by Tom Wolfe
When Sergei said yes, she took two forms from the top of the pile and said, “If you’ll just sign these, please.”
Sergei started reading the form she handed him—and suddenly twisted his head and narrowed his eyes and stared intently, as if the thing had turned into a lizard. He shot the blonde the same look. “What is this thing?” Vot ees dees zing?
The blonde smiled brightly again and said, “It’s a release. It’s just a formality.”
Now Sergei smiled. “Ah, that’s good. If it’s just a formality, then why we bother? Don’t you agree?”
“Well,” said the blonde, “we do have to have your written permission.”
“Written permission? For what?”
“So we can use your likeness and your speech in the video?”
“Liiiiikeness?” said Sergei.
“Yes, so we can show you in action at the party. You’ll be amazing, if you don’t mind my saying so. We love European accents on these shows. You’ll be wonderful… and you will, too!” she said, looking at Magdalena. “You’re the best-looking couple I’ve seen all evening.”
Magdalena loved that. She was dying to go in.
“What you mean ‘these shows’?”
“Our series,” said the blonde. “It’s called Masters of Disaster. They didn’t tell you? Maybe you’ve seen it.”
“No, I have not zeen it,” said Sergei, “and no, I never heard of it, and no, ‘zey’ did not tell me. I thought Mr. Flebetnikov is inviting me to a party. What is this Masters of Disaster?”
“It’s a reality show. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it. Our ratings are really pretty good. Everybody’s crazy about stars, but they’re even crazier about seeing the stars fall and crash and burn. You know German? In German they call it Schadenfreude.”
“So Flebetnikov, he crashed and burned?” said Sergei.
“I’m told he’s a Russian oligarch, and he had a huge hedge fund and then some sort of deal went bad, and everyone’s pulled out of the hedge fund, and it’s a disaster for him.”
Magdalena said to Sergei, “Oh, I think I remember him! He was in our line at the opening day of Art Basel. A big man. He kept cutting into the line ahead of people.”
“Oh, also I saw him there.” He chuckled. “And so now he’s a master of disaster…” He turned toward the blonde. “Why do these ‘masters of disaster’ want to humiliate themselves this way on this show of yours?”
“Well, they seem to figure everybody already knows what happened to them, so they might as well make their comeback by showing they’re bloodied but unbowed.” She smiled slyly this time. “Either that… or the fee we pay them for the right to do the show.”
“How much is that?”
With the same knowing smile the blonde said, “It varies, it varies. All I can tell you is that masters of disaster always cash that check.”
Sergei looked at Magdalena with his eyes opened wide—which was very wide for him—and the slightest of smiles… altogether an expression that said, “This is too good to miss. How about it?”
Magdalena nodded yes with a big smile of her own. So they both signed the releases. The blonde glanced at them and said, “Oh, Mr. Korolyov, now I know who you are! Some people were talking about you just the other day! The Korolyov Museum of Art—and I can’t believe I’m right here talking to you. It’s an honor. You’re Russian, just like Mr. Flebetnikov! Am I right? I’m sure they’ll want you to talk to him in Russian, and they can add subtitles. It goes over great. We did that with Yves Gaultier on Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s show. Both French.” Her face turned radiant with the memory of that high point in reality show history. “The producers, the director, and the writer—they’ll all be happy to see you.”
Magdalena spoke up for the first time. “The writer?” she said.
“Well, yes… It’s all real, of course, and he doesn’t write anybody’s lines for them or anything like that… but you need somebody to give the show some… structure. You know what I mean? I mean, you can’t have sixty or seventy people in there just milling about with no focus on anything.”
Sergei gave Magdalena a knowing smile of his own. He nodded toward the big house. It was an enormous spread in the 1920s Spanish Revival style.
The entrance was manned by two black doormen in tuxedos. Inside, they found themselves in a huge old-fashioned hall, an entry gallery, as they used to be called in grand houses. ¡Dios mío! It was mobbed with merry partygoers, most of them middle-aged. What a lot of hooting and shouting! Half the men were busy getting “white-boy wasted,” as Magdalena thought of it. The new sync’n’slip music was playing over the sound system.
From out of nowhere—an Anglo, a short Anglo wearing a too-big guayabera that came down almost to his knees, materialized right before them, grinning mightily, and singing out, “Mr. Korolyov! Miss Otero! Welcome! Savannah told us you were here, and are we glad! I’m Sidney Munch. I produce Masters of Disaster. I want you to meet Lawrence Koch.”
Two men and a woman were standing together about three feet from Mr. Sidney Munch, the producer. One of them, a young man with his head completely shaved—today’s fashionable solution when a young man is afflicted with baldness of the pate—stepped forward with the biggest, friendliest smile imaginable and said, “Larry Koch,” and shook hands with Sergei. He was wearing a safari jacket with a countless number of pockets.
“And this is our writer, Marvin Belli, and our stylist, Maria Zitzpoppen.” The writer was a young man with a round, blood-pressure-red face. His ponderous gut swelled out even worse below his belt than above it. He was the sort of bubbly, cheery soul who makes it hard for you not to smile back. The stylist, Miss Zitzpoppen, was a thin, gristly woman in a white smock whose smile looked positively dour and forced compared to Belli’s. Introductions all around. Incredible smiles all around… whereupon the bald young director—unfortunately his neck was so long and so thin, his head looked like a white knob—the young director positively beamed at Sergei. “I understand you’re Russian—and you speak Russian?”
“That is true,” said Sergei. Zat ees drue.
“Well—it would be awesome if you had a conversation with Mr. Flebetnikov. That would create some real reality and give Mr. Flebetnikov’s narrative some genuine ambiance.”
“That would be ‘real reality’? Then what would be ‘unreal reality’? I hardly know Mr. Flebetnikov.” Sergei froze director Koch with a mocking grin.
“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” said director Koch. “All you need to get started is a couple of opening lines. And you and Ms. Otero look awesome. Awesome! I can tell, once you break the ice you’ll do very well. You’re certainly not shy, and Marvin can give you two or three good opening lines.”
But Sergei had already turned toward Sidney Munch, the producer. Maintaining his look of amused disbelief, he said, “This is a reality show, I thought. And I speak lines by a writer? I think the English term for that is ‘a play.’ ”
Without a moment’s hesitation Sidney Munch said, “As I’m sure you can imagine, on television you have to create a hyper-reality before it will come across to the viewer as plain reality. Marvin and Larry here have to give all this”—he gestured toward the party in progress—“a narrative. Otherwise, it will just be confusion, and this is supposed to be Mr. Flebetnikov’s own story. By the way, why do you think Mr. Flebetnikov went bankrupt like this? I hope to find out more about it, but at this point I really can’t comprehend it all.”
Sergei had to chuckle. “Oh, there are very few risk takers like Mr. Flebetnikov; he has—how you say it—‘guts’—that is the word? He has the ‘guts,’ and he makes a very big bet on American natural gas production, and energy futures are never a safe bet, and the bigger you bet, the more unsafe the bet. It was a foolish mistake in the hindsight, but Flebetnikov, he has the guts. Real guts. That is how his hedge fund made billions of dollars in the first place. He has the real guts to take the real risks.”
“That’s awesome!” said the b
ald-headed young director. “We’ve been struggling to figure it out and make it easy for the audience to comprehend. You’re awesome, Mr. Korolyov! Why don’t you go over and have a discussion with him about all that? He’s right over there. The cameras are on him.” He pointed toward two of the high white camera stands. You couldn’t see Flebetnikov for the crowd. But you could see video cameras aimed at him from the rear and head-on.
“So you want me to confront him and talk about his troubles,” said Sergei, more amused than ever. “You will like for someone to come to you with the television cameras and start talking about your troubles?”
“Hah!” said Munch. “I only wish I rated that much attention! I’d love it! It’s not a confrontation, not at all. It’s a chance for him to give his perspective regarding this situation, and he wouldn’t have agreed to come on this show if he weren’t prepared to bring it all out in the open. And this time he can explain it in his own native language. Maybe he wouldn’t feel comfortable going into such a complicated situation in English, but this way the entire thing can be in Russian, with English subtitles. Confrontation! Hah!—he’ll be grateful for the opportunity to talk about it in his own native tongue and capture all the nuances. Very important, the nuances. You’ll be doing him a real favor.”
Sergei all but laughed in his face. “So you think you instruct me to go over and talk to someone about things that interest you, and you film it, and that’s reality?” Now he did laugh in Sidney Munch’s face.
While Sergei was still laughing and pulling faces, Munch cast a glance at Larry, his bald-headed director in a safari jacket… a very quick glance, he cast… and resumed giving Sergei his full attention… but all the while keeping his arm down at thigh level and flapping the palm up and down. Without a word, Larry departed their little cluster, walking ever so slowly and casually… but once he was about twenty feet away, his pace sped up to the maximum. He was walking so fast, he kept having to put his hands up before him to keep from colliding with people in the crowd and continually saying something on the order of “Excuse me!… Excuse me!… Excuse me!… Excuse me!”… Magdalena caught that. Sergei hadn’t seen it at all. He was having too much fun laughing at Munch and needling him with heavy sarcasm. “What a wonderful ‘narrative’ you have! I be an actor! My role, I go up to Flebetnikov and rub his nose in his mess, and you film it—and we call that a reality show!” What a good time he was having… showing up Sidney Munch for the fraud that he was! What a little snake!
All at once a rumble and drunken hoots and howls in the crowd off to the side… and drunken anger… “Get the fuck off my foot, you greasy tub a butter!”… Comrade Fleabittenov is more like it!”… “You don’t shove me, you big fat piece a blubber!”… “Master of Up the Asster!” The tumult only grew louder. Whatever it was, it was heading toward Magdalena and Sergei and Sidney Munch. Following it were two mobile camera stands. You couldn’t miss them, they were so tall. They rolled through the crowd like a pair of tanks.
Dios mío, the rumble! The edge of the crowd broke open—and the tumult was right on top of Magdalena. It was the great hulk of Flebetnikov himself—enraged. He was clad in an expensive-looking dark suit and white shirt. His neck was now bulging with veins, tendons, striations, and a pair of huge sternocleidomastoid muscles… and gorged with the blood of fury.
“Korolyov!” he bellowed.
Sidney Munch and Ms. Zitzpoppen knew enough to get out of the way. The big rabid Russian headed straight for Sergei, roaring in Russian, “You miserable little viper! You insult me, you attack me behind my back! On the TV! For three hundred million stupid Americans!”
He thrust his big red apoplectic face right in Sergei’s. Barely six inches separated the two. Magdalena stared anxiously at her Sergei. He didn’t move a muscle, other than to cross his arms upon his chest. He wore a smile that said I hope you know you’re crazy. He couldn’t have looked more confident or more relaxed. Cool was the word for it. Magdalena was so proud of her Sergei! She was dying to tell him that!
Flebetnikov continued to yell in Russian. “You dare call me a fool! A fool who did a foolish thing and lost all his money! You think I’ll just take that?!”
Magdalena noticed that the two mobile cameras were right on top of them, and the cameramen had their heads practically socketed into the lenses, hungrily eating up the whole scene.
Still smiling his very cool smile, Sergei was saying in Russian, “Boris Feodorovich, you know very well that’s not true. You know very well that our masters of reality here”—he motioned toward Sidney Munch and at the knob-headed director, who was right behind Flebetnikov—“will tell you any lies.”
Flebetnikov went silent. Magdalena saw him flick a glance at Munch, the producer, and she saw Munch, his arms still at his side flapping his open palm upward upward upward upward. Keep it up! Munch seemed to be signaling, Don’t stop! Pour it on! Wipe that cynical look off his arrogant face! He’s mocking you! Go get him, Big Boy! Don’t stop now!
Flebetnikov continued in Russian, “You dare stand there and mock me, Sergei Andreivich? You think I am going to put up with your arrogance! Am I going to have to wipe that smug face off for you myself?”
In Russian, Sergei responded, “Oh, come on, Boris Feodorovich, we both know this is something cooked up by these Americans. They just want to make you look foolish.”
“Foolish, there you use that word again! You dare call me a fool in my face?! Oh, I’m sorry, Sergei Andreivich, but I can’t let you go that far! Obviously, I’m bigger than you, but now you force me to do what I have to do! If you won’t remove that insulting little smile from your face yourself, then you leave me no choice!”
Magdalena had no idea what they were saying—but look at Flebetnikov’s face now! It’s positively swelling up! It’s gorged with blood! He’s putting it even closer to Sergei’s! He’s close enough to bite his nose off! He’s reached the boiling point! And Sergei! She is so proud of him. He is a man! He doesn’t flinch, much less retreat. The cool look he gave Flebetnikov hasn’t changed at all since this whole thing began. She sees Flebetnikov flick another glance at Munch. Munch nods a quick yes and flaps the open palm up and down at a furious rate. Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!
In Russian, Flebetnikov said, “Remember, I don’t want to do this! You insist that I do it!”
With that, he stepped back to give himself room to do what he “had to do.” With a cross between a grunt and a roar, he swung at Sergei. It was a big ponderous right hook. Even someone not as young and fit as Sergei could have wrapped up a telephone call and said goodbye before it arrived. Sergei ducked it easily and countered by ramming his shoulder into Flebetnikov’s midsection. Grrrrooof!—between a grunt and a deflating belly… and the Master of Disaster keeled over backward, him and his great gut and fat bottom. He would have hit the floor with the base of his skull had it not hit the bald-headed director’s thigh on the way down. He lay on the floor with his chest and his belly heaving with shallow breaths. His eyes were open, but they focused on nothing at all and obviously saw nothing at all. Magdalena, being a nurse, knew about such things. Sergei had obviously meant only to push the big man away. But his shoulder had struck Flebetnikov squarely in the nerve bundle of the solar plexus and knocked him out.
Producer Munch wasn’t the slightest bit concerned about the fallen star of his reality show. His attention was devoted entirely to his two cameramen up on their rolling camera stands. He kept hurling his fist with the forefinger rampant toward Flebetnikov and Sergei and shouting, “Get it all! Eat ’em up! Get it all! Eat ’em up!” The only ones trying to help the fat man were Magdalena and Sergei. Sergei leaned over the prostrate hulk, looking for signs of life. “Boris Feodorovich! Boris Feodorovich! Can you hear me?”
Producer Munch and Director Koch were in the throes of a dream coming true.
“Fabulous!” said Munch, who was doing an odd hula inside his guayabera.
“Awesome!” said Koch, who was a generation younger than Munch and didn�
��t say “fabulous.”
Now Sergei was kneeling beside Flebetnikov, speaking in Russian. Concern that he might have delivered a mortal blow to the fat man was written in anguish on his face. The fat man’s eyes looked like two lumps of milk glass… no irises… no pupils…
“Boris Feodorovich! I swear I wasn’t trying to hurt you! I was only trying to separate us from one another, so we could talk about all this like friends! And I still want to be your friend. Speak to me, Boris Feodorovich! We are proud Russians and we have let these slimy Americans make fools of us both!”
That word—fools—cut through the fat man’s fog. All by itself it created a stimulus response bond. At last, a sign of life! Trying mightily but incapable of anything beyond a gravelly whisper, Flebetnikov kept saying something over and over.
Oddly, he didn’t appear angry at all… merely sad…
Magdalena and Sergei both knelt by Flebetnikov’s belly-up bulk. Sergei’s head was very close to the fat man’s. Then a third pair of knees appeared in their little huddle, knees in a pair of clean, smartly ironed khaki pants… flawless creases… Magdalena and Sergei looked up. It was a thin, pale young Anglo with neatly trimmed, carefully combed blond hair. He had a spiral notebook in one hand and a ballpoint pen in the other… not an ordinary ballpoint pen—no, a ballpoint pen with a digital recording microphone built into the upper part, the wider part. He wore a navy blazer and a white shirt. He looked like an Anglo college boy, the kind you saw pictures of in magazines.
He stared at Sergei and said, “Mr. Korolyov? Hi!” He sounded friendly and shy. He blushed when Sergei stared back at him. “I’m John Smith from the Miami Herald,” he said lightly. “I’m covering Mr. Flebetnikov’s party—or reality show or whatever it is—and suddenly there was all this commotion over here.” He looked down at Flebetnikov, then back to Sergei and said, “What happened to Mr. Flebetnikov?”
::::::The Miami Herald. John Smith… Why does that ring a bell?::::::
