“Because you’re just like him. Or her.” She was holding her hand before her smile again, and because Chaplin didn’t understand her, she tried to explain, with bursts of giggling in between: there was a cat who was a boy sometimes and a girl sometimes, but was more like a sprite, not quite real, but ever so hilarious. “The cat is a pooka,” she explained. “Not really a boy or a girl, but a sprite,” which was the second time she’d said this, and it annoyed Chaplin to hear it again.

She was waiting for a response. He asked, “Does anyone love the cat?”

“No,” she said. “Oh, wait, the dog loves the cat.”

“Yes, of course. And the cat loves the dog?”

“No, the cat loves the mouse.”

“Does the mouse love the cat?”

“No, the mouse hates the cat. And the dog. And everyone. He even throws bricks at him. Or her. You know?”

“Now it sounds realistic.” When she continued to giggle, he said, “No, truly, that’s how love works.”

“It’s not,” she declared. “Love doesn’t work that way at all.”

“How old are you?”

“I’m”—she swallowed—“seventeen.” It was ingrained, the shift between the first word and the second. She had gone from girl-on-the-beach to actress. “Seventeen” went with the right clothing and the photograph for the casting agents. It was a good age for any girl’s career. “No, I’m sixteen,” she said.

“Oh.”

Her posture was contrite, and she looked at him from the corner of her eye, as she often did, but this time chewing on her lip. There was a car horn in the parking lot, someone honking for attention, a couple of short and simple beats upon the steering wheel. “I’m sorry,” she said.

He didn’t know what she was apologizing for—being sixteen? lying? needing to go call her mother, which she hadn’t? He liked having her be sorry. He wanted her to act polite, to walk carefully, looking for approval, and he wanted never to grant it. He had in mind offering her the thing no one else had gotten today. “Mildred,” he said. He was going to offer her a screen test.

“Can your mother ever come here?”

The screen test evaporated. He said, “She can. She’s been trying to.”

“It must be dangerous. How would she travel? By boat?”

A great deal of time passed. “She’ll travel … by soap bubble.”