by Bruce Bauman
I grab a beer and a pack of chocolate Hostess cupcakes and a pack of Twinkies from the kitchen and stumble into the living room, stuffing a cupcake in my mouth. Alchy yells, “Hey, Mr. Met, think fast,” and he flings a baseball glove at my chest. I drop the Twinkies but hold on to the beer and catch the glove. “What the fuckaya doin’?”
He hands me a baseball. “Look at them.”
They both was signed by Lenny Dykstra, who was on the ’86 Mets World Series team, and Alchy knows I love the guy, who was nicknamed Nails.
“Whoa. Shit. Thanks.” I pick up the Twinkies and plop down in a folding chair, down my beer and the Twinkies, put on the glove, and am throwing the ball into it.
“I was going to get you a bat, too. Thought you might find an unhealthy use for it.”
He wasn’t looking at me but at the chessboard.
“That game is so freakin’ bor-ing.”
“My mom claims it’s a legacy from my grandfather. It’s cathartic. Relaxing. It teaches me to be unemotional.”
“You cheat? My grandfather taught me checkers. And how to cheat.”
“Cheating defeats the purpose. You cheat when you play video games for hours?”
“When I get bored.”
Nathaniel clomps in from the guest cottage and shoots me a glance that says I am messing with the order of the house, as if it’s his, ’cause of my empty beer bottle and cupcake wrappers. As if Alchemy’s mess and magazines was sacred. For a hippie dude, his life posture was never slouchy but grouchy-bouncy, except when he got drunk and he meowed about how life with Salome came crashing down on him.
He sits his lumpy ass in a folding chair. “It’s the pinup boy for his de-generation. Always a pleasure to see your impudent leer.”
“You head to the kitchen and earn your keep and cook me a omelet, and you won’t have to see me.”
“You two.” Alchemy shakes his head at us. “Muzzle your stellar banter tonight. We have business.” He spoke directly to Nathaniel. “Lure my mom back to your place before we get started.” Nathaniel nodded. “It’s your move.”
Andrew, Sue, and the shrink arrive together and a few minutes later Lux comes with Randy Sheik. The Sheiks was always protecting their “franchise.”
Everyone is there but the guest of honor. She finally shows up with Silky Trespass, who at the time is the guitarist for the Come Queens. They and Dress Shields, calling themselves the Mendietas, jam together off and on for years.
Around nine a cook serves up dinner, which is laid out buffet style on the dining room table. It’s the only furniture except this giant Christmassy glass chandelier that Salome says was made special by some famous guy who also got one eye.
Most of us pull out the folding chairs or sit on the couch and eat in the other room. Alchemy has put on Blue Velvet with the sound off. Absurda’s put on Jane’s Addiction’s Ritual, which I admit is one fine fuckin’ piece of music. While we’re eating, Salome and a chick Alchemy met maybe ten hours before parade in from the hot tub. Back in Flushin’ we call those hookups “tramp-oline time,” something to jump on all night and jump off of in the morning. Alchy frowned on me using that phrase.
The trampoline has covered up in jeans, sweatshirt, and flip-flops. Salome is slinking, still slightly wet, wearing a green T-shirt, no bra, orange sarong, with a towel slung over her shoulder. Barefoot. She was some kinda female Dorian Gray who must’ve had one of her paintings in the closet that looked four hundred fuckin’ years old, ’cause her body is like a ticking sex bomb ready to explode. (Alchemy gave me that book after the Irving Plaza gig.)
When she’s done eating, Salome puts on the Stones’ “Miss You.” She starts snake-dancing alone under the skylights in the living room. She forefinger wags at Alchemy and waves the towel like a toreador. He gets up and they are both shimmying their butts. I see where he gets some of his moves. They drift in and out in circles from six inches to six feet from each other. They are both mouthing the lyrics. Sick shit, man. Nathaniel, I peek at him, and even he is squirming and dripping in sweat. Lux and me give each other a look that says “I don’t wanna see this.” Absurda and Silky are whispering in each other’s ears. They start dancing with each other, you know, how babes do to get guys hot. The trampoline is looking con-freaking-fused so she gets up and tries to butt in between Alchemy and Salome. They give her the homicidal Savant stare. She backs off. Everyone, even Nathaniel and me, is always an outsider when it comes to Alchemy and Salome. The two of them is swaying to the “oooh-oooh-aaah-aaah” and Mick’s strung-out voice and with Isabella Rossellini on the screen and there’s some very sexy vibrations in the atmosphere. Salome is singing really low, “… I miss ya, chile …” I am getting eroticized by all of this when my brand-new cell phone rings.
“McFinn. Nova.”
“Yo, Franky Novalino. Long time, ya prick. How’d ya get my number?”
“Ya sister. That street corner sideshow would suck the anal warts off a the queer-ass pope for a dime.”
She was the only one of my family to have that number. I told her not to give it to them but didn’t say nuthin’ about guys like Nova.
“Nova, insult my sister and break my heart.”
“Hey, I was just dickin’ wit’ ya. Bonnie is cool. Ricky, listen, no jokin’ …” I hear him breathing hard and halting. “I been shot and Jaw is dead.” Jaw was a crackhead speed freak who’d been doing time in Dannemora. I didn’t even know he was out. I hated that Nova is hanging with him.
“What the fuck you two do? No bull, Nova.”
“We ripped off some Jew jewelers about six months ago. Big score.”
“Nova, ya dumb knucklewit, those are the Jews with who you do not fuck.”
“No lectures, hah, I’m in severe pain. We been hidin’ out in Vegas. Somehow the bastids found us.”
“Somehow? Jesus. Why didn’t ya take a ad out on America’s Most Wanted?”
“It was like they hired the Israeli secret service the way they come at us.”
“What the fuck you want me ta do?”
“Put me up and get me a medic. Fast. My thigh been bleedin’ for hours. Ya know I can’t go ta no hospital. I’m takin’ vycs for the pain. I’m parked in fron’ a phone boot’ in a Vons parkin’ lot on Alvarado off a the Ten.”
“Did you leave Jaw in Vegas?”
“No, he croaked on the way, so I left him on the side a some nowhere exit off a the Fifteen.”
I’m thinking he is one lucky douche bag, ’cause Alchemy has access to a doc twenty-four/seven for Salome. “Okay. Don’t fuckin’ go nowhere. And don’t call no one else.”
“Ricky, I’ll be in the Camaro.”
“Be there in twenty, thirty minutes.” I’m frustrated, but I can’t strand the poor schmuck. He was one of the few dudes who stood up to my dad when he was beating the crap outta me.
I wave to Alchemy, who is now slo-mo soloing with the trampoline. He reads my face that says I got an SOS call. We step outside onto the front lawn. I explain the dilemma. His head’s shaking in disbelief. Still, he gets it right away and surveys the options. “You go. Call me immediately. We’ll meet at the Pantera.” The Pantera been closed by then, but Falstaffa and Marty still live above it. “Don’t use his car. If we can fix him up, maybe we can get him on a boat at the marina and out of here.”
He follows me to my Escalade. “You aren’t holding, are you?
“No.”
“Give me your knife. I’ll keep it in the house.”
I hesitate.
“Give it to me.” I hand him my mettle. “Where’s your Colt?”
“In my room.”
Alchemy tells everyone I got an emergency but gives no other facts. He calls off the Absurda intervention for the night.
I race to the Vons and I spot the Camaro in a deserted corner of the lot. I bang on the fucking trunk. He don’t move. I look in the window and start screaming, “Fran-kee, Frank-ee Fuckin’ Novalino!” I think maybe he passed out. The door ain’t locked so I reach i
n and—goddamn it, the poor bastard is dead. I kick in the side of his damn car. I’m embarrassed to admit, I want to toss my cell and get my ass outta there, but that’s cowardly shit. I must do right by my man.
I phone Alchemy.
He says, very calm, “Call nine one one. You tell them this. Exactly this: He called you and said he was in deep shit. You tell them he said something about the jewelers, that they were after him. Only he never, never mentioned being shot. Got that?”
“Yes.”
“Never to anyone. Not even me, ever again.”
“Got it. I got it.” We keep that under wraps ’cause if we hadn’t, they would’ve jumped on us for not calling the cops right away, and we—I didn’t need that.
Alchy is on top of the situation. Andrew and a shyster meet me at Parker Center that night. He gets the PR people ready because this hits the news big time, insinuating that I’m involved with all kinds of gang shit.
Alchemy was stand-up through everything. He never blinked. Or talked about tossing me out. At least, not to my face.
41
THE SONGS OF SALOME
Let’s Not Make a Deal
After the performance I felt so high, younger, and more vital than I had in years. I was infatuated with Berlin life and didn’t want to return to America. I needed to. Hilda, who was phobic about flying and had no curiosity about the world beyond Orient, turned down my invitations to join us for Christmas and then again at Easter, which upset me more for Alchemy than for myself. He and I flew back to the States for a month in July.
The city repelled me. I sensated that the inquisitions of friends or former fucks could undo me. I avoided Gibbon and the Hamptons, that summertime G-spot of the self-anointed elite. Xtine drove me to Collier Layne to see Ruggles; he was pleased with my “progress.” I brought a copy of the Teumer photo. “It’s real.”
He raised his eyebrows and fingered his mole. “And?”
“I still mourn for myself and the child, only not in the same fashion. I found renewed faith my body. I forgive myself that indiscretion.” He only nodded.
Before going back to Orient, I crashed for two days with Xtine. We avoided the downtown cliques and ate dinner at the Supreme Macaroni Company. After dinner, the summer air stifled and my head felt as if it were encased in a plastic bag while I gasped for breath. We lolled inconspicuously down Ninth Avenue back to the Chelsea. Before we entered the lobby, from behind I heard an unmistakable voice. “Salome! Salome, please wait.”
Under the dim streetlights and headlights of the cars zipping across 23rd Street stood Lively with his saddle-sized sideburns and shiny cowboy boots. He hovered between the sidewalk and a double-parked black sedan. “Look, Xtine.” I poked her with my elbow. “It’s the archangel of Bad News.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way.”
“I do, Laban, so why don’t you—whoosh—vanish.”
“I have tried to help you in the past.” Of course there was a reason he told me about Gus. “And I don’t think what I have to say will qualify as bad news. Can we go somewhere to talk?”
“No.”
He blew his meaty nostrils into a white handkerchief, stuffed it in his pocket, and shook his head in disgust at the sloth around him. “Suit yerself.”
“So, surprise me with your good news.”
“Do you know why Nathaniel chose to go to Berlin?”
“The delicate cuisine?” I asked. He almost smiled as his molten features relaxed. “That’s not it? Hmmm. So tell me.”
“I’d say it’s due to his involvement with underground political groups in East Berlin. Smuggling money in and photographs out. Some of which were published in the West German magazine GEO.”
I’d never read it. “I don’t see how printing photos in a magazine is illegal.”
“It is in Communist Germany. I’d like to help him.”
“Your help he can do without.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. In this case we are both on the same side. There’s an old saw, my enemy’s enemy is my friend. The Stasi is both of our enemies.”
“You will never be his ‘friend.’ ”
“Ally, then.”
“You want me to help you to help him help you?”
“I wouldn’t have phrased it in such a way, but yes.”
“He’ll never pass information on his friends to you.”
“No need. His friends need funds. Supplies. They use a hand-cranked press to print their pamphlets. We can help them upgrade.”
“Why should he trust you? Why should I?”
“Because I’ve never lied to you.”
As beastly as he was, he believed that. His truths may have been false to me, but they were his truths.
“Laban, you’re a deal maker. I have one for you.”
“Shoot.”
“I lost a child when I was fifteen.”
His gaze squirmed away from mine. “Yes, I’d heard from the Bickleys. It was not my place to pursue any details.”
“I have questions about the father.”
He tapped the heel of his boot on the sidewalk and ground it on a now very dead cockroach. “Why do you think I can help you?”
“You’re a spy, Laban. Finding information on people is what you do.”
He chuckled, baring his oversized carnivorous teeth.
“You get me some information about him. Like where he’s living. And I’ll do my best to help you with Nathaniel.”
“Let me see if there’s anything I can do. No promises.”
I asked if he wanted the photo of Teumer. He didn’t need it. He knew more than I did about my own past.
42
THE MOSES CHRONICLES (2008)
Lovers Cross
Jay shielded herself behind the electronic curtain, unresponsive to Moses’s plaintive e-mails and calls. She finally sent a one-line e-mail: “It’s best I spend the night at Geri’s.” He considered a drive-by spy mission but dismissed it as too insidious. Alchemy called near ten that evening. Moses didn’t pick up. He sat in his darkened room and listened to Alchemy’s clipped cadence play on the machine, “Call me. ASAP. We need to talk.”
Moses had no desire to hear whatever wisdom Alchemy wanted to impart. Anxious and restless, he called Sidonna Cherry, who answered in her typical playful fashion. “You becoming one of those PI junkies I need to put on retainer?”
“Gosh, I hope not. Just have some questions. When you researched my father, did you have an inkling of a sinister past? Is he dead yet?”
“I’ll answer the second question first. I don’t know. You want me to find out?”
“Yes.”
“See, you are going to pay me again. In answer to question one, identity refashioning is not exactly unique in my line of work.”
“Anything else you can find, and yes, I’ll pay. I want to meet him.”
“Oddsy bodsy, babe. I’ll check if your ghosty pop is still samba-ing down Rio way at the same address.”
Moses spent the night dominated by obsessive introspection and scrutiny, certifying all major “facts” of his heritage as fraudulent. He couldn’t help thinking that Jay’s fleeing implied even more portentous revelations. The next day, she finally e-mailed that she’d be coming by around eleven.
When her Honda pulled into the driveway, Moses feigned casualness. He loped out to hug her. Hair unkempt, wearing jeans and a tan blouse, sunglasses, and floppy straw hat covering her pallid complexion sans makeup, Jay shook her head as she brushed past him. “Inside.” He trudged into the living room. The sun rays from the skylight above bathed the room, giving it an aura of airiness when strangulation would be more apt. Jay edged into the right corner of the white leather couch. Moses sat opposite, an unbridgeable two feet of space and an immeasurable gulf of hurt separating them. After all those years of seeming dormancy, the silent spores of the fungus Lovegonelousy had released their lethal toxins.
“Jay, I’m so, so sorry. Please say you’re coming home to stay.”
; “I can’t. Not yet.”
“I’m begging you. Please forgive my idiotic jealousy. Don’t you know how much I love you? I don’t understand. Why did you have to leave?”
“Saying what you said and asking me not to go with you to the museum … Moses, you left me. You’d really already left. That just sealed—”
“I hadn’t slept. I’d told you I’d taken too much Xanax. I was terrified. I apologized and begged you to forgive me, to come with me—”
“None of that undoes what you said, what you’ve been thinking. What you still think.”
“Jay—”
“Stop.” She had no intention of letting him reframe the events until she had her say. “Moses, I mean it, I feel like you left ‘us’ years ago. I’ve tried to bring you back.”
“You feel wrong.”
“No, I don’t. You’ve become more and more distant. Whenever I brought up wanting a child—”
“I agreed.”
“Agreed you weren’t ready. I was ready! And then after I stopped using birth control—”
“Jay—”
“Let me finish. Since we met, I never wanted to be with anyone else. Not when you were sick. Not when you drifted farther away after your mother died. Not when you glared at me so spitefully when you found about … I never betrayed you in reality or emotionally. I hurt for your hurt, over Salome and your father.”
“The nut and the Nazi.”