The plane banks steeply and Veronica D’Arcy looks straight down at the rumpled duvet of cloud beneath. Shafts of blinding sunshine stab through the windows on the other side of the cabin. The good-looking drunk beside her—he has a loose lock of dark hair on his brow that makes her think of Cary Grant, of Clark Kent—unconsciously squeezes his armrests. She wonders if he’s a white-knuckle flier or just a boozer. He had his first scotch as soon as they reached cruising altitude, three hours ago, just after 10:00 A.M.

The screens go black and another AN ANNOUNCEMENT IS IN PROGRESS. Veronica shuts her eyes to listen, focusing the way she might at a table read as another actor reads lines for the first time.

CAPTAIN WATERS (V.O.)

Hello, passengers, Captain Waters again. I’m afraid we’ve had an unexpected request from air traffic control to reroute to Fargo and put down at Hector International Airport. We’ve been asked to clear this airspace, effective immediately—

(uneasy beat)

—for military maneuvers. Obviously the situation in Guam has created . . . um, complications for everyone in the sky today. There’s no reason for alarm, but we are going to have to put down. We expect to be on the ground in Fargo in forty minutes. I’ll have more information for you as it comes in.

(beat)

My apologies, folks. This isn’t the afternoon any of us were hoping for.

If it were a movie, the captain wouldn’t sound like a teenage boy going through the worst of adolescence. They would’ve cast someone gruff and authoritative. Hugh Jackman, maybe. Or a Brit, if they wanted to suggest erudition, a hint of Oxford-acquired wisdom. Derek Jacobi, perhaps.

Veronica has acted alongside Derek off and on for almost thirty years. He held her backstage the night her mother died and talked her through it in a gentle, reassuring murmur. An hour later they were both dressed as Romans in front of 480 people, and God, he was good that night, and she was good, too, and that was the evening she learned she could act her way through anything, and she can act her way through this, too. Inside, she is already growing calmer, letting go of all cares, all concern. It has been years since she felt anything she didn’t decide to feel first.

“I thought you were drinking too early,” she says to the man beside her. “It turns out I started drinking too late.” She lifts the little plastic cup of wine she was served with her lunch and says “Chin-chin” before draining it.

He turns a lovely, easy smile upon her. “I’ve never been to Fargo, although I did watch the TV show.” He narrows his eyes. “Were you in Fargo? I feel like you were. You did something with forensics, and then Ewan McGregor strangled you to death.”