by Kent Russell
First, Darcy explained how she was not a fortune-teller. “Mediums don’t glimpse the future,” she said. They deploy a sixth sense that captures vibrations. These vibrations convey information. A good medium is like a tuning fork reverberating in perfect harmony with the resonance of the Universe.
“What I’m going to do is step into our vibration and pick up the people who are a part of our vibration,” Darcy said. “Then we’ll talk to these people in the vibration. I hear them in my left ear. For a lot of mediums, it’s the left ear. A couple other people hear it in their mind’s eye.”
Darcy closed her eyes, jutted her chin, gripped the arms of her chair. “I am getting a fenced backyard…” she began. “I am getting a woman. I am getting a little thickness around her head. I don’t know if she had dementia or anything…
“I am getting…a caring person, but a person who might not have communicated as well as she wanted to…” Here Darcy cracked an eye and looked at Glenn, who was looking back at her sidewise.
“Wait, no,” she tried again. “Now I am getting…that you are getting a lot of your strength from your male side of your family. I am getting…that you are a lot like your dad. Does that make sense?”
I turned to Glenn. His eyes were waiting for mine.
“Is this anything you recognize?” Darcy asked, her lids still closed.
“Within a broad realm,” Glenn answered, still staring at me.
“Now I’m moving to the heart chakra…I am getting…Oh, OK. I just had a man come in here, so I’m checking in with him as well…Strong-minded man, not thin, a strong-willed man…Do you have a man from your family who’s in spirit?”
A stone punched through the frozen surface of Glenn’s demeanor. His icy outer layer cracked, webbed, dissolved. “Yeah,” he said. “Yes. My father’s dead.” He straightened up in his chair.
“He spent a lot of time in his head?” Darcy said. “He was one who did work that used his head. He had a lot of creativity. He might’ve been a manager or a leader? Someone who drove things, led people…”
“Yes!” Glenn’s enthusiasm startled Darcy. She kept her eyes closed, though a grin began to nibble at the ends of her smile lines.
“As I’m working with his vibration, I’m sensing that you might have a lot of his characteristics. He’s telling me…he’s telling me that he went to the school of hard knocks? Or maybe you did?”
“Mmmmmaybe,” Glenn said. “You’d really have to stretch that metaphor to include us.”
“I think that’s what he means?” Darcy chuckled. “He’s telling me that you’re both men who’re able to overcome?”
“Sure, I think that’s fair,” Glenn said.
For the next twenty minutes, Darcy offered Glenn one nebulous characteristic after another. Glenn considered each, saying nay or yea with certain reservations. Together, they outfitted more or less ideal versions of Glenn’s dad, Glenn, and the relationship they shared. Watching this, I thought: Reminds me of how Noah and his buds create a communal fiction while playing Dungeons & Dragons. But more than that, I thought: It’s like two people working on a police sketch. “I’m sensing that the man had…a defining physical characteristic?”
Indeed, Darcy disclosed her reading in a manner that was very familiar to me, a part-time instructor of young people. Almost every one of her statements curled upward at the end—“upspeak,” as it is known. (“I feel that…he wants you to settle down?”) Practically everything Darcy proposed was appended with a question mark, as though she sensed that a flat-out declaration would open her up to argument.
And Glenn—sweet Glenn, son of the attenuated North—Glenn did not wish to quibble. He seemed too embarrassed to do so. I was certainly too embarrassed to do so. Embarrassed for him, embarrassed for Darcy. Embarrassed for all of us. Every time Glenn affirmed her, I was secretly relieved. This, I came to understand, was what greased the whole works.
You, the customer, want to preserve good relations at all times. You want to be in harmony with the spirits. You don’t want to be the one who disputes, who says maybe this but definitely not that. Doing so would amount to drawing distinction. And you don’t want to do such a thing, not after that affirmational church service. You want to go along to get along. Go with the flow. Encourage, and you will be encouraged in turn. To sigh “Nah” is to close yourself off to the Universe and its vibrations, is it not? What’s more, it is discourteous. After all, you are the one who came in here asking for advice or guidance. Asking for advice or guidance is in nine cases out of ten touting for flattery. And now that you’ve got it, you’re going to reject it?
“Around you,” Darcy said, opening her eyes, “and you, too”—she looked at Noah—“and you as well”—she turned to me—“I’m picking up a lot of men? A lot of male energy? Men kind of standing alone? Kind of, you know, finding themselves on that path? Men seeking, men searching?”
While keeping his attention locked on the camera’s flip screen, Noah let out a short, mirthless sound. A pause inflated—then popped like a soap bubble.
“What I’m hearing is that this is taking you closer to your heart? And how you approach life in general? The spirit took me into the heart chakra, that’s why. It’s connecting the head and the heart for you? That’s part of your life journey?
“And as you transition back to the life before this journey, it feels as though there’s change coming with that? More depth?”
“Like, deeper pockets?” I asked.
“What I’m saying is that I’m picking up children? Children. There’s children with this situation?”
“OK!” Glenn clapped his hands together. He circled his finger at me and Noah, the universal wrap-it-up gesture. “I think that will do. Thank you very much. I guess that’ll be…?”
“Sixty dollars is our suggested donation,” Darcy said, licking the tip of a ballpoint pen in order to write out a receipt.
—
INT. CLUTTERED HOME OFFICE—LATE AFTERNOON
Kent sits uneasily on a sunflower-print couch next to JULIAN, the plump, horseshoe-bald, Platonic ideal of a BUFFALO SNOWBIRD. Shelved around them are books and cassette tapes pertaining to the 150 precepts of Spiritualist natural law. Silhouetted in the sunshine along the window ledge behind them are plaster statues of religious figures as well as vases full of peacock feathers. Julian holds his hands together above his lap, but his fingers are not quite steepled. He is rubbing his middle digits together, smiling at the camera.
GLENN (O.S.)
So, Julian, if you could introduce yourself.
JULIAN
Well, let’s see. I was a real estate broker up in New York. Had a hundred agents, three offices. I was a New York mortgage banker. Had a hundred fifty employees and clients like Kodak. But I was very out of balance in life. I worked twenty-five years, seven days a week. I basically ruined two marriages, focusing on all my empires. Heh, you could say I was like a mini Donald Trump.
JULIAN (CONT’D)
Are you guys familiar with what an “aha moment” is? When answers come to us, but not in our conscious minds? Well, a year to the day from my last divorce, all four of my corporations went into insolvency. There was nothing I could do about it. It was like sand going through my fingers. It was a multimillion-dollar bankruptcy.
GLENN (O.S.)
Maybe not so mini, eh?
JULIAN
I was a member of seventeen community organizations back home. I left those behind, too, to come here. Arrived in 1997. Became a Reiki master. Do you know Reiki? Went from being a multimillionaire to here. Do you know any other spiritual counselors with an MBA?
KENT
I mean—money can’t buy you unity with the Great Spirit, right?
JULIAN
(wistfully)
When I was younger, I’d get a burr under my saddle—and peew
! I was out of here. Now, I meditate. Meditation is listening to the Spirit. Prayer is asking. I ask, and I ask. And I don’t see that door! So maybe this is where I’m supposed to be, in the end? This is where the Universe wants me to end my life on this plane?
Glenn, Noah, and Kent exchange glances while Julian continues to smile at the lens.
KENT
Stability! You know? If the Universe is everywhere, then you don’t need to seek Him—It?—elsewhere. Right? Wouldn’t that be the logic? It isn’t the Spirit who’s absent from us but we who are absent from…It.
JULIAN
Let me tell you something. You like this house? I own it. This and the one next door. You know the woman who gave you guys your reading earlier? She’s my wife. Well, not technically my wife. She’s been divorced twice before, too. We know the runaround. She wanted me to get my real estate license four years ago. OK! I said. Twenty percent of what I do—it’s real estate.
NOAH (O.S.)
A fine house. What abou—
JULIAN (CONT’D)
One of John D. Rockefeller’s accountants built a house here. I can sell it to you, should you guys ever want a house. You have to be a member of the camp association, though, to buy it. You have to be a Spiritualist. But here’s the thing—you can own these homes, right? Own your own castle, the American Dream—but the camp association owns all the land beneath the homes.
Julian shifts his head from cocked-to-the-right to cocked-to-the-left. All while maintaining eye contact with the lens, stroking his fingers.
JULIAN (CONT’D)
We’ve got 175 association members, but only 44 homeowners. If you lose your membership, you lose your house. If you die, your next of kin has to sell your house to another Spiritualist. No banks will loan here. You have to find a cash buyer or be willing to take on a mortgage in return. So, to answer your question: My name is Julian, and I’ve got a couple of properties I bought right at the height of the housing bubble that I sure would like to sell.
GLENN (O.S.)
I say hang on to them, Julian.
KENT
Yeah, you never know. You’re pretty high and dry here, right? Once the coasts start flooding, and the property values plunge, you could have a couple of primo pieces on your hands. I’m sure people’ll be willing to believe whatever shi—
JULIAN
Oh, you’re not one of those who seriously believes global warming, are you? You don’t actually believe that we could seriously impact Gaia?
KENT
…shit.
JULIAN
We like to think we’re so powerful, don’t we? We like to think that it’s us who controls the Universe. And not the other way around.
NOAH (O.S.)
Julian, goddamn it.
JULIAN
We cannot rend the garment of the living God. You understand that, though. I’m receiving a very understanding vibration from you. Are you sure you don’t want to move to Cassadaga?
Julian leans back, laughs. His hands uncouple and float to their corresponding knees as lightly as a fresh sheet thrown over a mattress.
JULIAN
Now, Kent, do you have an active prayer life? Is there a spiritual tradition that you follow?
KENT
I’m a Catholic, yeah.
JULIAN
Do you believe you’re a perfect child of God?
KENT
I’m a Catholic—no.
JULIAN
In the eyes of the Universe, you are a perfect child of God. It’s just, do you choose openness or do you choose fear?
KENT
Oh, I choose openness, Julian.
JULIAN
One of the things we do in spiritual healing is help you erase those negative perceptions. We help you remember who you are.
KENT
I want to do that, Julian, believe me. I want to remember who I am. But first, let me tell you my truth. Then maybe you can help me get the Universe to actualize it.
FADE OUT
* * *
—
The human need to believe—to embrace explanations—is as pervasive as it is strong. Given the right cues, we are willing to go along with just about anything. We’ll put our confidence in just about anyone. This-all I disclosed to Julian as if he couldn’t possibly have heard it before.
“Good divination is the art of a good story,” he agreed. Julian was very astute, I must say.
Our minds are hardwired for narratives. We crave them. And when ready ones aren’t available, we contrive them. Stories about our origins. Our purpose. We contrive stories that supply the reasons why. “Human beings don’t like to exist in a state of uncertainty, Julian” was what I said. “When something doesn’t make sense, we want to supply the missing link.”
This is what the confidence artist is, of course: that link. Someone who’s only too happy to provide you with exactly what you need to hear exactly when you need to hear it. The confidence artist exists because everyone, now and then, whether they want to admit it or not, desires a little…magic, let’s say, for lack of a better term. The too good to be true. (It’s never too good to be true if it’s you—you, not those other schmucks and marks—to whom it rings true.) And since this desire has always been with us, that means the confidence artist has always been with us. But when he thrives is during times of upheaval. When the old ways of doing things, of looking at the world, no longer suffice. Droughts, plagues, revolutions. Gold rushes, territorial expansions, demographic declines. Whenever transition is afoot, so, too, is the confidence artist.
He’s a linguistic alchemist. He takes anxiety and disquiet and with his silver tongue he turns them into gold. In this he is similar to the writer—he is an artist, after all—seeing as how the both of them have a gift for dissembling. The both of them can create characters who convey sincerity, dependability, vulnerability as needed. They can present as credible, and that’s huge, since the credibility of the teller is very often the test of the truth of a proposition. “Reliable” narrators through and through, the both of them know how to work an audience, how to get disbelief suspended. They do more than pull strings; their cogged circles fit into the various gearwheels, and all revolve.
Confidence must come first. Confidence is a voice, it is a gesture, it is a pretense, it is a ruse. To establish confidence in the worlds of storytelling or swindling, one simply…acts confidently. Which is to say, one does what one can to come across as well established. (Harder than it sounds; much practice is needed to come off as unpracticed.) That achieved, one makes sure to meet the expectations of the genre being worked. In the writer’s case, that can be anything from tell-all memoir (extreme suffering leads to self-deliverance) to rollicking travelogue (numberless perils return the writer to where he started, wiser and more content). The scammer’s categories are no less well worn: there’s the money-box scheme, the Spanish Prisoner, the pig in a poke, the jam auction, the pigeon drop.
One takes care to select and present only the most pitch-perfect details. One anticipates the audience’s questions, concerns, and objections, and one moves to manipulate them before they even register. Most of the concerns, anyway. You don’t want your okeydoke to seem completely scripted. You have to act natural. You have to provide your mark with enough leeway to play the part required of him. Remember, friend: Believability hinges on the person being asked to believe. The principle at work is the same whether you’re spinning a yarn, grifting a mark, or baiting a mousetrap. You load your trap with cheese, yes, but just as important, you leave room for the mouse.
The first Spiritualists were excellent storytellers, excellent confidence artists. They responded to and profited from the grievous bewilderment of those who had lost loved ones to total war. “We affirm that the existence and personal ide
ntity of the individual continue after the change called death,” the Spiritualists assured these mourners. (And continue to assure them, as it is their Principle Number 4.) Then they told the mourners what they were hearing from the other side. Which, what do you know, coincided almost exactly with whatever it was the mourners needed to hear.
None of that did I mention to Julian. Instead, I asked him if he wouldn’t like to coauthor a little something with me. “You ever seen Nanook of the North, Julian?” I asked. “What about F for Fake?” When he didn’t answer, I said: “Doesn’t matter. Let us introduce the wonderful mysteries of Cassadaga to the widest possible audience, hey?”
—
INT. CLUTTERED HOME OFFICE—EARLY EVENING
Kent sits smiling on a sunflower-print couch next to JULIAN, the plump, horseshoe-bald, Platonic ideal of a BUFFALO SNOWBIRD. Julian holds his hands together above some sheets of paper in his lap. He, too, smiles at the camera.
JULIAN
Kent, I want to thank you for having a reading with me. Even though, according to your own faith tradition—
Julian glances at the sheets in his lap.
JULIAN (CONT’D)
—consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone.
KENT
(closes eyes, nods)
JULIAN
Nevertheless, you are embracing your openness at Cassadaga. I honor you for that. The Great Spirit honors you for that. You are embracing your loving openness to the unlimited power of Spirit. Whom we now invoke.
Julian takes Kent’s hand. Both bow heads.
JULIAN
Mother-Father God, Infinite Intelligence—as we come to you today with Kent, seeking guidance in his life, help us to discern the meaning of these words. Help us to put a layer of white light around him, to only allow the highest and the best through…