The Tetherballs of Bougainville: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries) by Mark Leyner Read Free Book Online Page B

launched into the song, a hammering sermon about how Russia must mix its plutonium in molten glass and bury it deep underground.
    In the midst of the song, which, like an asylum inmate gouging at his own scabs, exacerbated itself into a raging cacophony, Mikhailov; Viktor M. Murogov, director of the Institute of Physics and Power Engineering at Obninsk; Yuri Vishevsky, the head of Gosatomnadzor or GAN, the Russian equivalent of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission; and Aleksei V. Yablokov, an adviser to President Boris Yeltsin, and their spouses formed a throbbing mosh pit in the center of the living room.
    Following the set, when asked what had made her appear with the band, Mrs. O’Leary, drenched in sweat, paused to catch her breath and then replied, “I’d asked Viktor [Mikhailov] if I could bring my guitar … and hesaid sure. And one thing led to another … and, well …” She gestured toward the throng of guests still pumping their fists in the air.
    After dinner, a bizarre incident occurred that has had the diplomatic community and entertainment industry abuzz with wild rumor and rampant speculation.
    Sergei Smernyakov, a well-known nightclub hypnotist invited to the soirée by Mikhailov to provide postprandial entertainment, hypnotized guests Dorothy Bodin, Deputy Secretary of the Department of Energy; Cynthia Bowers-Lipken, a weapons expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council; and LaShaquilla Nuland, wife of Adm. C. F. Bud Nuland, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Each woman was given the posthypnotic suggestion that at the tone of a spoon striking a wineglass she would become a frenzied Dionysian orgiast with an uncontrollable compulsion to instantly gratify her every carnal desire.
    Brought out of their trances, the women, each one a paragon of professional accomplishment, dignity, and decorum, blushed at the suggestion, and laughingly assured their companions that—with all due respect to Mr. Kavochilov’s mesmeric prowess—they could certainly never be induced to behave in such an outrageously uncharacteristic manner.
    But sure enough, when Yeltsin aide Yablokov tapped a tiny silver jam spoon against his wine goblet, Ms. Bodin, Ms. Bowers-Lipken, and Mrs. Nuland immediately disrobed, rending the garments from their bodies asif they were aflame, and then, like deranged children, spreading caviar and blintz filling over each other’s naked flesh. Then, after a brief huddle, they overpowered a chosen male guest, shackled his legs, cuffed his hands behind his back, and took turns sitting on his face as they swigged caraway and jimsonweed-infused vodka from cut-crystal decanters.
    Having finally sated themselves and tired, the women released the man, who staggered back to his hotel covered in their juices, followed by a howling cavalcade of rutting dogs, cats, raccoons, and possums whose demented caterwauling awakened sleeping Muscovites throughout the city.
    Although invited guests refuse to comment on the identity of the male victim,
People
has learned that it was none other than celebrated television personality and Tony Award-winning actor
    continued on p. 115
    “Mark Leyner?”
    “Huh?” I say distractedly, my attention monopolized by the foregoing magazine article.
    “Mark, the doctor will see you now.”
    “Right now?” I whine, my fingers riffling furiously through a multipage Lincoln Town Car insert in a frustrated effort to reach the jump on page 115 and learn the name of the celebrity “victim.”
    “Right now,” answers the nurse with a peremptory lilt.
    “Fuck,” I mutter, and toss the magazine atop a pile.
    Have you ever read an article in
People
that was so perfectly suited to your interests that it seemed as if the writer had intended it exclusively for you, so that you could—in the way that mentally disturbed individuals glean divine messages from advertising jingles or laundering instruction labels—perhaps derive some subliminal or encrypted communication or