Rick Moody - The Diviners

“What Mormon episode? I just had Thaddeus in here, and he was making up all this shit about the Mormons; I thought he was just —”

“Van,” he says, “you have to stay up to date. The Mormon section was a condition of sharing expenses with Interstate Mortuary Services.”

“Interstate Mortuary Services?”

“A subsidiary of UBC.”

“I know who they are.”

“They want to get involved in content. Content is the future. For Interstate Mortuary Services and their shareholders. Every consumer that they can get acquainted with the Interstate Mortuary brand is more likely to call on them later, when they are confronting a fatality situation.”

“A fatality situation? Listen, I just want to make sure that we’re. . that Means of Production is the development arm of the series right now, because we have all our people working on it. We have it out with two writers, and I’m going to see who comes up with the best treatment for the first episode, and then we’re going to move the ball forward.”

“You don’t even have a writer yet? Jesus. We’re talking principal photography no later than September.”

“We have names. ”

“Look, I don’t know how long I can hold the place for you. There are other parties interested. Big names, names I’m not at liberty to reveal. There are people who think there’s theme park potential here. Everybody loves a water ride. There’s cross-marketing potential with the divining rods. The toy companies have been contacted. And did I tell you about the really great product placement underwriting agreement we have right now?”

“Uh, don’t tell me. . doughnuts.”

“Exactly!”

“My people secured that Krispy Kreme financing.”

“Vanessa, don’t bullshit me. My assistant here is in close touch with the chairman at Krispy Kreme. . Hang on. Gretchen? Gretchen? How many calls have we made to the guys at Krispy Kreme on the thing? The thing! Hang on. Vanessa, did you hear that? Did you hear what she just said? She says we’ve made at least twenty calls this week to the Krispy Kreme guys alone. In the last two weeks. Their involvement was a prerequisite for all the talks with UBC.”

“You didn’t talk to UBC, Vic. I talked to UBC. I talked to Maiser right after I talked to you. . what day was that? Saturday? I talked with him right after that. He didn’t mention talking to you. It was all me. I did the pitch, and I’m in touch with the guy. Don’t mess with my contacts.”

“How long can I hold the spot for you? Can I hold it forever for you? Vanessa, I can’t. I would like to, but I can’t. That’s all. Get your story together. Tell me who’s attached, and as long as they’re clients of this agency, we’re in business. I think I can get you the line producer job on the actual filming if you want it.”

“Line producer, my ass. How many days do I have?”

“You have a few days.”

“Because you have no idea —”

“I don’t care what’s been going on.”

“Okay, okay. Judy Davis for Brigham Young’s wife. .”

“Are you crazy? Can you say the word? The word is Australian. ”

“She’s not Australian.”

“She’s Australian as puddles of beer vomit.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Gotta go!”

The intern appears with the dumplings. She pulls her chair up right next to Vanessa’s desk and she spreads wide the plastic trays. She arranges the little pools of dunking sauces. She makes her preparations with a minimum of conversation. She holds up chopsticks in one hand and in the other she holds a plastic fork. Vanessa wants the plastic fork but takes the chopsticks.

The intern says, “I told them we were in discussions about a reality show called Take-Out. Who can deliver the items the fastest, that kind of thing. They knew all about reality television. They kept repeating Regis Philbin’s name in the form of a question.”

The intern has one expression and the expression is boredom. And the question is, in this time of unprecedented prosperity and budget surplus, why all the boredom? The intern eats a dumpling. And then, in a ruminative spirit, she offers the following: “My father is ready to give you the green light, but you have to tell him that I’m here. And you have to tell him that I’m going to do the location scouting. That’s what I want to do first. My career trajectory is up the production side. In this case, I want to be able to drive around the Southwest for a few weeks, looking for the right locations.”

Never once does a flicker of interest pass across her vampirically pale features.

“How do you know that he’s ready to give us the green light?”

“He’s embarrassed by my mom. By the divorce settlement. By his stupid girlfriend. He’s looking for a place where he can make a stand. And he’s embarrassed about the news division. He’s going to have staff reductions in the news division, and he’s going to have to do more tabloid television type of stuff, and he doesn’t want to, because the news guys are the only guys he likes. He’d rather do anything than have more reality programs, but he has to do it. And when he has to do stuff like that he’s always looking for something else. What’s the thing he can do that’s completely different from whatever everyone else is doing? A miniseries. Why would he want to do that? It’s stupid. A miniseries is just a bad idea. Who actually watches these things? Nobody watches them.”

“What do you mean?”

“Some Civil War thing with Robert Duvall in a hairpiece? Nobody watches that except your grandparents and the Civil War reenacters. Get drunk and eat a lot of fried chicken out of buckets and then pretend to fire your musket at your neighbor the muffler repairman. Then you pretend to have your leg cut off by the Walt Whitman character. That’s who watches the miniseries. Nobody wants to do them, and that’s exactly why my father will want to. He’s going to want to look like he’s a man of principle.”

“You think I should call him?” Vanessa nervously wipes off her lips with a take-out napkin for the fifth time.

“He’s going to call you. But you have to be completely ready. If you don’t have a writer, lie about having a writer. If you don’t have directors lined up, lie about having directors. And when he says to fly out there, don’t take any meetings with anyone from the network where he’s not present. By the way, my scouting ticket has to be business class.”

Then they go back to the dumplings. After that, a couple more doughnuts. The intern gives Vanessa a disquisition on her interests. The intern likes Antonioni, the intern likes Tarkovsky, the intern likes Fassbinder, the intern likes Sirk, the intern likes Kurosawa, the intern likes Ozu, the intern likes Wenders, the intern likes Herzog, especially the Kinski films. She wrote her senior thesis on Kinski. And Vanessa makes up a list of movies that the intern should watch that she hasn’t yet seen, and she does it with zest, even if her stomach suddenly feels as if something is inside her, intent on gnawing its way out. When the intern finally goes back out to her desk to chew on her hangnail some more, Ranjeet and Jeanine peer into the office as if they’ve been waiting.

“Got a second?” Jeanine says.

Vanessa looks for her pen and her list of problems.

Jeanine wears an expression of forced joviality. Ranjeet is dressed in an expensive suit, and he wears a matching tie and pocket square, and he has removed his turban and shaved his beard. Ranjeet is beaming. He has been living in the office, Vanessa knows, because the kitchenette has become a chaotic scene. It smells like vindaloo in there. Vanessa should feel concerned. She’s sure he once mentioned a family. Maybe he’s not in close contact with his family this week. What she likes is that she has an employee who stays long after she has left for the night and who is there before she gets into the office in the morning. If he has to shave in the kitchenette, fine. He’s out there trying to meet with the big agents, and he’s talking to casting directors about the miniseries, and he’s going over the treatment, sentence by sentence. He’s a postcolonial onslaught.