Great Circle: A Novel

by Maggie Shipstead

  Marian’s hand shakes as she sinks her spoon into the soup, watches the viscous yellow liquid flow over its sides. What is this feeling? It’s too strong to be identified, the way heat and cold can both burn. Shock, she supposes. She lifts the spoon, spilling some. The soup sears her mouth. Jamie pats her knee under the table, doesn’t say anything. She wipes her cheeks with a napkin, shakes her head. “No more of that,” she says, meaning the tears.

  Barclay will never show up in Alaska. He’ll never show up anywhere. She had burned his last letter unopened. But what could it have said? Should she have written back to his first letter, told him she would forgive him only if he forgot her, left her alone forever? Would that have changed anything? Did she want anything changed? Can you mourn and rejoice at the same time?

  “Why would they need to kill him?” she says, her throat rough, burned from the soup. “Everything was in their names already.” She wonders if Sadler and Kate loved each other. Had they always? She had never seen any signs, though maybe that’s what Kate had meant when she said she wasn’t just an old maid. She decides she doesn’t care. They are no more consequential than characters in a book read long ago. They will not come looking for her.

  “I don’t know,” Jamie says. “I don’t know how any of it works.”

  “You said a rifle shot? Just one? And Barclay was driving—he hadn’t stopped the car?”

  “I think so.”

  “Sadler wasn’t a good shot.”

  “Maybe he got lucky.”

  “Sadler wouldn’t have wanted to plan on luck.”

  They stare at each other, wondering.

  The waitress brings a plate of noodles with pork, a bowl of green beans in sauce. Carefully, Marian says, “When Caleb came to see me in Alaska, I told him some things about Barclay. Things I hadn’t told anyone. He was angry.”

  They look at each other for another long moment. Jamie says, “We shouldn’t think this way. We shouldn’t go down this road.”

  “I’m not sorry he’s dead. But I always thought I’d see him again. I thought there was some reckoning still to come.”

  “I know.”

  “I used to think I would never feel free of him unless he agreed to free me.”

  “I know.”

  “Sometimes I still feel that way.”

  “You are free. You have been for a long time. You’re feeling the shock.”

  “I meant what I said. I am glad he’s dead.”

  “I’m glad he’s dead, too. Will you tell me what you told Caleb?”

  “Maybe later. I need another drink first.”

  “In Vancouver,” he says, “some men came to my apartment in the middle of the night once and roughed me up. They kept demanding I tell them where ‘she’ had gone. I assumed they were Barclay’s goons trying to find you, but they were actually different goons looking for a different woman. It was farcical. Like something that would happen to Wallace, having so many goons after you that you lose track.” He laughs.

  Marian is horrified. “Is that why you left Vancouver?”

  “Partly. And two women in a row had hurt my feelings.”

  “Tell me.”

  After dinner, he leads her some blocks to a bar he likes. Cold mist hangs in the air. A few of his Boar Bristle friends will meet them later. A streetcar rattles past, hats and newspaper tops filling the windows. He says, “Do you think you’ll ever marry again?”

  “No.”

  “I thought maybe you and Caleb, someday.”

  “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 feelin
g.

  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.

  Gonna win big?

  Somehow I doubt it. I typed and deleted, typed and deleted, typed, Leanne seems cool, but I thought you said you weren’t seeing anyone

  [Thinking-typing dots]

  I don’t know if I am

  Ok?

  Do you ever let things play out a little with someone just kind of to distract yourself?

  That’s maybe the only thing I’ve ever done

  I think Travis Day has a thing for you

  [Emoji with the flat mouth and flat, pained dashes for eyes] Does Leanne know that’s what’s up?

  Unclear

  Distract yourself from what?

  Also unclear

  I typed, deleted. Typed, deleted. I think I miss you a little. I sent it before I could think more.

  [An eternity of the three dots, then nothing.]

  * * *

  —

  I woke up early, restless and bothered, itchy for something to happen. I ate a room-service breakfast while staring at the city, the desert, all of it pale and washed-out. The days here were the nights’ ashes.

  Oliver was already in the greenroom when I came in with Augustina and M.G., and his beauty, so familiar, popped in my face. I could almost hear it. He opened his arms and said, in a small, sad voice, “Hey.”

  I knew everyone in the room was watching us when we hugged, but when I looked, their eyes snapped away. Oliver steered me to a couch.

  “How have you been?” I said, awkward, shifting around, black leather squelching under me.

  “Good.” He nodded. “Yeah. Better. I had a hard time for a while.”

  “I’m really sorry. I wanted to tell you that. We never talked, so—”

  He held up a hand in deflection. “Let’s not.”

  “Okay.” I didn’t know what he wanted me to say, or not say.

  “How are things with Jones?”

  “I was never with Jones.”

  “I’m seeing someone.”

  I wasn’t remotely surprised, but I said, “Really? Who?”

  A young guy in a headset and lanyard hurried over and squatted beside us. “Guys, I’m so sorry to interrupt, but I’ve been asked to let you know we’re running slightly behind. It’s going to be a minute. Thanks so much for your patience.”

  When the guy had hustled off, Oliver said the name of the actress who was taking over as Katerina, and I laughed a high, incredulous trill. Startled faces swiveled, bounced away again. I whispered, “Isn’t she seventeen? You do know that’s illegal?”

  Irritation and mild pity came into his eyes, as though I were some pathetic low-level bureaucrat avenging my own insignificance by clinging to arbitrary rules, and maybe I was. “She’s an old soul. I was seventeen when I met my ex.”

  “And look how well that worked out.”

  “I don’t regret it.” He gave me a tragic look. “I never regret loving someone.”

  “Must be nice.”

  “Meeting her really helped me get over you.”

  Even though deep down I’d never believed he loved me, I was struggling to resist his plaintiveness. He leaned closer, emanating tender melancholy, and I understood that the best and easiest thing I could do would be to join him in his version of our story, to cut loose the tangled mass of what had really happened.

  “It’s really nice to see you,” he said.

  I pulled a veil of wistfulness over my face. “Yeah. You too.”

  The door opened, and Alexei came in.

  * * *

  —

  “We’ll always be friends,” Oliver said during our panel, blasting his light out at the crowd like Moses parting the Red Sea. “I only want good things for Hadley. She’s an amazing person.”

  We were sitting side by side at a long table in front of a backdrop of the endlessly repeating convention logo. People held up their phones, recording. I summoned a cloying smile. I said Oliver and I still cared deeply about each other. I said I would miss the franchise and the Archangel family, but I was looking forward to moving on. I was excited about the future. Alexei was standing just off the edge of the stage; I didn’t dare look at him. I’d barely looked at him in the greenroom, either, afraid everyone would see me blazing bright for him, afraid he’d see it.

  A screen rolled down. The lights dimmed, and there was Archangel, golden and frozen. There I was in chains. There was Oliver on a throne.

  Light reflected back on the audience. I watched them watch my image, their faces all angled up at the screen like it was going to feed them. But Alexei, when I dared glance at him, was watching the actual me. Sometimes I imagined meeting him again for the first time but under different circumstances, if he were divorced or had never married, but then we would have been at the mercy of a different Olofssonian system of a different past, pushing us forward through a different network of chain reactions. Maybe then there wouldn’t even have been a flicker. Or maybe then there would have been love, or enlightenment.

  I was in a white, fur-trimmed dress being chased across a snowy plain by a man dressed all in black, carrying a black ax, his face covered with a black knight’s helmet. I stopped running. Below me was a dizzyingly high cliff of blue ice, sheer and deadly. Black waves broke against it, throwing up plumes of white spray. The camera started pulling back and up, revealing that the ax man and I were alone atop an iceberg, and the iceberg was floating in an empty, stormy sea. Close-up on my face as I watched my attacker approach. Cut to black. Fall once, fall forever appeared in white text, faded away, was replaced by the release date. Everyone cheered.

  * * *

  —

  In bed in New Zealand, Alexei had told me about his parents, who were loving and intellectual and performatively stodgy in a dust-ruffle-pipe-smoking-Bush-voter way that he’d come to think of as white-people camouflage and broke his heart because it didn’t even work. He’d talked about the maddening bullshit that came with being black in Hollywood, no matter how stuffy your upbringing: how lonely it was sometimes, how awkward development people could be, how clear it was when they wished there wasn’t a black dude in the room so they wouldn’t have to feel uncomfortable ignoring race or making tokenist suggestions. How everyone assumed he only represented black talent or basketball players. How he still got taken for an assistant even though he was thirty-nine years old and crazy successful. How he still got pulled over so cops could express skepticism about his ownership of a Tesla. Before Oliver got Archangel, Alexei’s boss had told him to cut off his dreads. You want to be taken seriously, you need serious hair, he’d said. Alexei hadn’t done it, though, and now he was a partner and no one ever said anything about his hair except to compliment it too much.

  He sidled up sideways during the VIP meet and greet, both of us aiming our words in the same direction like we were driving down a road somewhere.

  “I didn’t know you were going to be here,” I said.

  “Me neither until two days ago. Oliver’s been after me for a boys’ weekend. I ran out of excuses.”

  Oliver thought Alexei didn’t have enough fun, Alexei told me, and had insisted on buying him lap dances and a Patek Philippe watch, insisted on losing fifty thousand bucks at poker, insisted on spraying champagne over the crowd at some club where a famous DJ occasionally pressed a button on his laptop. “I don’t remember signing up for any Entourage reenactment society,” Alexei said. “Am I supposed to have a rage attack in a Porsche now?”

  This made me laugh in the faces of the VIPs on approach, some rich-looking parents and two tween girls in alarmingly sexy Katerina outfits. Fro
m the other side of the room, Oliver glanced at us. “Excuse me,” Alexei said, pulling back into his shell of professionalism, drifting off toward Oliver.

  More little girls showed up, and people in costume, and a lone bearded guy who unpacked a whole esoteric theory about the underlying philosophy of Archangel. I smiled and signed things and posed for photos, but all I could see was Alexei, even when I wasn’t looking at him. Redwood had gone out of my head almost entirely. When I did think of him, it was with tenderness, even nostalgia, as though our affair that hadn’t happened yet was already far in the past. When Alexei came sidling up again, I didn’t look at him, but he filled my horizon like a thunderhead.

  Sideways, he said, “Do you want to get a drink after this?”

  * * *

  —

  It’s cool, we were both projecting in the dim light of the secret bar for high rollers and The Famous. It’s chill. We’re friends. And what do friends do? They hang out. They catch up. We each held this fiction in front of us like a shield.

  “You won’t leak it, will you?” Alexei said about Oliver dating a teenager. “That’s really the last thing we need right now.”

  “Does Gwendolyn know? Is she devastated?”

  He rolled his eyes. “She suspects. Oliver’s had to launch a charm offensive.”

  “It’ll get out eventually.”

  “Not everything does,” he said, looking at me intently. “I hope to god not everything does.”

  An enormous sculptural light fixture hung from the ceiling, a ball of blue glass tentacles resembling a sea anemone that cast us in a watery glow.

  “No,” I said, “some things are just between two people.”

  “But,” he said, “that doesn’t mean those things don’t maybe scare the shit out of people. Maybe people thought they could just have a little fling but then the reality freaked them out.”