Rick Moody - The Diviners

Jeanine can feel her abdomen beginning to twitch as if inside there’s one of those monster larvae about to bust out of her entrails and rocket toward the light. Looking around the table at Madison, who’s gazing critically at her fingernails, at Annabel, staring vacantly out a window, Jeanine can tell that Vanessa has finally driven the locomotive off the rails.

“I have to go to the hospital in Brooklyn right now. I mean, you guys know that my mother is back in the hospital, right? I’m trying to keep the company going without any interns. Can anyone explain to me why we keep losing the interns? And why are we in this totally awful office space? Why can’t we get an office downtown? Anyway, I’m trying to keep the company going and now I have this, this situation with my mother. So that’s what I have to show for all the hard work. I have to look to the future; I have to look to the possibility of a more dependable revenue model. Which is why I have gone to great lengths to hire Ranjeet, who comes highly recommended from the University of Delhi. He’s an important international thinker on the cinema and television from one of the largest, most successful film markets on the globe. He’s personally acquainted with Umberto Eco and Edward Said. So here he is, Ranjeet Singh, in case you haven’t met him yet, to help plot our revolution in the medium of television.”

Even though everyone is desperate to get back to their desk, desperate to pretend that Vanessa is not putting a third piece of bubble gum in her mouth, Jeanine has to ask a question. She even knows it’s awful, but she asks anyway.

“What about reality television? Reality programming? Like that show about. . the one where everyone’s going to an island, and they just, they get rid of people? Because people, they just can’t make it on the island, like —”

“Ranjeet?”

All eyes turn to the expert.

“Reality programming,” Ranjeet starts, hands in prayer position, “is a type of programming which comes from Europe. It is the revenge of Europeans on the American dramatic series. People perform crazy actions. They might perhaps eat a rat. Persons collaborate on the eating of rats, preparations for rats, which herbs to use. You might have a program about persons doing these things. You might perhaps find persons in a house together with a lot of money, and you could see who tries to find the money first, and the house has many rats in it. Or you could put people in a house together, and one of these persons is having sexual relations with another. What these programs lack is a mythology. You simply have people and money and sexual relations, and you have no mythology. Consider in the program called Roots the moment when the captain of the slave ship, who is incidentally played by Mary Tyler Moore’s boss, and this captain of the slave ship is not comfortable with the duties of the slave ship. He finds that he cannot believe in the mission of the slave ship, but nonetheless he is contracted to bring the ship into port. The evil first mate brings first a wench, which is his word for the young African woman with exposed breasts, and he says, ‘Captain, perhaps you’ll be wanting a belly warmer,’ or something to this effect, and the captain must decide whether he is equipped to have this unclothed African woman overnight in his cabin. So the captain is morally conflicted by the endeavor of slavery, and yet when there is the beautiful woman with the exposed breasts in his cabin, when he is lord of the high seas, he cannot refuse. This is mythology. This is the story that is equal to a hundred other stories. The myth of national origins is rich in a way that the reality television camera cannot be.”

“People get stupid in front of the camera,” Vanessa says. “People begin to grovel. People begin to lie. People begin to pander. That’s the big festering paradox of reality programming.”

Madison rallies briefly. “Reality programming. I mean, I think it’s just the programming of sluts. If you met any of these girls who are on those shows, they’re all sluts. And I’m betting the guys in the creative departments at the networks, they’re just trying to find ways to meet girls who are sluts. We don’t really have any sluts here, right? So I figure we don’t really have anyone who understands the programming for sluts. So can we please not work on those shows? Because I don’t want to look at myself in the mirror and think I could have worked on getting distribution for that new Iranian film, but instead I worked on a show about the world record holder for hooking up with guys.”

“Thanks for waking up, Madison.”

Then, when everyone is filing out, looking as if they won’t be able to work another day at Means of Production, Ranjeet stops Jeanine in front of his empty office. His face glows with the look of a man who has a complicated future. “I have a son, and he is the most extraordinary boy, and I would like very much for you to meet my son. Perhaps you would come to dinner with my family?”

Preliminary reports, according to detectives, indicate that the victim is an employee of an art gallery in the Chelsea section of Manhattan. Specifically, the victim works at the gallery called 905 on West Twenty-fourth, a gallery known primarily for mixed-media work. The detectives have called the gallery and they have spoken to the owner. This owner remarked that the victim left work early on Thursday for a doctor’s appointment and was not seen in the office after 4:00PM. The victim, according to the employer and others, is Asian and is described as of slight build, attractive, with brown hair and chestnut highlights. The victim is described as wearing, at the time of the attack, clothes dark in color: black tights, black skirt, midthigh, black leather jacket. Age: twenty-six. The victim was educated at a private college in Pennsylvania. The victim’s employer also indicated that the victim has been embarked for some months on gathering material for an exhibition of contemporary African American mixed-media work. The victim, according to interviews, has a considerable critical reputation. She is admired both in the office and in the field generally.

The parents of the victim were notified as soon as was feasible, after contact information was located among the personal effects of the victim. These calls were placed by detectives after notification by personnel at the hospital. The parents are currently staying in a hotel in midtown and are visiting their daughter during visiting hours. They have given detectives permission to read the address book and other effects of the victim found in a shoulder bag at the crime scene. This address book contains seven numbers for local doctors. The parents have indicated that their daughter was recently under the care of a clinical social worker. Calls to the social worker were inconclusive. However, a call to the victim’s orthopedist has apparently confirmed a visit earlier in the day. The office of the orthopedist is located in the Murray Hill district of Manhattan, on Thirty-third Street between Second and Third Avenues. The victim suffers from a repetitive stress complaint and was fitted for a wrist brace.

Detectives believe that the victim was making her way to the library. Records show that she has been a frequent user of the resources of the Mid-Manhattan branch library in recent months. The victim may have been doing research relevant to the curatorial project described above. According to detectives, the point of origin for this trip was the Murray Hill office of the orthopedist. The victim was admitted to Bellevue Hospital at 6:13PM on Thursday evening, so the time of attack would fall between 5:00 and 5:30, when midtown swells with pedestrian and vehicular traffic. Thus, the volume of eyewitness accounts.