But, to be fair, Hugo wanted to make good movies, too. He just needed other people’s money to do it.
“He’s putting up all the money?” I asked.
“Ah, no. But a good chunk. Frankly with the locations and the airplanes and the CGI and all, it’s a bit rich for our blood, so we took it to Sun God.” Sun God Entertainment was backed by hedge funds and had ambitions to make movies that were too expensive to be indies but not expensive enough to be worth the studios’ time. “They signed on, and now perhaps there is just the slightest overabundance of cooks in the kitchen, but I think it could work. With the right star, of course.” He winked. “We couldn’t pay you much.”
“How not much?”
“Scale. And something on the back end.”
“Siobhan’s going to love that.”
“Screw Siobhan. You don’t need the money. This is your moment to show the naysayers what you’re capable of.” He was making his voice extra sonorous, booming at me like I was a medieval army he was trying to rally to wipe out another medieval army advancing over some moor.
What was I capable of? I didn’t actually know. I pictured myself with the Oscar again. Did I deserve an Oscar? No, but who did, really? Manifest.
Hugo clapped his hands on his thighs and stood up. “Think about it.”
I walked him through the house. As he stepped out the front door, I said, “I should tell you, Gavin du Pré has a grudge against me. It might be inconvenient.”
“He’s not involved.”
“But still. He can do things.”
“How do you know he has a grudge?”
“Oh, I got that feeling yesterday when he told me he’d kill my career. His exact words were”—I put on the raspy growl of a comic book villain and clenched one hand into a fist—“？‘you’re finished.’？”
To my surprise, Hugo only laughed. “Do you know who the head of Sun God is?”
“Ted Lazarus, isn’t it?”
“Do you know that Ted Lazarus and Gavin du Pré hate each other?”
“Vaguely.”
“Do you know why?”
“No.”
“Gavin fucked Ted’s wife. So it’s fine. Everything’s fine. Everyone’s already out to ruin each other.” He reached for my hand. “This will be a very good role for you, my dear. This will elevate you.” He kissed my hand with a loud smack and went striding off. While he waited for my gate to open, he squared himself up, then, between the parting panels, swept a low bow to the paparazzi, who cheered.
Eight
After Hugo left, I got in the bathtub and opened Marian’s book.
Editor’s Note
The document contained in the following pages, reader, has taken a most unlikely journey before settling, as it has, in your hands.
Very true, I thought.
In 1950, Marian Graves, an accomplished pilot and the author of this short tome, vanished along with her navigator, Eddie Bloom, while attempting to circumnavigate the globe longitudinally, by way of both the North and South Poles. They were last seen in Queen Maud Land, East Antarctica, when they refueled at Maudheim, the encampment of the Norwegian-British-Swedish Antarctic Expedition. From Maudheim they were to have flown across the continent, passing over the South Pole, to the Ross Ice Shelf, where lay the remains of the various bases built and used during Admiral Richard E. Byrd’s Antarctic expeditions, all dubbed “Little America.” Though the bases were abandoned, more than enough cached gasoline would have been available to refuel the plane, the Peregrine, before Marian and Eddie embarked on their journey’s final leg, bound for New Zealand. Tragically, after departing Maudheim, neither pilot nor navigator nor aircraft were ever seen again. For almost a decade, nothing was known of their fate. Most assumed the Peregrine had crashed somewhere in the pitiless Antarctic interior.
Now, thanks to a remarkably fortuitous discovery, we know that Marian and Eddie indeed reached the Ross Ice Shelf. Last year, while conducting research as part of the collaborative International Geophysical Year, scientists exploring the buried remnants of Little America III found not only the expected artifacts of Byrd’s 1939–1941 expedition but also an odd bundle of yellow rubber. They determined, to their great surprise, that it was the kind of aviation life preserver known as a Mae West, and it was wrapped carefully around Marian’s handwritten journal containing her elliptical, fragmented musings from the flight: the manuscript of this very book.
I’m afraid I cannot elucidate her reasons for leaving behind her journal （and, ominously, one of their two life preservers）。 Perhaps she weighed the odds of reaching New Zealand versus the odds of future visitors to Little America finding the book and, disturbing to contemplate, found the latter more likely. It can be counted as a stroke of luck that the base was still in existence at all. Icebergs are continually breaking, or calving, from the Ross Ice Shelf, and half of Little America IV, a more recent encampment from 1946–47, has already been carried out to sea.