Rick Moody - The Diviners

“Please don’t poke at it, my brothers, because the bone hasn’t healed over all the way, and if the skin were to be perforated, well, you know, I could get a bruise on the tissue itself. And this would not be good for the movement.”

The spot is overgrown with hair, so it’s hard to say exactly where or what the evidence is. Glenn is first, massaging the top of Eduardo’s head.

“I can’t feel anything,” Glenn says. “Is this the right spot?”

Eduardo takes his hand, and there is the strangely gentle probing of the skull, the older man, holding Glenn’s right hand, stroking the mild curve at the top of his head.

“Oh,” Glenn says, “I get it. There, right?”

Eduardo drops the hand suddenly, as if it has now grown foul, and he points at Hal. Hal wipes his hand on his grimy jeans and presents himself. Eduardo takes his hand and swipes the hand across his head, like a caress at first and then, as if the hand were some kind of swooping bird, sets it down on his skull, and Hal’s brow, furrowed in concentration, seems to soften.

“You mean that little divot thing there?”

“What else would I mean?” Eduardo snaps.

“What did you use to do it?” Hal says.

Of course, Eduardo points out, he did not perform an auto-trepanation, and he is reasonably sure there are no examples of auto-penetration in the literature of the ancient surgery, especially because it would be impossible to both fold the skin flap over the eyes and simultaneously complete the procedure. However, Eduardo points out that the medical industry in his own land is not as tightly regulated as it is in this country, where the industry is compromised by manufacturers of drugs and by large health insurance conglomerates that control medical practice by virtue of their normative idea of what the human body is and must be. In his country, a trepanation can be procured under sterile circumstances for a modest fee. He points out that the Peruvians had a much higher success rate, in the pre-Columbian era, than the doctors of Europe because they practiced their surgery in the open air, whereas the western doctors performed theirs in operating rooms, where vulnerability to infection rendered the survival rate no higher than 10 percent or so, and that in the rare instance in which a doctor agreed to perform the surgery.

“Of course,” Eduardo says, and now he seems to be making his pitch directly to Tyrone, “we have a migraine sufferer here. And for her loyalty test, she has gratefully agreed to be the recipient of our efforts today.”

Is it possible? Has Nina agreed?

“Because of our situation, we are going to have to make do with the tools at hand. I have spent some time making sure that we have a drill bit that will not penetrate beyond the skull into the brain tissue. We will also need a small hand vacuum cleaner to suction up the fragments from the hole. I think under the circumstances, the boring technique is going to make the best sense. In this technique, a number of very small holes are bored into the skull, in the shape of a circle, after which we gouge out small lines connecting each hole until we pry loose the circular piece of the skull. We would like to offer Nina, the revolutionary sister, the piece of skull fragment when we are done, so that she can make an amulet out of it. And we would also like to assure the revolutionary sister that we have, in advance, procured enough prescription pain reliever to ensure that the operation will be virtually free of pain. So whenever the sister is ready, we will commence.”

Nina begins to cry softly in the corner where she’s sitting, and the crying is so base, such a violation of the revolutionary code, that there’s a flurry of activity in which all of the Retrievalists gather around her. Tyrone has to get her out of Eduardo’s shack somehow. Immediately.

“Does the revolutionary sister want the pain medication now?”

“Look, my brother,” Tyrone says at last, edging closer to the front door, “I think there might be some better ways to test her loyalty than to put her life in jeopardy in order to cure her migraines.”

“What does the minister propose? Unless of course he proposes to call the authorities, who would take a great interest in his own case.”

“Give me the drugs,” Nina says. “Give me the drugs.”

“Uh, you could have her go get work at the Krispy Kreme franchise. She could bring back, I don’t know, information on the time that they close up shop. Which parts of the store are vulnerable to fire. A blueprint, whatever you need.”

“The minister is not taking into account the fact of the ancient surgery creating feelings of well-being and fulfillment. And also there is the matter of allegiance.”

Tyrone could turn the drill on Eduardo and perforate his left shoulder or his wrist or his ankle, so that Eduardo would be in intense pain. Or he could depress the spot where Eduardo’s skull surgery is healed over, bringing upon him a deep and heavy sleep. Or he could hold Eduardo down and give him a half dozen of the Percodans or Percocets that are secreted away on him somewhere. He could persuade the teenagers to turn against Eduardo, in the process giving them great lessons about the preciousness of some aspects of contemporary life, even in these dark times. For example, look at the mountaintops; there are mountaintops all over the place. There are mountaintops in the state of Massachusetts; on any day you could just decide to go walk to the summit of a mountaintop, on the trail that passes over it. Tyrone is no hero, but he could do one of these things, or he could simply do what messengers do. He could flee.

There is no one to stop him; there are no guns in this turn of events, even if Eduardo does yell, “Get the gun!” as Tyrone opens the door. There is no genuine snub-nosed, pearl-handled anything, there are no perforations with bullets, no high-speed chases, or that’s what Tyrone hopes when he resolves upon telephoning the constabulary, come what may, just as soon as he figures out where he is, out in this neglected part of the suburbs, a few filling stations, auto repair shops, the front door of Eduardo’s place swinging wide behind him, looking back to see the room lit up, running and yelling, “Call the police! Call the police!” running and yelling as if he has never used his voice this way, as if he hasn’t spoken in years. The four of them staring, pointing. As he hightails it up the street. Never did a used auto parts shop and a bunch of customers loitering in front of a mini-storage facility seem so wondrous and full of peace.

Something really strange is happening in the office, Madison McDowell, the diarist, scribbles, in a hand marked by excessive balloons, balloons intent on lofting the i’ s of her composition above the other letters. She’s in bed, just before sleep, surrounded in a bunker of throw pillows and stuffed animals. Like for example what was that outfit that Annabel was wearing, she came into the office and she was wearing this suit, you’d probably get it at Ann Taylor, gray with pinstripes, some kind of cheap silk shirt, not even a good one, pumps with ankle straps, and get this — white nylons, and that’s a weird look on a black girl. So I ask around a little and Jeanine tells me that Annabel has to go see a lawyer. Something to do with her brother again. I have definitely been avoiding her since I heard about the whole thing, because I wouldn’t say I knew Samantha Lee well or anything like that, but I saw her, you know, at parties. There’s all kinds of girls from the art world that you see them around, but you don’t want to seem like you don’t care about somebody who got hurt. Maybe she’s going to have really horrible scars. Of course, Annabel says her brother didn’t do it, and that’s what they all say. The truth is I never trusted her that much to begin with. I can work with anyone pretty much, that’s one of the qualities that anyone would have to talk about if they were writing a reference letter for me or something, or if I were doing an interview, I can work with anyone.