My favorite film professor used to drill Herzog and Pennebaker and Marker into our heads, ranting about how life is never how it looks in a movie, and documentaries reveal more about the person making them than the subject. Personally, I’ve never believed that. Documentaries are the only art form that isn’t really art; if you do it right, it’s real life. Yes, you have to be able to steady your hands and operate a slightly complicated mechanical device, but I’m only a pair of eyes when I’m behind a camera. It isn’t Lilah anymore, at least, I don’t think it is. I’m a bird on a wire, the great big glasses billboard inThe Great Gatsby, watching the world. It’s like Barbara Kopple said:I don’t create the tension.
And suddenly, it’s okay that I’m silent and aloof and smart. People like those qualities in a filmmaker that they dislike in women; they don’t wonder what I’m hiding (nothing) or why I’m strangely quiet (I’m having a thousand conversations in my head).
Then Thursday comes around, and I’m standing on a blinking tarmac in front of the first private jet I’ve ever laid eyes on, tranquilized by antianxiety medication. It’s still mostly dark out—deep blue sky, too many runway lights. Disorienting. Tightening my grip on my suitcase handle, I train my handheld camera on the plane and get my first real shot of the film: A slender gray-white jet, blackened sky, nobody around except hired help and orange-shirted Ignition staff. Arthur’s ridiculous, isolating wealth in a single image.
See? It’s real. It might be a movie, but that doesn’t make it fake.
“You have to climb the stairs to get on the plane.”
I click pause on my camera. Arthur stands next to me, dressed in an Ignition sweatshirt and thick, patterned sweatpants. It’s the first we’ve seen each other since our all-out, smackdown brawl, and I half expect him to cut me down to size right here on the spot.You think you’re too good to be my fake unethical sex-friend? Au contraire, American swine, I have dated and dumped twenty physicists-turned-models since we last spoke.
But Arthur only holds out his tiny to-go espresso cup toward me. I frown; he shrugs. “Suit yourself,” he says, finishing the coffee.
My camera hangs from the strap around my neck as he leads us to the stairs. When I’m greeted by a man in a prim blue suit—and his polite “Miss Graywood”—I turn to Arthur, who smiles innocently. The plane is beautiful, clean, and very empty. “Are you planning on murdering me now that we’re alone?”
“Rude.” Arthur moseys down the carpeted aisle to a plush leather chaise lounge and leans his hip against it. The top of his finger-combed blond hair almost hits the low ceiling. “If I wanted to murder you, you wouldn’t be riding on the Bianco family jet. Paper trails.”
I glance at the attendant behind us, who looks like he couldn’t care less, as Arthur sits down, long legs spreading apart, taking up way too much space. I take the love seat across the aisle from him, trying to keep my elbows and knees away from the fancy screens and switches, and watch as he thoughtlessly clicks through buttons on his armrests. I should be filming him, but my preflight nervousness might screw up my hands. Best to wait until we’re in the air.
“Where is everyone?” I ask.
“Holmes is flying out with Max on Sunday, along with Faust if he’s well enough.”
“How long do you think Faust will be out?”
He tilts his head. “Shouldn’t you be filming my answer?”
Shit. “I’m just wondering.”
“Ah, you’re building your narrative.”
“Wow, big word.”
“Great word. Big in racing. Never heard it before?”
“I have. Just didn’t think you’d know it.”
“Tsk, tsk, love,” he says. “I’m the cocky one, not you.”
My face warms. It’s like he knows exactly how to turn my internal thermostat all the way up. “It’s three whole syllables. I didn’t think you had it in you.”
Arthur’s cheek slopes in with amusement. “Three is nothing. This mouth can handle a lot more.”
An eye roll isn’t enough. “An-y-way,” I singsong, “answer the question.”
“Regrettably,” he sighs, “I wasn’t blessed with great looks, pristine sportsmanship, and psychic abilities. Best to get your footage while I am driving.”
“Because you don’t think you’ll be traveling the rest of the season? Doesn’t that make you worry what Leone will think if Ignition benches you again?”
Arthur holds my stare for a moment, a glimmer of anger curling in that sharp smile of his, but then he seems to put it away and rest back on his humor. “Well done. That’s an important lesson to learn about F1.”
“Drivers swap out often?”
“How well a driver competes comes in second place to his narrative.” He pauses. “Or should I use the word ‘story’? I’d hate to confuse you.”
“I can keep up.”
“We’ll see. You haven’t filmed me driving yet.” He grins. “Ithink I like that you don’t know anything about F1. It’s like teaching a baby how to walk.”
