by Rick Moody
There’s no getting around this phrenological obsessiveness of Eduardo’s, and Tyrone watches the kids step forward to where the older man is seated, by the oven, which is set at broil to help with the heating problem. Eduardo bows before the teens, in order to present the crown of his head.
“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.
21
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.
Which reminds me, we’re trying to hire an intern again, and since Anna
bel had to go wear her Ann Taylor outfit out to see a lawyer, that only left me and Jeanine to do the interviewing for the interns, and they were all these boys who have to know everything, like one guy comes in and wants to talk about how horror movies from the fifties were like revolutionary texts or something, and Czech psychoanalysts, and The Crawling Eye and It Came from Within, this is supposed to impress me, but it doesn’t impress me at all. Thing is, the interns always want to direct, but they’d be a lot more interesting if they wanted to produce or they wanted to be marketing experts. Besides, all they’re going to do is messenger videotapes and file things, whatever, write coverage on scripts that somebody’s aunt sent to the office. I don’t give a shit if The Crawling Eye is meant to be an allegory, I just really don’t care.
Vanessa’s mom is rehabbing out in some hospital in Brooklyn, so Vanessa’s been even weirder than usual. Honestly, I don’t know where she thinks the company is going and if she even has it together enough to keep the company going. Of course, my mom is in the living room, drinking dessert wine and watching reports about politicians arguing in Florida, and that’s pretty good when you compare it to your mom being in some rehab in Brooklyn with skanky crackheads.
Anyway, in the afternoon, the Vanderbilt girls called, because they had finally gotten out of bed, and they said there’s going to be a righteous party on for when Mercurio launches his clothing line, which is going to be called PussyWhipped, already he has this logo that’s going to be on everything, it’s going to be the best logo ever, that’s what they were saying, and they tried to explain to me what the logo looked like, but come on. That’s just stupid. You can’t describe a logo over the phone. Logos are meant to be seen, not digitized. And making the logo before you make the clothes is like making the movie poster before you make the movie, but I guess a lot of movies do get made that way. In fact, I have been making little sketches of the bus poster for The Diviners, because I figure this will really help us. Okay, my idea is that the beginning of the show, the first episode, has to start with this big army sweeping down over some big plain. I mean, Mongolia, right, somewhere around there, it’s some country no one ever heard of, like what are the names of those countries over there? Like Uzbekistan or something. So the army is sweeping low down over some plain in Uzbekistan, I bet if there’s not a desert plain there, no one will know any better, and anyway they’re supposed to be Huns, so the Huns are sweeping down across the plain, pillaging and raping innocent girls, whatever it is that these armies do and the camera is sweeping above the army, like from a helicopter, above these men, just a ton of men, a whole bunch of men, and they’re all sweaty and wearing jerkins, right? I don’t care if the Huns didn’t wear jerkins, it doesn’t have to be historically accurate, it has to be sexy, and lots of the guys have bloody slices or cuts on their biceps and maybe on their faces, with just a little bit of blood, and that’s what’s going on down there with a lot of hacking and stuff and people are getting sliced. There are men on horses, but if you look up the hill toward the top, you see one general, I mean, did they have generals? Whoever their leaders are, one is riding down behind the marauders and one other man is turning the other way, and he’s got this bright light on him, and he’s raising this stick high above his head, could be a crutch from some old war injury, at first you’re not sure, but then you are, it’s not a crutch, it’s a diviner’s rod, and he’s raising it above, because it indicates that there’s another way to do things, and this guy, this really sexy guy with the divining rod, he’s raising it above everything, and he’s indicating that the diviner’s rod is the way of peace, or whatever you want to call it. And that’s my idea for the poster. It would look really good on buses. You know, buses have that big advertising space there. The Diviners: A New Mini-Series brought to you by UBC. Then some kind of marketing line: Love, famine, war, thirst, half-naked men, ethnic cleansing, the creation of Las Vegas. Produced by Means of Production, in association with UBC. Something like that.
Here’s the really strange thing I forgot to say. Lois never came in today. Never called or anything.
Okay, so let’s just say I had the greatest idea ever for the company, just the greatest idea ever, Madison writes, the pink vinyl journal in her lap, last curlicues of smoke from a stubbed-out joint hovering over her bedside table with its pile of unread scripts. The idea is so good that I should get my paw print in front of that theater in Hollywood, way ahead of Brad Pitt, who doesn’t bathe enough. Anyway, here’s the idea, which is about the intern problem. We have all these boys coming in, with their stupid ideas, like one boy comes in with the train station sequence from The Untouchables all storyboarded, like that’s supposed to impress me, because the point is that we’re a company that’s mostly women except for this one womanizing jerk I wouldn’t give the time of day to and an Indian TV wonk. We need a girl intern! So I’m invited to the program of student films at NYU, and I hate going to those things, because all the movies are about whether or not some French woman influenced Freud’s conception of the death drive, or whatever, Jesus, get a pedicure or something. Anyway, so I noticed that the screenwriter for one of the films was a student called Allison Maiser. You’d think everyone in New York City would have the idea I was having, the idea about seeing if this Maiser was related to that Maiser, you know, head of UBC programming—I think Vanessa pitched him over the weekend. So I did a little checking, stealth phone calling, or maybe I made Jeanine do a little of the checking up, and it turns out that it’s her, all right, only question is how can we get hold of her. So I call up the Vanderbilt girls, get them on the phone, they’re back to talking about PussyWhipped again, everything is PussyWhipped this and PussyWhipped that, I tell them to quit with PussyWhipped, because my pussy is not whipped, I say look I have to figure out how to find this girl, this Maiser girl, and they put me on hold, seems like it’s only five minutes, but I’m reading a script anyway, and that’s okay because I love a story when you can just sink into it like it’s the best boyfriend you ever had, which is what this script is like, seems like it’s only five minutes later, and they say, we know how to get to her, we have her number, but we have something we need to tell you, it’s really important. What’s that? I say. They’re interrupting each other. Are you sure you want to know? Of course I want to know. Well, she’s like so not your type of girl. Who isn’t? The Maiser girl. She might have her bottom lip pierced or something, or her tongue pierced. She’s like a girl version of Dennis Rodman. I say, Forget about it! Dennis Rodman is so nineties! I say, it doesn’t matter if Allison Maiser doesn’t have any arms and legs! Because we’ll put her to work licking stamps, even if we don’t have any of those licking stamps anymore. We’ll do that because as soon as she walks in the door, we can call her father and say, your daughter is the best intern! Your daughter makes all the interns seem like, I don’t know, bricks of cheese! The Vanderbilts are skeptical, because they are almost certain that Allison is not a blonde either, not even a dyed blonde. She might have blue hair or something. They’re giving me a warning. Who gives a shit, I don’t always have to listen to them.
So I give the Maiser girl a call later, and I put on my best office voice, and I say where I’m calling from, I say the magic words that work on any college student, I say that I’m from Means of Production, I say we’re working on a Michel Foucault biopic, and we definitely need more help in the office, and we have heard good things about her short film, and it’s not like she is immediately jumping for joy, which I guess figures since her dad is like the most powerful man on earth, but she agrees to come in around ten the next morning, assuming I can get to the office by then. I tell Annabel that she has to interview her first, and I don’t tell Annabel who she is. I don’t tell anyone who she is, because I want to savor the idea for a little while. It’s worth savoring, because it’s the smartest idea ever.
Oh yeah, other news. It’s in all the papers! I don’t know why this kind of thing should always be in the tabloids first, but you’d have to be an idiot
not to read the tabloids. This article says that there was a rumor going around that Samantha Lee was on her cell phone at the time she got hit in the head with the brick. I mean, maybe she got hit because she was on the cell phone and talking really loudly about bloating or something. I’ve wanted to kill a couple of people, especially when they were talking about stuff like that during a movie. I was watching one of those French movies, but you know it had a crazed nymphomaniac in it, and suddenly, right at the big death scene, someone takes a cell phone call. Takes the call and promises to call back but she can’t talk because right now she’s in the theater, and then the person says which theater it is, and how the movie is really great, and it has a crazed nymphomaniac in it, when are they going to get together.
The rumor in the paper says that there’s a cell phone, and that the cell phone will prove that Annabel’s brother, a suspect in the case, was actually calling Samantha at the time of the attack, and so he could not have been the attacker, because he was calling from a land line, and now there are all these police swarming around the spot where it all happened, except that no one can quite find the cell phone, you know, because it got knocked loose when half of her head was crushed by the brick that the psychotic guy hit her with. The weird part is that Annabel doesn’t seem all that surprised by the news. Still, if she planted the story, then I’m pretty proud of her, because that’s a good skill to have at your command, you know? I try to plant things in the press all the time, and if I had better contacts, I’d plant even more stuff, like that Mercurio is definitely going to be in The Diviners and that I am destined to head one of the major studios.
I didn’t go out tonight. I just came home and painted on skin care products. Then I ran around the house terrorizing the dogs. They don’t know it’s me, because my facial mask is purple.
P.S. Still no Lois.
The super went to Lois’s apartment to see if she was dead, Madison writes on Wednesday, after the big party for PussyWhipped, Mercurio’s sportswear line. Because she’s a little drunk, she’s writing in her lingerie, feeling fat, like a porpoise splayed on an expensive mattress. So far all we know is that Lois is not answering the door, and we should probably file a missing persons report, but Vanessa doesn’t want to do it yet, because someone from Lois’s family should do it. As far as I’m concerned the question is whether Lois actually has a family, because I’m betting she was spawned by an adding machine or a calculator or one of those slide rule things. Right from the first second when I got into the office Vanessa was on the rampage, and first it was back to that thing about how we had to get the fuck out of the fucking office because it’s a fucking dump and it depresses the fuck out of her, like I rented the suite or something. I asked where she wanted to move the office, and she says downtown of course, because everyone wants to be downtown, but personally I like the office here. Because my commute is really easy. And if I had time to skate now I would, at the rink, and I would wear a cashmere scarf and I would skate backwards under the big tree, and I would drink hot chocolate and tell some man what a hunk he was.