“This way,” Chaplin said, pointing toward Sunset. She had to walk slowly, not so much from infirmity as in a constant amazement at her surroundings. He saw her taking them in, and then it was as if a veil were falling. It was too sunny. She walked with one hand shading her eyes.

“Oh,” he said. The sun reflecting on the mica in the newly poured sidewalks was indeed painful. “Wait here, Mum. I have something.”

He stepped back into the studio. He asked the electricians if he could borrow some accessories they had just purchased. The Klieg lights were so bright that an hour or two under them sent many actors into temporary blindness. The remedy was to balm the eyelids with castor oil or tea leaves. When Doug finished a film, he spent a week that way. The American Society of Cinematographers, in conjunction with Bausch & Lomb, had come up with a better solution, and this is what Chaplin returned to the sidewalk with.

“Here, Mum.”

She held what Chaplin gave her with puzzlement. It was a pair of spectacles, but the lenses were opaque.

“Sunglasses.” He put on a pair, to show her how it was done. She burst out laughing.

“They’ll think we’re blind.”

“You won’t have to squint,” he explained. Hesitantly, she, too, put them on.

“Better?” he asked.

She leaned over a Cadillac parked at the curb and cocked her head to see the woman wearing sunglasses. “Doesn’t seem right, somehow,” she murmured.

“Let’s go to Taylor’s,” Chaplin said. He checked his watch.

“Is it very far?”

“It’s on the corner.”

“These sunglasses aren’t that nice, really.”

He could not remember the last time he had walked up the street. There were few people in view. The orchard across the street was empty; a real-estate company had purchased it and planned to put up houses. There was a line of stores on La Brea that he had once shopped at. The clothes in the window were of a fashion he no longer recognized: beaded purses for women, large, overbearing fur coats—was that raccoon?—for men. Why?

“The little mouse, he seems to enjoy his wheel.”