More than a month after Tyler’s death, David Rosenberg called to apologize for Perennial’s silence. Gerard Normandy was ready to talk, he said. Although they were still reluctant to draw up a new contract, they did have a potential project. He told me the last few weeks had been eventful. One of the things they had discovered in the wake of the murder was that Tyler wasn’t who they had thought. The director’s real name was Aaron Towland. Far from having a theater background in England and New York, he’d been third-generation antique salesman from Brooklyn. He’d left a wife and two children in Flatbush, and had disappeared in 1912 without a forwarding address. Mrs. Towland hadn’t known what had become of her husband until she saw him in a picture. With the news of his death, she had contacted the studio and informed them of Tyler’s true identity, hoping to secure assistance for their children. This information had thrown the studio into a frenzy, but they’d successfully kept it out of the papers, and they were just now getting their operations back in order.
But that was all moot, said Rosenberg. They wanted to see me. Could I come in and meet with him and Normandy in a week? I told him I could, and I hoped the shaking in my voice did not betray my joy and relief. It was going to be all right, I thought, despite everything. I was going back to work.
Had I not received an unannounced visit five days later, I might, in fact, have done so. I might have met with Normandy and found a way to continue my acting career. But I did receive a visit—one that, in some sense, I’d been expecting for weeks. After that day, I knew that I would never appear in a picture again—not for Normandy, or Perennial, or any other studio. And I would not see David Rosenberg for forty-two years, until I drove up to the nursing home in Culver City.
CHAPTER TWELVE
October 30, 1964
This has been a week of the most unexpected revelations, which have led me down a path of such reminiscence and regret that I find myself now at the top of Runyan Canyon Park, looking down at the lights of the city. I hadn’t planned to go for a walk this late in the evening, and certainly not after dark. But my thoughts were too unruly for me to stay still, and after today’s incident involving the bird, it seemed best to leave the confines of my house.
I had been sitting in my dining room when something struck the window, the sound of the impact accompanied by a tiny cry. When I went outside to investigate, I found a small green hummingbird lying on the walkway. Its head was folded under its body, and the wings, which normally move so fast one can only see the blur, were now flapping ineffectually. The little body shuddered as if it were racked with cold. I couldn’t tell whether the bird was seriously injured or just trying to gather itself enough to fly away. But I felt like I was intruding on a private struggle, so I returned inside and began to brew some tea. I could not get the sound of the impact out of my mind, however, nor the sight of the struggling bird. So after another few minutes, I ventured back outside and found that the hummingbird was still.
I felt responsible, as if I could have saved it. After my initial jolt of surprise, I moved closer to get a better look. The bird had settled on its side with its neck at a strange angle, and there was a small pool of clear liquid beneath its head. I stared at the lifeless body for a few more minutes, and then I took a shovel out of the garage, dug a shallow pit beneath the bushes on the side of the town house, and used the blade to push the bird inside. I replaced the dirt and packed it down, and then, because the procedure seemed incomplete, took a small flat stone and lodged it upright at the head of the grave. It was childish, I knew, but the burial felt necessary, and afterwards I went inside and drank some tea to calm my shaking hands. I couldn’t concentrate on my book anymore, nor could I suppress the feeling that the bird had represented some kind of omen, and so I left the house and came to the split log bench on top of Runyan Canyon.
It is silly, of course, to attach such significance to a single dead hummingbird. Yet with everything else that has occurred this week, I could not help but see this incident in relation to those other events, and to invest it with more than the appropriate level of sadness. The week had started uneventfully—I made my usual phone calls regarding my properties and took my regular morning walks. It all began to unravel when Mrs. Bradford came to get me, to pursue this mad idea she’d concocted.
For the last month or so, Mrs. Bradford has been telling me that there’s something that she wished for us to do. She wouldn’t tell me what it was, and I, being a man who has never been fond of surprises, repeatedly declined. Then, over breakfast last Saturday, after another of my refusals, an expression of real disappointment came over her face. “Please, Mr. Nakayama,” she pleaded. “It won’t take long—and it would tickle me so much.”
And that is how I found myself, five mornings ago, at an old Craftsman bungalow off of Franklin. Mrs. Bradford had picked me up ten minutes before, and when she pulled into the driveway, I turned to her. “You brought me to
