Michael stared down at a notepad on the counter; somebody had been doodling a sleigh with Santa on top and it really wasn’t bad. Michael flashed on Christmas the year before—Kristin had given him a pup tent, and he’d given her an acoustic guitar…that she’d never had time to learn how to play.
“So tell me,” Gillespie said, back on the line, “where are we on this story? I want to get the art department started on the cover and the layout as soon as possible, and anytime you have a rough draft of the text—and I don’t care how rough it is—I want to see it.” His words were coming so fast they were tumbling over themselves. “So what’s the latest with the bodies in the ice? Have you thawed ’em out? Or figured out anything about who they were?”
What, Michael wondered, could he say? That he not only knew who they were, but knew their actual names? Because they had told him?
“The girl’s the one I’m particularly interested in,” Gillespie confessed. “What’s she look like? Is she completely decayed, or would she be something we could feature in a full-page shot without scaring our younger readers?”
Michael was at a total loss. He didn’t want to start laying down a bunch of lies, but he was definitely not about to divulge the truth. The thought of describing Eleanor to him, of pitching her, as the subject of some photo opportunity…
“I hope she’s going to be well enough preserved to go on display somewhere,” Gillespie rattled on. “The NSF, I’m sure, is going to want to show her off, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they set up some kind of show around her at the Smithsonian.”
Michael’s heart sank even lower in his chest. He regretted the haste with which he had informed Gillespie of the find in the first place, and he wished, more than anything, that he could simply roll back time and start all over. That he could take it all back. Maybe now, it dawned on him, he could start. “You know,” he said, “it looks like I was a bit quick on the draw there.”
“Quick on the draw,” Gillespie repeated, slowly for a change. “What do you mean?”
What did he mean? He could picture the fuzz on Gillespie’s head getting fuzzier by the second. “The bodies, well, they didn’t turn out to be what I thought they were.”
“What the hell are you getting at? They’re either bodies, or they’re not. Don’t do this to me, Michael. Are you saying that—”
While he talked, Michael shook the phone, and when he went back on a few seconds later, he said, “Sorry, you were breaking up. Could you repeat that last bit, Joe?”
“I was saying, is this story for real or not? Because if you were just jerking my chain, I’m not amused in the slightest.”
“I was not jerking you around,” Michael replied, holding the phone at arm’s length for maximum effect. “I guess I was fooled myself. It looks like, well, it looks like maybe it wasn’t an actual woman at all. Just a carved wooden figurehead.”
“A…carved…wooden…figurehead?”
“Attached to a bowsprit.” Michael was momentarily impressed at his own ingenuity. “Quite old, and very beautiful, but not a woman. Or a man, either—he just turned out to be some more wood—though nicely painted—in the ice behind her. They must have been part of some shipwreck.” He could embellish it further, but he didn’t want Gillespie to get too excited about shots of the figurehead, because then he’d have to find a way to manufacture some. “I just can’t tell you, Joe, how embarrassed I am.”
“Embarrassed?” Michael heard, faintly. “That’s all? You’re embarrassed? I was planning to make you the poster boy for Eco-Travel Magazine. I was planning to shell out real money to hire a PR firm, just to plaster your face all over the media.”
Michael knew that with every syllable he’d just uttered, his chances of making news—winning awards, getting famous, maybe even getting rich—had withered, and vanished into the thinnest of air. “But I’ve got some other great stuff—an abandoned whaling station, the last dogsled team in the Antarctic, a big storm rounding the Horn. Tons of material.”
“That’s great, Michael, just great. We’ll talk more as soon as you get back here, after the first of the year. You can show me what you’ve got then.”
“You bet,” Michael said, still silently assessing what he had done to his career. He had taken what could have been a career-making moment, and torched it.
“And you’re feeling okay?”
“Absolutely,” Michael replied.
“And the situation with Kristin? Has that changed at all?”
He could see what was going through Gillespie’s mind—he thought that Michael had begun to come a little unhinged over the lingering tragedy. And, much as he hated to exploit something like that, Michael did see an opportunity.
“Kristin passed away,” he said.
“Oh jeez. You should have said something sooner.”
“So between that, and the weird conditions down here, maybe yeah, I have been a little out of whack.” He made sure his tone implied that that was definitely the case.
“Listen, I’m really sorry about Kristin.”
“Thanks.”
“But at least her ordeal is over. And yours, too.”