. I wished I could’ve stopped them. What was creepiest of all, he kept calling her Amanda.”