“I’ve read this book.”
Hugo’s box-hedge eyebrows flew up. “You have?”
“Don’t look so stunned. I read.”
“You do?”
“Ha ha. It made a big impression on me when I was a kid. Orphan solidarity, you know. Team Raised-by-Uncles. I thought it would be full of hidden messages, like tarot cards or something.”
“Ah.” Hugo nodded. “I can imagine it. Wee Hadley the bibliomancer, consulting the text for signs and omens. It’s the perfect sort of book for that, isn’t it? Mostly cryptic bits and pieces. What did it tell you?”
“Nothing.”
“Yes, well, that’s not surprising. Really I’m most intrigued by the question of whether or not she intended it to be read at all. I think the fact that she left it behind at least suggests she couldn’t bear to destroy it. What do you think?”
I considered bluffing but instead admitted, “I don’t remember it very well. I think I was ten or eleven when I read it.”
“Reread it. And then read this.” He took another book from the bag, a paperback. On the cover was a soft-focus photo of the back of a woman’s head as she gazed toward a silver airplane parked on a flat expanse of white. A fur collar stood up against her neck. Apparently People magazine had used the words Irresistible…dazzling…high-wire in relation to it somehow.
I read aloud, “Wings of Peregrine: A Novel. By Carol Feiffer.”
“To be honest, it’s”—Hugo teetered his hand—“not the best. It doesn’t have the depth one wishes for, and the prose is sometimes quite dreadful. But it’s the basis for this.” From the tote bag he took a sheaf of paper clamped together with a binder clip and tossed it onto the table. A script. Its title page was stamped diagonally with the name of Hugo’s production company. “The Day brothers brought it to me with Bart Olofsson already attached to direct,” he said. “They’ve done something quite unexpected, gone for almost a Coen brothers vibe, a little antic but not as dark. Just the tiniest bit camp but still quite affecting, I think.”
“So many brothers. You don’t have anything else in that bag, do you? No more homework?”
He turned the empty bag upside down and shook it. “Not a page.”
I pulled the script closer.
PEREGRINE
written by
The Day Brothers
based on the novel Wings of Peregrine by Carol Feiffer
I knew about the Day brothers. Kyle and Travis, blond twins with Nazi haircuts who vaped on the red carpet. They weren’t even thirty but had created a quirky, violent limited series for HBO set in Reno. They were having a moment. And Bart Olofsson had made one talky indie movie that was the darling of Sundance and then like three superhero movies, so he was probably ready to do the reverse sellout. These people were considered cool, and working with them might make me seem cool. “Whose idea was this?”
Hugo grimaced. “It gets a little complicated. The Days were commissioned by the son of the woman who wrote the book.”
“That couldn’t have been cheap.”
“No, but they wouldn’t have done it if they didn’t like the project. Which they do. The guy’s name is Redwood Feiffer. He wants to be a producer. And he already knew the Days from being young and hip and extremely rich. He’s a Feiffer Feiffer.”
“What’s a Feiffer Feiffer?”
“Like the Feiffer Foundation. Like the Feiffer Museum of Art. The father died—Redwood’s father; his parents have been divorced for ages—anyway, he died, and Redwood came into a major share of the family fortune. It’s from oil, I think? Chemicals? Something ghastly. His mother, Carol, wrote this novel, and—here’s the really interesting part—his paternal grandmother not only published Marian’s book in the fifties but paid for her flight. The family’s all knotted up with this story. And Redwood’s a do-gooder-slash-creative-type. Very enthusiastic.”
I got it then, what the racket was. “So he’s looking to be something other than rich and idle, and he thinks he’s going to reinvent Hollywood.”
“That’s likely his basic plan, yes.”
There was no real inflection to his words. Like how a general planning an air strike might give an estimate of civilian casualties. A bit of businesslike hardness to forestall pity. There are always a bunch of these rich kids floating around L.A., riding on fortunes they didn’t earn as though on litters born aloft by the ghosts of their ancestors. They want to make good movies, they all say: projects chosen for quality writing, compelling vision, original voice, etc., and not for their prospects in the Asian market. They want to reinvent something that doesn’t want to be reinvented, to disrupt a system that’s orders of magnitude more complex and predatory and fortified than they think. That’s their plan. Hollywood’s plan is to strip the flesh from their bones so slowly they won’t notice at first. Tiny little bites, and then big ones at the end.