“No. Can you imagine? Two hawks in a box.”
Through gaps in the buildings: a sliver of the harbor, the lights of ships. She imagines Caleb in the trees, waiting with his rifle, patiently watching the road below.
Fall Once, Fall Forever
Fifteen
When someone lurks in a dark hallway waiting to ask for your number, you expect them to use it. But I heard nothing from Adelaide Scott.
* * *
—
I wasn’t Katerina anymore, but I was still contractually obligated to go to a nerd convention in Vegas to promote my last Archangel movie, to sign autographs and sit on a dais with Oliver and answer questions, even though I hadn’t seen or talked to him since before The Night of Jones Cohen. My contractual jet picked me up at Burbank. My contractual veggie tray was waiting with my specified bottle of Dom. M.G. fell asleep before we even took off because what could he really protect me from on a plane. Augustina played a game on her phone. The jet launched itself up into the night.
I ate half a weed gummy bear and drank some champagne. It was my first time flying since my lesson, and I’d worried the vertiginous feeling would come back, the terrible downward suction, but it didn’t. I flipped through Marian’s book again. Every time I opened it, I had that same feeling I’d had as a kid, like there was something hiding in it. Everyone had their own idea of what Peregrine the movie would be, how best to squeeze Marian’s completely unknowable existence into a neat pellet of entertainment, and I thought I should have one, too. Adelaide Scott had said it was as important to know what you don’t want as what you do, and at least I knew I didn’t want the movie to be about either plucky girl power or the tragedy of biting off more than you can chew. A paragraph caught my eye:
My brother, an artist, said what he wished to convey in his paintings was a sense of infinite space. He knew this task to be impossible, as, even if a canvas could accommodate such a concept, our minds seem incapable of grasping it. But he said he believed, most of the time, that an unachievable intention was the worthiest kind. My flight has as its stated intention a plain and, I believe, achievable goal, but that intention has arisen from my own inherently unachievable desire to understand the scale of the planet, to see as much as can be seen. I wish to measure my life against the dimensions of the planet.
* * *
—
Were we doing a bad thing, compressing her? Reduction was inevitable. You have to choose a version, even if that version will be as dwarfed by reality as a life is by a planet.
Below was pure darkness with scraps of light floating in the distance and pinprick headlights strung along I-15 like dewdrops on a spiderweb. In a while we came down over a bright dense tangerine city suspended across a black desert void. I could see the Strip with its castle and pyramid and fountains and huge revolving wheel, a row of glossy hotel blocks like gigantic foil-wrapped candies.
A black SUV was waiting on the tarmac. On the way to the hotel, Augustina ran through the schedule. Interviews in the morning, a panel in the afternoon with Oliver and the director and a couple of other actors followed by the reveal of the new trailer, a VIP meet and greet afterward, then a fence-mending dinner with the director and people from the studio. Out the window, the city blinked and flashed like a spaceship disguised as a city.
“Is Oliver here yet?” I asked, fiddling with my phone.
“He is,” she said. “Do you want me to—”
“No.”
We went into the hotel through a secret entrance for high rollers and The Famous, up a secret elevator. Vegas is full of these hidden portals, gilded crawl spaces for golden rats.
I sat on my enormous white bed and looked out my wall of windows. I ate the rest of the weed gummy bear. I ate some smoked almonds from the minibar. I stared out at where the city’s embers met desert blackness and worried about seeing Oliver, wondered if I should text him to break the ice. When he’d vanished, he’d been punishing me, but he’d also made everything easier. The thought of facing him made me squirmy. I didn’t want him to be mad at me, but I needed him to be mad so I’d know I mattered.
I lay back on the pillows, texted Redwood instead. Thanks again for dinner last week. It was fun. Leanne had stayed when everyone left, and the memory of her waving from the doorstep with Redwood and Carol gave me a dark and discontented feeling.
A few minutes later: Thanks for coming! My mom was excited to meet you. We need to hang out soon.
:）， I said.
I waited to see if he would add anything else. When he didn’t, I wrote, So I’m in Vegas.