He looked up. The car was not moving. Kono had actually parked at the curb long moments before. There was a broad and flat lawn surrounding the Georgian municipal building, alone on its block, a massive and crushing structure with a red tile dome at its center, and rising from it the American flag. There was a great emptiness around it, just wild and untended fields of poinsettias, as if it were the last remaining castle on a great chessboard. Which made Chaplin stay in his automobile, for there were no shady spots or places to remain inconspicuous, and this was Hollywood High School. He should not be here.

They had an arrangement—if he was intolerably late, Mildred was to wait in the nook by the pergola, just down the block. He scanned the lawn, checked his watch again—he wasn’t that late—and when he realized she wasn’t going to appear on her own, he left the car.

He did not look about. Instead, he walked straight ahead, toward the pergola, attempting to radiate a sense that he belonged here. He was a teacher, an older brother, a coach, or he was Charlie Chaplin, here to give a pep talk to the boys about the importance of making your best effort.

When he had reached the timbers of the pergola, he could see the alcove ahead, and, against the herringbone brick, just the points of Mildred’s black shoes.

Her mother was sitting next to her.

“Ailene,” he said. He thought of social words to say—“Hello,” to begin with—but it was obvious there were to be no niceties. Still, he said it: “Hello.”

Mildred’s knees were together, her feet apart, toe tips pointing toward each other. She did not look up. Her mother, Ailene, was holding a handkerchief, crumpled, in her hand. Her face turned its awful radiance at Chaplin.

He did not need to ask why Ailene was there. He did not need to ask what was coming next. It was coming at him with the force of shotgun pellets. It was a gaze, atavistic, that would not be tampered with.

16

Lee stood with his back pressed to the wall. The hole he was supposed to tumble through was just to his left. In the absence of thinking, his mind was wide open to music.

That’s the wrong way to tickle Marie
That’s the wrong way to kiss

He tried to stop it, but that of course just made the song root like ivy. He imagined putting his head slowly around the corner, into the darkness. He imagined doing it, imagined singing loudly, “That’s the wrong way to tickle Marie,” then being shot in the throat.