Хелен Девитт - Some Trick - Thirteen Stories

Mrs. Margaux explained that meanwhile , in just the last month , eight of her closest personal friends had been coopted onto the boards of eight grant-making foundations for the arts, and she had not even been asked .

“Mmmm,” said Gil. He dropped a chamois on top of the nest and swept it nonchalantly up and into his tool kit. Though extermination, probably, awaited the rest of the family. “ Well , what you could do…”

“Yes?” said Mrs. Margaux. (What could a mere Iowan know of the cutthroat world of New York philanthropy?)

“…is outflank. I don’t know if you know this, but J. P. Bergsma has this thing about wanting a fixer-upper in Pittsburgh.”

“ Pittsburgh ?” said Mrs. Margaux.

“I know,” said Gil. “I know . But see.”

He was about to make a simple, crap-free suggestion, to the effect that Mrs. M could end the 13-year dry spell of this much-loved author and be instrumental in facilitating a much-longed-for film, simply by organizing the unpopular Pittsburgh fixer-upper element which had been a stumbling block so many times in the past. One of his 200 newfound friends was a dude whose brother was a subcontractor in Pittsburgh, a dude facing problems because the developer he was working for had suddenly filed for bankruptcy. How hard could it be?

Fixing things on a case-by-case basis, though, is such an inelegant solution. It lacks scalability. It lacks grandeur. And it doesn’t give you data , that you can analyze . Where as .

He said, “See, for ten, fifteen, twenty-thousand dollars you can get a house. A residency is normally for a maximum of 8 weeks. A typical grant is for $45,000, $50,000 for a year. So , say you go to these 8 entities, you offer the grant of a fixer-upper, for the people on the shortlist who didn’t make the grade. Among whom Mr. Bergsma is merely one. In return for a percentage of whatever artistic earnings they achieve over, say, 10 years. With some kind of cap? Making it, potentially, self-sustainable? Do a different city every year? Allow swaps? You then compare the achievements of your also-rans with those who got the actual award . And see, you could have a web presence, you could have something like minglebee’s MotoGP dataviz, that lets you drill down to look at individual performance? And Mr. Margaux could potentially even devise an investment vehicle?”

The refrigerator was purring softly. Mrs. Margaux was initially skeptical, but when Gil called up www.minglebee.com, and she was able to see for herself the fun that could be had drilling down, well . Adam got so cross when people kept asking him for checks, but my goodness, this would actually be fun . Gil left her clicking on drivers in the Malaysian Motorcycle Grand Prix, 10/19/2008.

This elegant solution had the drawback of deferring, probably indefinitely, the resolution of Mr. Bergsma’s specific problem. Mr. Bergsma was saved, in this instance, by circumstances beyond his control.

The dudes who had won at Sundance, who thought funding was solid for their first feature, had suddenly found that the money had dried up because the producers wanted something guaranteed bankable and commercial. But the dudes had a soft spot for Automatika , the one commercial project they could even contemplate , unsurprisingly, really, because the kind of dude you would meet in B&H is the kind of dude who would have been that kind of kid as a kid. And , another of Gil’s 200 newfound friends was an entertainment lawyer with extermination issues. So , though it was not really in the spirit of rigorous experiment design, Gil pushed ahead.

Within a day it was the donest of deals. The lawyer’s extermination issues had been resolved; a crap-free two-pager, with an unconventional real estate clause, had been sent to Gil as a PDF attachment. The subcontractor had agreed to organize purchase and fixing-up of a fixer-upper in Pittsburgh, within walking distance of Carnegie Mellon, subject to bank appeasement. One of the NYU dudes had lowered himself to make contact with his contact at Fox. Fox wanted in. And Mr. Bergsma, presented with the deal, had assigned the rights, minus the costs of the Pittsburgh fixer-upper, to Benny.

Mrs. Margaux, meanwhile, brought pressure to bear on Mr. Margaux; within a week she was able to go to her “friends” with an offer they could not, in all decency, refuse, using the new vocabulary item “drilling down” to killing effect.

Time passes.

The Dumbo dudes achieve a successful flotation and do, in fact, do something so inconceivably brilliant that their investors are happier than they could reasonably have expected. Thanks to the Iowan Investor Interface the dudes are spared actual personal contact with said investors, so they too are happier than they could reasonably have expected.

Mr. Bergsma moves to Pittsburgh and immerses himself in his Automatika world. Fifty creative types move to Pittsburgh and comprehensively outperform the types who pipped them to the post in their initial grant applications. The subcontractor realigns his construction business. Automatika the movie succeeds beyond the wildest dreams of the NYU dudes, such that they can select their projects. Loopy Margaux packs the bare essentials (five suitcases of shoes) and goes to Berlin to pursue her dream. Mr. Margaux has fun. While the actual money involved is peanuts, his genius for applying financial acumen to support of the arts and urban renewal is noticed at the White House. Mrs. Margaux is the envy of her friends.

Benny gets $500,000.

Benny got what he always said he wanted, the freedom to do what he wanted. He’s not as happy as he might have expected.

Mr. Bergsma had been talking for years about the kind of deal he was looking for, and Benny, Lord knows, had the inside track. So what was to stop Benny from pulling a CFD out of a hat? What was to stop Benny from finagling the fixer-upper? What was to stop Benny from expanding the Pittsburgh idea, to the point where Mr. Bergsma looked like a visionary instead of a crank? Meanwhile some kid just walks in the door, a kid who has never even read the books , and hands him the CFD on a plate. The son he never had.

Benny hates talking to people about his father.

Gil, needless to say, moves into Manhattan, where he lives to this day.

Gerald was only a Canon in the Cathedral, not a very forceful one. He put it to the Bishop that it might be A Good Thing to invite a Jew to participate in the VE-Day service, and the Bishop waved a hand affably, as who should say, if a Jew can be found it might not be a bad thing at all . Gerald made noises to the local Rabbi, who could not personally undertake but put him on to a man who might do.

Gerald got on to the man. He had not had much to do with Jews, but the fellow seemed pleasant enough.

Gerald mooted. The fellow began to talk excitedly, throwing out all sorts of wild ideas which seemed to involve rather a lot of Hebrew . Gerald could not quite see where all this was to be slotted into the service, nor , come to that, what the Bishop would make of it all. He explained diffidently that he had really rather thought that perhaps the fellow might be willing to read the Old Testament reading for the day.

‘ Oh, I see ,’ said the fellow. ‘You’d like a Jew to read from the Old Testament .’

‘Er, yes,’ said Gerald.

‘I’m not interested, thanks,’ said the fellow. Hung up the phone.

The Bishop’s withers were thankfully unwrung.