“Why didn’t ya ever tell me this?”
“Didn’t seem right. If he wanted, he would’ve told you.”
“Think him and Absurda was in love? Like really in love?”
“Falling in love was not part of Alchemy’s big plan back then.”
70 THE MOSES CHRONICLES (2014)
Seeing Is Disbelieving
Almost naturally, as if there could be no other outcome, Jay and Moses once again became a couple. They took beach walks, went to movies and art events, and spent most nights at her condo. Only the barrier of meeting his new family, which he’d erected after the evening at the theater, stayed the cementing of their second-time-around relationship.
That afternoon, Jay was picking Moses up at noon at his acupuncturist (almost sheepishly he had begun a regimen as part of his recovery: acupuncture, a strict diet, yoga, and weight training). They were driving up to Topanga for lunch with only Persephone and Laluna, which suited Jay just fine. Alchemy had zipped off to San Francisco to meet with Frieberg and Loo, the Internet whiz kids behind riteplay.com. Alchemy’s Audition Enterprizes had supplied the seed money and became a major stockholder, and Google was making an offer to buy the company. Salome was in Chicago, accompanied by Tryx, where she was giving a lecture and receiving an honorary degree at the Art Institute.
They entered the hidden drive located about seven minutes up Topanga Canyon Boulevard from PCH. Fifty yards deeper into the woods, they stopped at the guardhouse manned by graduates of a Nightingale jobs program for former convicts, before driving up the half-mile private road. Jay parked the car in the large circular driveway.
In the garden, on her knees with a beer bottle by one side, Laluna tended to her flower bed. Dressed in woolen leggings that looked as if they were patched together from thrift shop sweaters, a thigh-length orange flannel shirt, short hair porcupining chaotically, no makeup on her smooth, tanned skin, Laluna struck Jay as carefree, young, and successful — yet her large, oval brown eyes seemed to deflect the gaze of anyone who stared too long and exuded an almost defiant aura that warned the uninvited to keep their distance. Jay guessed that it was the tension between vulnerability and stubborn independence that attracted Alchemy so ineluctably to Laluna.
Jay couldn’t balance her fluctuating emotions. Jealousy, because Laluna and Moses shared a child, hesitancy because Laluna seemed to float in her own world. Yet Jay found herself wanting this young woman’s approval.
Moses picked up and hugged Persephone, who settled happily in his arms. “Say hi to your auntie Jay.” The greeting instilled a special sense of security in Jay about her future with Moses. Persephone tucked her head shyly into Moses’s chest. Jay noted Persephone’s pale skin and light brownish hair, like Moses’s, and her hazel eyes that looked like neither Moses’s, Alchemy’s, nor Laluna’s.
Laluna waved to Moses and washed off her hands with the water hose. She and Jay shook hands. Moses carried Persephone as the four strolled along the gravelly paths winding around the grounds, until they stopped in front of Salome’s studio.
“Jay, Mose says you’re a fan of Salome’s art.” Jay nodded. “You want to peek inside?”
“Love to but …”
Moses had never been inside. His eyes darting anxiously, he muttered, “I don’t know.”
“C’mon, Mose.” Laluna glanced at Jay, her first sign of kinship. “We know you want to. We’ll protect you from her evil spirits.” Laluna turned to her daughter. “Perse, honey, you want to visit Granmamma’s studio?” She nodded emphatically. “Perse sits or naps with her while she’s working.”
Laluna dropped her empty beer bottle into a recycling bin and took Persephone from Moses, and with her free hand pushed open the two glass doors. “I call this her ‘mad room.’ She gets mad when anyone goes in without her permission, but when you do, it might drive you mad.”
Laluna held the door. Jay, then Moses, stepped gingerly into the first of three 750-square-foot spaces with twenty-foot ceiling and multiple skylights. They were engulfed by scores of clocks. Clocks with numerical signs and in languages ranging from Old English to Arabic to Chinese. Clocks with no numbers at all. Some hand-carved in wood, some one of a kind, some purchased at Ikea. Others made of cheap plastic or various forms of cast metal. Two clocks made out of rocks. One sundial on the floor. A seven-foot-tall wire spiral clock. A slew of wristwatches side by side: Salvador Dalí with his mustache as the hour and minute hands, Annie Oakley with six guns as the hands, Smokey the Bear and another with Jesus on the Cross. A replica of an ancient Greek water clock. From hundreds of years old to digital. Three cuckoo clocks. Not one clock ticktocked. Salome set and then disabled each clock to the moment she got it. In bold two-foot-high letters, scrawled across the floor in red chalk: THE END OF TIME STARTS NOW.
“Got no idea what she intends to do with this stuff. She’s told me she doesn’t believe in time. I look at this and, hmm … Who am I to question her?” Laluna led them behind a black curtain into a space of equal size, without windows or skylights. Paints, brushes, signs, books, rocks, twigs, stacks of torn wallpaper, coins, movie posters, piles of newspaper and magazine images, Kewpie dolls, Indian Ganeshes, an old, empty gumball machine filled with tiny pebbles.
Laluna clicked on a remote control and a TV nestled in the corner started playing. The images began with Salome’s youthful, near-perfect face morphing into its present profile, marked by the vicissitudes of age and madness, followed by images of her creations melting and distorting in a distinctly trippy fashion through various stages of her career. The soundtrack played splices of the Insatiables’ “Savant Sensation Bluz,” Miles Davis’s “Blue in Green,” and Davis’s version of Lauper and Hyman’s “Time After Time.” A half-delighted, half-frightened squeal erupted — it sounded as if it might be coming from the video, until they heard “Unc Mose!” They hurried through another black curtain to the back room, where Persephone stood beside a nude life-size body caste of Salome, and was staring at the never exhibited collages, done in Baddist Boy style, of Salome and a man dressed in Nazi uniforms. They were holding a baby that they were either throwing into or pulling from a fire pit. The baby’s head was a photo of Moses taken off the SCCAM Web site. Across the top, in skeletal letters, she’d scrawled “Child Sacrifice?” Moses eyed Laluna and signaled, Time to go.
Jay clasped Moses’s hand as they speed-walked back to the main house. They avoided speaking of what they’d seen. They ate a late lunch on a glass patio that overlooked the Pacific. Laluna kept nudging Persephone to eat her lunch instead of play with it. Moses offered support. “My mom said I never ate much until I was ten or so.” Laluna’s stare fixed on her caprese sandwich. Moses quickly changed the subject. “I hope Alchemy gets what he wants from Spencer and Amy. Those teen titans of the tech world could really help the foundation.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Laluna opened another beer and took a gulp. “So, Mose, you’re Alchemy’s political guru.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“I would. I got a question, and don’t bullshit me. Is what he wants to do with the Nightingale Party a total waste of energy and money? He’s so obsessed. I start out talking about what to eat for dinner or rewatching Battlestar Gallactica and he finds a way to talk about ‘the third way.’ ”
“If I thought it a waste of time, I wouldn’t be so involved.” Moses started to list their agenda: changing the health system from “Medicare for the aged” to “Medicare for all,” taxing all religious institutions like businesses, redefining the Patriot Act. Laluna quickly looked bored. “I’m not exactly sure how or if we can do it, or what he expects. Not exactly.”