Amanda went over to the couch and sat down beside her, while I remained at the periphery of the room. “Miss Niles,” she said gently, touching Nora on the shoulder. “Miss Niles, Mr. Nakayama is here to see you.”
“Who?” Nora’s voice was incongruously loud, and she sounded distinctly annoyed.
“Mr. Nakayama, your former colleague. Mr. Rosenberg arranged it. You spoke with him last week. Do you remember?”
She shook her head, baffled, but then she looked up at me. I held the bouquet out toward her, and her face softened a bit. “I remember you. You’re the flower man.”
After a moment of uncertainty, I stepped forward and said, “Yes. Yes, Nora. I’m the flower man.”
“I loved your film,” she said. Then her voice changed again. “My mother thought it was indecent.”
“I am sorry to hear that. But I think she couldn’t always have disapproved of me. After all, we did eventually work together.”
Nora gazed at me intently, which was rather unsettling, for I did not know whether she was seeing me as I was, or as she had known me in the past. “You and I? My mother let us work together?”
“We appeared in six films together, don’t you remember? The Noble Servant was the first.”
At this point, Amanda must have felt that our visit was going well, for she stood up and smoothed down her apron. “I’ll go bring the tea. Would you like something to eat?”
I shook my head, and felt slightly panicked at the thought of her leaving the room. She must have sensed my apprehension, because she smiled and said, “Don’t worry, Mr. Nakayama. She’s perfectly harmless.”
When Amanda departed, I sat rather uncomfortably in the armchair directly across from Nora and held my jacket in my lap. Her mind seemed to have wandered off again, and she stared smiling at a spot beyond my shoulder. I took the opportunity to study her more closely. Beneath the mass of wrinkles, the face was familiar but distorted, as if I were looking at her through a slab of cracked glass. Her lipstick was dark red, and her mascara too thick; beneath her hair I could see the gray roots. She wore a cream-colored dress with wide, elaborate folds, which was buttoned up to her neck and ruffled at the sleeves. The bottom of the dress was dark with dirt, and her shoes—cream—colored as well, and rounded like a ballerina’s slippers—were worn and dirty. Suddenly I realized that the outfit looked familiar. Surely it could not have been her costume from Flying Princess, her comedy from 1917. But as I glanced around at the old furniture, the posters and pictures, I knew it was entirely possible.
“How have you been, Nora?” I asked, my voice too loud.
She didn’t respond for so long that I thought she hadn’t heard me. Just as I was about to repeat my question, she said, “I haven’t made a picture in a very long time. But I’m writing a book now. A novel. Would you like to hear it?”
I hesitated, but then said, “Certainly.”
She stood up and then, more nimbly than I would have expected, rushed over to her piano. There, she picked up an untidy stack of papers and sat down on the piano bench. “Wayward Winds,” she announced, and she began to read. While I understood that the story was about a river and some trees, I could not determine anything more about it. The sentences did not connect, the words were like the spewing of a broken water sprinkler, plentiful but erratic. What struck me more than anything was the sound of her voice, which was at once so familiar and so changed. If I closed my eyes, I could have imagined that this was the Nora of my youth—except I could not, and the person before me was a worn, unbalanced woman, a sad caricature of the lively girl she once had been.
After fifteen minutes or so, she stopped reading and looked up at me expectantly. “It’s wonderful,” I said. “Have you been writing long?”
“Oh yes!” she said smiling. “It helps to pass the time. It gives me something to do until my next role comes along.” At this moment, Amanda reentered the room, bearing a tray of tea cups, a pot, and some scones. She placed these in front of us and poured our tea, and then, after determining that all was in order, turned around and left us again. “Have you been working?” Nora asked, and I was sure now that she knew who I was.
I thought about Bellinger’s film and my upcoming screen test. But looking at her holding that yellowing manuscript, I said, “No. It has been some time since I appeared in a film.”
“We were good actors, weren’t we, Jun? Everyone used to love us.”
“Yes, we were.”
“Everybody loved us. You and me, and Mary, and Elizabeth Banks, and Charlie Chaplin, and Ashley Tyler.”
“Yes, Ashley Tyler,” I said, and my pulse quickened at speaking his name. “As a matter of fact, Nora, I wanted to talk to you about him.”
“I miss Ashley.” She gazed sadly at the floor. “He was always so good to me.”
“I believe that he cared for you deeply.”
“My mother said he only wanted one thing from me, but it wasn’t like that. He loved me for my mind.”
I paused for a moment, wondering how much she knew. “Your mother perhaps did not see Mr. Tyler for who he truly was.”
“He said I didn’t have to do what she told me to do. He treated me like a grown-up. He believed in me!”
I
