In 1837, a band of Flathead is surrounded by Blackfeet. Sitting-in-the-Water-Grizzly brings a misleading message to the Blackfeet to stall them while the Flathead escape.
When the Blackfoot warriors understand they have been deceived, they stab him in the gut.
Another story: Sitting-in-the-Water-Grizzly’s wounds keep closing as though by magic until one warrior has the idea to make a deep gouge and reach in and cut off a piece of his beating heart. After that, when his heart is no longer whole, his wounds stop sealing themselves, and Sitting-in-the-Water-Grizzly dies.
So he didn’t have powers, some people say when they hear. He died like anyone else would. So we can disregard all he said, because he didn’t know any more than we do.
But, others say, I’ve heard his body lay in the forest for a long time without decaying, and no animals or birds touched it. That’s odd, isn’t it? Maybe it means something.
Maybe, people say. It might. It could.
Grace Kelly
Four
Not long before we broke up, Oliver and I had put on hats and sunglasses and gone out in the middle of the day to a superhero movie, the ninth one in a series. He’d seen all the others; I hadn’t seen any. I sat in the dark tugging on leathery Red Vines until there was dull pain in my incisors, watching a violent fever dream of huge, luminous faces, caroming bodies, buildings toppling and machines crashing and bursts of fire. Somewhere in a dark and gleaming room was a locked briefcase, and in that briefcase was a vial of mysterious white light, and whoever possessed the vial could either save or destroy the world.
The fantasy, I said to Oliver afterward, is that you—you, Joe Moviegoer—might also possess extraordinary powers and not even know it, or you might at any moment be transformed into someone who does. But the fantasy is also about containment. Ungovernable forces come to roost inside heroic human bodies or are shrunk down and carted around in vials and briefcases. The end of everything is held inside a tiny ball of light.
“Yeah, I guess,” Oliver said. “But mostly I like how the story keeps getting bigger. Like it’s not even just a universe anymore. It’s an extended universe. Like you don’t even know how much more there might be.”
I said there was no such thing as an extended universe. A universe either was or wasn’t. Something couldn’t be more than infinity.
“It’s just an expression,” Oliver said.
* * *
—
I was hauled in for a shaming session with some studio executives and sentenced to lunch with Gwendolyn, the author of Archangel, and tasked with appeasing her. Then we’ll see, they said. They kept alluding ominously to decisions to be made going forward, and Siobhan did her best to defend my right to a personal life, but nobody was buying it. I sat there sullenly, not saying anything until, when prompted, I said, no, I didn’t know what I’d been thinking with Jones, and, no, I didn’t think Oliver and I would get back together, and, no, it hadn’t been my best idea to leave the club by the front door.
* * *
—
In Hollywood, lunch is where dreams are made and broken; anything can happen at lunch; lunch is the alpha and omega. Behind every film is a mountain of spicy tuna, an ocean of San Pellegrino. No dessert for me, but do you have cold brew? With almond milk. Thanks.
When I arrived, Gwendolyn had already been seated. Her fluffy little white dog was under her chair, surveilling everyone’s feet. Because she took her dog everywhere, Gwendolyn always chose restaurants with patios, and this particular patio was in a hotel’s jungly courtyard under angular maroon sunshade things that looked like the sails of a pirate ship. She watched me approach without smiling, her hands folded in her lap, her platform heels barely touching the floor. She’s five feet tall at most, and I felt like a courtier granted an audience with a malevolent child queen.
The ripple of excitement that followed me across the patio must have bugged the hell out of Gwendolyn, even if everyone was only talking about what a slut I am and plotting how to surreptitiously take my picture. “Heyyy, Gwendolyn,” I said in a slow, cracking stoner voice. “Hey, poochie,” I said to the dog, its black button eyes burning with anxious outrage.
Usually Gwendolyn would make a big show of standing up and wrapping her dinky arms around my shoulders and holding her hips a mile away while I stooped awkwardly over her, and usually she would say something like “There’s my gorgeous girl.” She was only in her late forties, so I don’t know why she always talked like she was my grandmother. This time, though, she just sat there and stared like she was trying to turn me to stone with her mind. Or maybe she couldn’t move her face. She’s starting to have work done. In twenty years she’ll be a skin balloon with eyeholes.