shelves and files devoted to old Captain Marvo episodes, and dupes of the grade Z movies featured on the show.
This was where Robbie found Leonard, bent over a refurbished Steenbeck editing table.
“Robbie.” Leonard waved, then returned to threading film onto a spindle. “Emery back with dinner?”
“Uh-uh.” Robbie pulled a chair alongside him. “What are you doing?”
“Loading up that nitrate I showed you yesterday.”
“It’s not going to explode, is it?”
“No, Robbie, it’s not going to explode.” Leonard’s mouth tightened. “Did Emery talk to you yet?”
“He just said something about a plan. So what’s up?”
“I’ll let him tell you.”
Robbie flushed angrily, but before he could retort there was a knock behind them.
“Chow time, campers.” Emery held up two steaming paper bags. “Can you leave that for a few minutes, Leonard?”
They ate on the couch in the next room. Emery talked about a pitch he’d made to revive Captain Marvo in cell-phone format. “It’d be freaking perfect, if I could figure out a way to make any money from it.”
Leonard said nothing. Robbie noted that the cuffs of his white tunic were stained with flecks of orange pigment, as were his fingernails. He looked tired, his face lined and his eyes sunken.
“You getting enough sleep?” Emery asked.
Leonard smiled wanly. “Enough.”
Finally the food was gone, and the beer. Emery clapped his hands on his knees, pushed aside the empty plates, then leaned forward.
“Okay. So here’s the plan. I rented a house on Cowana for a week, starting this Saturday. I mapped it online and it’s about ten hours. If we leave right after you guys get off work on Friday and drive all night, we’ll get there early Saturday morning. Leonard, you said you’ve got everything pretty much assembled, so all you need to do is pack it up. I’ve got everything else here. Be a tight fit in the Prius, though, so we’ll have to take two cars. We’ll bring everything we need with us, we’ll have a week to shoot and edit or whatever, then on the way back we swing through Fayetteville and show the finished product to Maggie. What do you think?”
“That’s not a lot of time,” said Leonard. “But we could do it.”
Emery turned to Robbie. “Is you car roadworthy? It’s about twelve hundred miles round-trip.”
Robbie stared at him. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“The
“Are you high?” Robbie laughed. “I can’t just take off. I have a job.”
“You get vacation time, right? You can take a week. It’ll be great, man. The Realtor says it’s already in the eighties down there. Warm water, a beach-what more you want?”
“Uh, maybe a beach with people besides you and Leonard?” Robbie searched in vain for another beer. “I couldn’t go anyway-next week’s Zach’s spring break.”
“Yeah?” Emery shook his head. “So, you’re going to be at the store all day, and he’ll be home getting stoned. Bring him. We’ll put him to work.”
Leonard frowned, but Robbie looked thoughtful. “Yeah, you’re right. I hadn’t thought of that. I can’t really leave him alone. I guess I’ll think about it.”
“Don’t think, just do it. It’s Wednesday, tell ’em you’re taking off next week. They gonna fire you?”
“Maybe.”
“I’m not babysitting some-” Leonard started.
Emery cut him off. “You got that nitrate loaded? Let’s see it.”
They filed into the workroom. Leonard sat at the Steenbeck. The others watched as he adjusted the film on its sprockets. He turned to Robbie, then indicated the black projection box in the center of the deck.
“Emery knows all this, so I’m just telling you. That’s a quartz halogen lamp. I haven’t turned it on yet, because if the frame was just sitting there it might incinerate the film, and us. But there’s only about four seconds of footage, so we’re going to take our chances and watch it, once. Maybe you remember it from the gallery?”
Robbie nodded. “Yeah, I saw it a bunch of times. Not as much as the Head, but enough.”
“Good. Hit that light, would you, Emery? Everyone ready? Blink and you’ll miss it.”
Robbie craned his neck, staring at a blank white screen. There was a whir, the stutter of film running through a projector.
At the bottom of the frame the horizon lurched, bright flickers that might be an expanse of water. Then a blurred image, faded sepia and amber, etched with blotches and something resembling a beetle leg: the absurd contraption Robbie recognized as the original
Nothing. The film ended as abruptly as it had begun. Leonard quickly reached to turn off the lamp, and immediately removed the film from the take-up drive.
Robbie felt his neck prickle-he’d forgotten how weird, uncanny even, the footage was.
“Jesus, that’s some bizarre shit,” said Emery.
“It doesn’t even look real.” Robbie watched as Leonard coiled the film and slid it in a canister. “I mean, the guy, he looks fake.”
Emery nodded. “Yeah, I know. It looks like one of those old silents,
Robbie stared at the empty screen, then shut his eyes. He tried to recall the rest of the film from when it played in the General Aviation gallery: the swift, jerky trajectory of that eerie little vehicle with its bizarre pilot, a man in a black suit and bowler hat; then the flash from the corner of the screen, and the man toppling from his perch into the white and empty air. The last thing you saw was a tiny hand at the bottom of the frame, then some blank leader, followed by the words “The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s
“It was like someone was in the air next to him,” said Robbie. “Unless he got only six feet off the ground. I always assumed it was faked.”
“It wasn’t faked,” said Leonard. “The cameraman was on the beach filming. It was a windy day, they were hoping that would help give the plane some lift but there must have been a sudden gust. When the
“Who found it?” asked Robbie.
“We don’t know.” Leonard sighed, his shoulders slumping. “We don’t know anything. Not the name of the cameraman, nothing. When Maggie and I ran the original footage, the leader said ‘Maiden Flight of McCauley’s
Robbie followed Leonard into the next room. “What was that weird flash of light?”
“I don’t know.” Leonard stared out a glass door into the parking lot. “But it’s not overexposure or lens flare or