Rick Moody - The Diviners

“Who do you think was playing the national anthem on the harpsichord at the baseball stadium? Can you guess who it was? Like I said, the stadium was promoting attendance by the ladies, so they had a beautiful lady onto Ebbets Field to play the national anthem. She was a tiny little speck down there on the field. She told me later that they had to truck the harpsichord out first thing in the morning and then tune it, parked at home plate. They were using a brand-new public-address system at the park, and the national anthem was never so glorious. Maybe it was beautiful because there’d been the brawl the day before where Stanky started throwing punches at Len Merullo. Or because the war was over. I only know it was wondrous, and it was played by the woman I was going to marry. And I had a hunch that she’d stay for the game. Because it was a great game. There was another brawl, but then Pete Reiser stole home, even though he was injured. He stole home seven times that season. And the boys pulled it out, two to one. I missed most of that, however, because I was waiting out in the parking lot. I was betting that my future wife would be wherever the harpsichord was, and, sure enough, she was standing by the truck in the parking lot. They had the game on the radio.”

Sandra is back, and she distracts Vic from a portion of Spicer’s heartfelt monologue, the monologue that Spicer has probably delivered nine times this morning. Vic’s assistant is on the line. Sandra punches the buttons and holds up the handset. Vic abandons Spicer in the middle of telling him about selling the harpsichord after his wife died, the cost of tuning and upkeep for a harpsichord. Half attending to Spicer, half listening to the emergency. At first he thinks it’s his wife, because when you are a father this is always your worry. One of your kids is banged up. But it’s not his wife, it’s the personal manager of the new client.

It takes him a moment to put it all together. A moment until the personal manager is in the middle of saying, “. . going to be really unfortunate from a legal angle, not to mention from a, you know, publicity angle. So, anyway, she’s going to go to Europe for a few weeks, to relax, maybe to record some new things, out of the spotlight. In fact, she’s already at the airport. Sorry I didn’t call earlier.”

Vic says, “I can’t believe what I’m hearing.” By which he means that he wasn’t listening to what he was hearing. The handset, still warm, smells like Binaca. The manager keeps saying “Ramon Martinez.”

“Ramon Martinez? Who the hell is Ramon Martinez?”

Spicer, the messenger, is listening to the whole thing, and he chimes in. Soon everyone is saying “Ramon Martinez,” as though it’s the adult-world equivalent of the precious incantation campfire song, and Vic has it pieced together that the new client, now on her way to Paris, used to be the girlfriend of someone called Ramon Martinez, and this Ramon Martinez has done something truly awful, and Spicer is saying, “Diamond District, in the Diamond District,” and so is Sandra, so Vic sees the tabloid headlines assembling in the developing tray of his consciousness, that sensational newspaper photo. He starts to see Ramon Martinez driving his car into the jewelry store on Sixth Avenue, cursing the Jews. A senseless crime for a senseless time perpetrated by a senseless guy. The new client was his girlfriend, the girlfriend of Ramon Martinez. Or, at least, the new client was photographed with him, the new client had him in her private company for a span of seven consecutive nights, canoodling, as the tabloids will have it. Therefore, the new client, it is revealed, was consort to this known perpetrator of a hate crime. Vic Freese should see this as a dark day for the agency, he should see this as an insurmountable difficulty for his stewardship of the fledgling television career of the new client; instead, in a way, all he can feel is relief. Now the streamers in the office are for his own celebration, the celebration of his ability to go home at 5:30 and do the thousand dances with his kids to New Order instead of beseeching producers and casting agents to think Lacey, Lacey, Lacey, Lacey. Lacey with her pierced navel, Lacey with her hip-huggers, Lacey with her thongs, with her constant traveling homunculus, also known as Neil the hairdresser. Lacey, friend of manslaughterers. He cradles the handset in its postderegulation console.

Spicer says, “Now let’s see that swing.”

Vic says, with a new optimism, “There was always some trouble driving off my back leg. I had fallen arches as a teen.”

“That can be an asset, you know. Upper-body strength. Give me a look.”

And Vic Freese, soon-to-be-former television agent, stands in reception with a messenger who smells like he’s bathed in formaldehyde and drives off the right leg. Spicer puts the manila envelope on the coffee table in reception, where Variety and Premiere are stacked in perfect diagonal lines. Some nice photos hanging in this room, too. Fictional film stills by the woman who is in all her own photos. Black-and-whites. Also: tiger lilies in a vase. Right before Vic swings at the second imaginary pitch, an off-speed thing that tails in over the inside corner, he looks down at the envelope and he sees the name on it. Which is not his own name. Nor is it the name of any current employee of the Michael Cohen Agency. Actually, the name on the envelope is the name of a producer of his acquaintance, at a production company called Means of Production.

Spicer has a lot of corrections for Vic. Vic is turning his wrists too soon, he’s letting his shoulder drop out. Spicer argues for lifting the front leg a little higher, planting it firmly. Spicer lets it be known that he could have been a scout if he’d wanted to, plenty of guys he’s met at the minor leagues have told him so. He has the eye. Knows about the importance of offense. And Vic lets him draw a diagram, including right triangles, to which Spicer adds a little analysis about why pulling the ball is a failed strategy. And Spicer actually draws this diagram on the manila envelope that is now officially delivered to the wrong address, and Vic does not stop him.

Because he has an idea. Not that he has a lot of professional ideas, but he has this little idea. Like a middle-aged mathematician, these days he has to hoard any idea that comes his way. This idea is formulated as a question: What if there’s something good in the manila envelope? What if there’s something to know? Some tidbit of knowledge, some insider information in the manila envelope? Isn’t it now an insider information world? The envelope, in fact, is coming from the competition, from International Talent and Media. Says so right there on the messenger form. Is this not access to the world of agents who take their jobs seriously, who perform? Is this not access to the seven habits of highly effective agents: evasiveness, impatience, deceit, hyperbole, manipulation, cruelty, and love of fellow man? This idea comes from his distant past, from the days of being a trainee, when steaming open the occasional letter and reading it was considered pragmatic. Once he was startled, in the men’s room, while steaming open a letter, only to discover that some other junior agent, also clutching an envelope, was about to attempt to do the same thing. And though he believed he had left behind the steaming open of envelopes, here he is. Because Vanessa Meandro has failed on three occasions to return his call. And she sweats too much. Here he is receiving a package from ITM meant for Vanessa Meandro, some project he doesn’t know about, and he thinks he’ll just have a look. A quick peek. To see what is to be seen.

Vic thanks Spicer for the lesson, cutting off a tiresome digression on the big band tunes of the postwar era, and invites the old guy through the smoky opacity of the door.