Rick Moody - The Diviners

“I watched some of one of the World Series games,” Jeanine says. “With a man.”

“Right. With —”

“How are we going to develop television stuff if neither of us watches any television? And Madison is going out to parties all night?” To the waitress: “Another one of these? When you get a chance?”

“Minivan is acting weird.”

“Totally.”

“She’s totally out of her mind, even on a good day.”

“I go home and cry,” Stampfel says. “I can’t do anything. My parents are worried. They’re saying I should just come back to Arizona. What’s so great about the movie business? Why do you have to be so far from home? Arizona is not as glamorous, but it’s. . it’s —”

“We should film there, ” Duffy says. “I mean, Arizona would be great. We could stay at some really good hotels, right? We could get massages.”

“Have you read the coverage?”

“Sure.”

“I thought it was really junky, personally. I don’t even think Madison reads the stuff. She just passes it on.”

“I didn’t think it was so bad,” Duffy says. The detectives turn, as if to signal for more hot sauce. It’s part of their undercover cloak of veracity. They only briefly attempt to catch a look at the awkward conversation of Annabel Duffy and her friend. The two of them are stabbing at salads as if they’re trying to put the salads out of some misery. “I like epics, big things, politics. And maybe it’s sort of fun to think of stories that anyone could like.”

“That’s so cynical. I don’t mind being, you know, the priss on the staff, so that everyone can feel all superior, and, well, yes, I guess I do mind it, it kind of hurts my feelings, but don’t expect me to pretend everything is fine. The story sounds like it was written by some romance novelist or something. In fact, Madison was telling me that the author is a romance novelist.”

“Come on, Jeanine. You know I —”

“Sorry. . I’m —”

“Maybe it’s just, like I said, I’m worried that if we’re just doing television, then we’re all going to become —”

The suspect’s sister signals the waitress again, plunks down a large ring of keys on the table, keys as numerous as if she were a prison guard at a county jail.

Stampfel says, “I dated this guy from Harvard one time, and now he’s writing a reality show where people try to inform on their coworkers.”

“You don’t really —”

“No, you’re. . you’re. .”

“Look,” Annabel remarks, “Minivan wants us to hate each other; it’s like, it’s really easy to hate each other. That’s what professional women do, you know. They’re like, they’re supposed to hate each other and fight over the same men, all of that,” Duffy says. “I’m supposed to hate your projects, you’re supposed to hate mine. We’re both supposed to hate Madison’s projects, and we’re supposed to talk about what a bitch she is.”

“She is kind of a bitch.”

“And we’re not supposed to talk about Thaddeus.”

The detectives asphyxiate, momentarily, on extremely spicy Brazilian fare, because one bit of information available to the detectives that is perhaps not available to the two employees of Means of Production in the next booth is that a Casanova named Thaddeus Griffin has been romantically involved with both of these women. And that’s the least of it. One of the detectives tailed Mr. Thaddeus Griffin very recently, just for fun, and went to the gentlemen’s club with him and, just for fun, asked Thaddeus Griffin for an autograph in this gentlemen’s club. Contrary to stakeout protocol, of course, endangering the security of the investigation, et cetera, but the detective in question considered it information of a kind. Would Griffin bolt if recognized by an action film fan in a mob-owned strip club? Or would he return to the Asian lap dancer, the one who looked much like the victim of the crime they are investigating? Griffin brushed off the overture of the detective, shoved aside his black laundry-proof marker without comment. Later the same night, Griffin was observed outside the building of Annabel Duffy.

“You aren’t. .” Stampfel stutters, can’t get it out. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“Big deal. So we both slept with him,” Duffy observes. “He gave me chlamydia. That’s a boundary for me.”

“Do you think he slept with Madison? This is so embarrassing. I can think of some embarrassing things in my life, but I have never talked with someone who slept with the same guy as me. It’s just, uh, you know.”

What the waitress brings now is carrot cake and dessert forks, and the two women appear to have arrived at complete unanimity in the matter of dessert, the better to negotiate the awkwardness of their revelations. Further commentary on Griffin follows, some of it extremely embarrassing, as in the portion of the recording wherein Duffy asks Stampfel if Thaddeus Griffin started talking with her about “taking it to the next level.” Duffy guffaws at the recollection. No, Stampfel did not have any discussion about the next level, but Stampfel naturally asks, What is the next level?

“The next level is the level of pain. ”

Which means? According to Duffy, as summarized briefly in the report of the detectives, the level of pain is chiefly the level of clothespins. And it is not the woman who must wear the clothespins, it is the woman who must apply the clothespins. Which means, deductively, that Griffin is the wearer of the clothespins. The target area for the clothespins is apparently the nipples of Griffin. At first. Then later, when the nipples have too reliably become the target area, the scrotal region becomes the target area for the clothespins. “It’s a lark,” according to Duffy, applying the clothespins to the scrotal region of Griffin. Maybe the scrotal application of clothespins to a major Hollywood action film star makes Annabel Duffy want to jangle her keys — this is more than audible on the tape. And yet the detectives also wonder how Duffy, sister of the suspect in a major felonious assault, can casually eat a luncheon and discourse on scrotal application of clothespins. And yet they are enough bemused by the scrotal application, and the application of clothespins to inner thigh, likewise the words binder clip, which in this context must be considered extremely painful, that they fail to notice some of the rather strange twists and turns of this conversation.

“He never asked any of that sort of thing of me,” Jeanine says, devouring the last bite of cake. “I guess it didn’t get that far. I started to feel guilty about his wife.”

“That’s the thing that made me want to attach the clothespins. The fact that he hurt so much when they were on, it was like he was feeling as bad as he should have felt about his wife. He’d be sweating and whining and saying ‘ouch’ over and over. It was kind of funny. The worst part, you know, is the part where you take the clothespins off. That’s the part that really hurts. You get used to them while they’re on, I mean, not that I know personally, but that’s what he said. But then he would take the clothespins off, and he would just be crying out when he did it. I put all this in my screenplay. You know, he promised to help me with my screenplay, that liar, so I guess maybe he finally did, because at least now I know that clothespins hurt more when you take them off.”

“If my parents found out about this, they’d make me get on a plane immediately. If I said New York was like a man who can’t get an erection and who wants you to attach clothespins to him.”

“He couldn’t —”

“He tried to make up for it in other ways.”