Rick Moody - The Diviners

“And now,” he says, “I must tell you about Roots. ”

“Wait,” Jeanine says, seeing at last a chance to get a word in somehow and hoping, thereby, to get out of the office. “Just how do you know all this?”

“I thought it up while I was driving for the car service.”

“Your —”

“My car is outside. Parked in an illegal spot.”

“What you’re saying is very powerful. But actually I —”

She can hear some commotion outside now and she uses it as an opportunity to open the door. In the hall, Vanessa is standing over Annabel’s desk ridiculing her, while the others, as usual, pretend to be knee-deep in work. “And the treatment lands, by accident, somehow by accident, on the desk of Vic Freese. And he calls me, telling me he has some treatment, says it’s called The Diviners, and what a tremendous piece of work it is, this treatment, have I seen this treatment? And everyone is talking about this treatment. And I don’t even have this particular piece of paper. Which has now been promised to me for what, three days? What do I pay you for? To sit here and talk on the phone with your friends about how horribly you are treated at the office, where your boss actually wants you to get the material before somebody else, some agent, because that’s how you make the deal? You make the deal before the other companies, not after them. If you make the deal after the other companies, you don’t make any money or there is no deal at all. Yeah, you are treated so badly, because you have to sit around and talk to the eleven managers and agents of some actor who wants you to come out with him to some bar tonight where supermodels are going. Horrible. Your boss actually wants you to do your job, how astonishing, because that’s the only way your boss can meet the payroll so that you can actually pay your rent and pay your taxes and I can continue to run a business —”

It wouldn’t be a day at Means of Production if one of the women there was not weeping. And Vanessa, waving a stale doughnut, looks over at Jeanine, who darkens the doorway of the empty office that is now the office of the theory and practice of television at Means of Production, and she evidently sees the half-light and the disheveled participants in the discussion of the theory and practice of television, the history of the medium, and she does a double take. But now Ranjeet simply reaches around Jeanine and closes the door. There is the sound of a siren going down Fifth Avenue. A convoy of rush hour buses.

“Think about the birth of the man called Kunta Kinte, in the program entitled Roots. When before in this medium which is called television has the birth of a black man such as this been as reverently treated as it is in the program entitled Roots ? The father holds an infant up to the stars, and it is like the exaggerated dance sequences of Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire. It is the falsehood that tells a truth about the history of your nation which has never been told, which is the truth about a child born in Africa, not even born in this country, a child who didn’t even choose to come to this country but who came here forcibly. It could be the most important birth in the history of the country, the birth of little Kunta Kinte, even though he is a fictionalized personage! Certainly the most important birth on television! The woman crying out in pain, pushing, pushing, and then the little child being held up by the father, Kunta Kinte being held up to the stars. And then there is the youth of Kunta Kinte, and into this is cut very falsified footage of wild animals, a cheetah running in a field which is clearly not the field in which Kunta Kinte is later seen running. Or there is a monkey standing on a tree limb at the moment that the young Kunta Kinte is about to be captured by a slave trader. All these many lapses, these mistakes in the editing of the material, and the misplaced comic moments of the program called Roots. However, above all this is the slave trade, above all this is the instant of the sale into slavery of Kunta Kinte, because no matter the aesthetics of the moment, all American stories aspire to this condition, which is the condition of the saga. All stories aspire in this direction, and all corporations aspire toward the sale and reproduction of this saga. Nothing could be more American than this, and nothing could be more international than what is American, nothing could be more human; there are no nationalities, there are only ethnicities and corporations, there is only the military and its collateral damage, and the land of profitability and cowboys and slave trading.”

Ranjeet is so excited by the details as he spins them out that he paces the room, stepping on the coverage on the floor in his shiny sneakers, which are knockoffs from a large retailer. It’s hard to tell under the beard how old he is. Jeanine thinks thirty-four, but he carries himself like he’s thirty years older. There is something sexy about him. Again, he takes her wrist as he speaks of LeVar Burton. LeVar Burton, who plays Kunta Kinte. And when he does, he can feel her disfigurement. She knows that he knows. She has her sleeves pulled down, of course. As she always does. Even in the summer.

Vanessa comes in. She had to eventually. Vanessa bustles in and suddenly the lights are on, and Ranjeet is picking up the coverage from everywhere on the floor.

“Give me the update, you guys.”

Circles under her eyes. It’s one of those days when you have to feel pity for her, which is the compassion on which the abuser depends. Circles under her eyes, disarranged hair, a shirt that’s badly tucked in, a missing earring.

“He’s giving me a lecture on the miniseries,” Jeanine says.

“Hey, wait a second. I want everyone to hear this.”

Everyone winces at the advent of team strategy meetings. They overcome Vanessa with a migrainous instantaneity. Though it can be said that Vanessa’s attention deficit problems do prevent lengthy attempts at these or any other corporate time wasters. She leads Ranjeet, babbling, out into the hall and into the conference room with the arty glass table that Jeanine herself ordered from a catalogue. The others gather in the hall.

“Madison. Jeanine. Over here.”

“Like we don’t have more important things to do.”

“Shut up, Madison.”

Annabel, wiping away leftover tears, bringing up the rear. Thaddeus Griffin waves from his phone, points at the mouthpiece. Vanessa beckons him in, but it’s nothing doing. Thaddeus won’t appear in groups of women, Jeanine thinks. Too much potential for cross-referencing. When the women and the guy in the turban are all assembled in the conference room, looking at a glass bowl with individually wrapped Tootsie Rolls in it, Vanessa starts in.

“We’ve been educated in the American academy. We’re the best and brightest. But that stops now. As of this moment, we’re going to be the stealth intelligence unit, learning about this medium that we don’t know anything about. Nod if you understand. We’re going to learn about the medium of shamelessness. That’s what Ranjeet is here to help us do. We’re going to infiltrate. We’re going to bite the hand that feeds us. I want to know who programs Entertainment Tonight and I want to know who the reporters are for Inside Edition. I want to know the ratings results for every appearance of Elizabeth Taylor in the past five years. The Gilligan’s Island reunion special. Or anything having to do with Michael Jackson. The ratings for all his appearances. The Larry Hagman character. Who thought that up? Shooting him? If there’s the opportunity to show women with enhanced boobs in swimsuits, let’s do it. If there’s the opportunity to show married women climbing into the beds of men just for money, perfect. Take lots of notes on whatever Ranjeet says. As long as he says it. Think about syndication. Just this morning I’ve been discussing syndication and its revenue streams with my lawyers. What I mean is, it’s time to take the company to the next level. The level where the money is. I’ve put in all this work and you guys have put in all this work, we’ve plotted and dreamed, and what do we have to show for it? We’ve got the undivided attention of the kids with blue hair, that’s our audience, dabblers, kids who use lunch boxes for their purses. We’ve got the bald poets with their art historian wives and PBS tote bags; we’ve got the film school students. And that’s nice. I never thought we could even get this far, but the company needs to grow, needs to rocket toward the light. .”