“I don’t know about flowers,” Chaplin said. “Mum, I can’t believe you’re here. How.” He meant it to be a question.

Luckily, he was rescued: one of the men attending her introduced himself. He worked with the Bureau of Immigration, and explained that the paperwork that had been lost with the associate general counsel had been located, his mother was in fine health, she’d lived in Peckham as a model patient without many incidents, except of course on the nights of the zeppelin raids, but, then again, all of the unfortunates were affected similarly on such nights, and it was an honor to meet Mr. Chaplin, and his wife would never believe he was meeting Mr. Charlie Chaplin today, was it true he had learned the funny walk from Billie West, and as he was talking, Chaplin watched his mother use a stubby finger—when had her hands lost their shape?—to test the California soil.

“Mignonette,” she said, and stood.

“I didn’t know.” He touched her upper arm. She was as stout as a bottle of beer. That was the scrim across his thoughts, like a graduated screen—the third method for a fade, a long piece of glass, clear at one end and subtly growing opaque, until you drew it along to utter blackness. He had a few of these in the lab, but he worried about them, they could break; he could feel nothing else yet.

“Aren’t we the main attraction,” she said. She smiled with terrible teeth, wrinkling her face, and he wanted to sweep her up, put her in the shade somewhere.

“Mrs. Chaplin, your son owns this studio,” said someone in shirtsleeves and garters, a young man Chaplin did not recognize.

“Oh,” she said.

“All of it,” the man continued. “He’s successful.”

“He should know the names of his flowers, don’t you think?”

Chaplin regarded the crowd with his royalty smile. He imagined throwing her into the car, riding on the buckboard himself, having Kono drive them into traffic while the crowd chased them. He knew she wouldn’t budge. He wondered, with fear, if she’d brought presents for him.

She patted him on the cheek. “You’re a good boy, Charlie. Even if you didn’t know the names of the flowers, you make your old mother proud.”

He could meet her eyes, but only as though he were tapping his fingers against a hot stove. They were still a deep hazel, cloudy and merry, for now. He craned his head, looking for an ally. Why did this need to happen when Syd was gone? The mood in the courtyard was festive, far lighter than on any day since he’d started shooting Sunnyside.

“Oh,” said the man from the Bureau of Immigration. “I’m supposed to tell you this was arranged by friends of yours.”

“Pardon?”