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 bald-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