Star

5

The day after we called it a wrap was the first day the sun was harsh enough to feel like summer. It was almost like a holiday for me, but in my usual masochistic way I went to the studio early for a haircut.

Kayo had a meeting with the PR Office, and I walked clear across the studio grounds toward the old squat building that was the barber shop. The vast lawn was banded with islands of light. On the other side, next to a row of tour buses, squads of extras waited to be shuttled off-site for location shoots.

Someone gave directions through a megaphone: “All those assigned to head into the city with Director Takeuchi, please proceed to your designated bus.”

The voice, grainy and barely comprehensible, repeated the directions. The extras wore the robes of vagabonds. As if on cue, the whole posse looked my way.

I plodded toward them through the sunlight. At the buses, I said “Good morning!” to Director Takeuchi, gave an affable “Good morning!” to his crew, and then turned to admire the swaths of cloud lingering over the woods edging the lot.

I was modest and merry, everybody’s favorite star. Along came Ken from lighting.

“Morning, Ken!”

“Richie! You’re out early. Who’s the lucky lady?”

“Come off it, Ken. You see these eyes? These are the eyes of a virgin!”

I pulled my eyelids back, to prove it. We parted in front of the barber shop.

Inside, I sank into the ancient chair and watched the bright white sheet billow up in the reflection of the mirror. As it settled over my chest, the quiet old barber picked up his scissors and went to work behind me. He knew exactly what I wanted.

The snipping of the scissors made me sleepy. Off to the side, on the seats by the sunny window, I saw the morning paper, tossed aside and pulled apart.

Since I had nothing on my mind, I thought of Kayo.

I was certain she was over at the PR Office. She had to be. But who could prove it?

Battling sleep made the pattern of my thoughts grow hazy and obscure.

If I couldn’t say for sure that Kayo was at the PR Office, could I be sure that she existed? What if she wasn’t actually anywhere? Not the PR Office, not the soundstage, not anywhere on the face of the earth? If Kayo was something only I could see, then why did everyone pretend to see her? Or maybe I just thought they were pretending. What if no one ever mentioned her because they couldn’t actually see her?

A snipped bang dropped across my vision like the shadow of a bird. The problem of Kayo’s existence prodded my numb brain bluntly, almost imperceptibly.

If Kayo didn’t exist, if that much was true, what guaranteed that I did? If I didn’t actually exist, then who was here, bright and early, barely awake in the barber’s chair?

I must have fallen into a deep sleep.

“Kokura’s here!” a voice said into my ear, startling me awake. It was Kayo. I looked over, and seated two chairs down, attended by a pair of reverent assistants, was Aijiro Kokura. The original lady killer. The cornerstone of our studio. A star among stars.

I couldn’t help myself and jumped out of the chair to greet him.

“Good morning, Sensei!”

“Morning. Sleepy huh? It’s tough being young.”

Kokura winked at me, with a rakish glimmer in his eye.

Even through the mirror I was too bashful to look at him directly. No one knew his actual age, but judging from the fact that he was famous in the silent era, he had to be over fifty. His face was breathtaking. Handsome in a way that blended manliness and suppleness, the rugged and the placid, stoicism and feeling. He was the dream lover of generations of women, from fifteen to seventy, sneaking into their bedrooms every night like a sandman of love.

But in the pronounced daylight of the barber’s mirror, Aijiro Kokura’s excesses were evident. He was a living god, male beauty sublime, incapable of doing wrong, but he had committed one great sin: the sin of growing old.

He wasn’t wearing any makeup; and while he had retained his silhouette, his skin had lost its tautness. Decay was evident. Thanks to expert makeup, subtle camera angles, and tricks with lighting, the creases under his eyes had been hidden from the public, but there was no hiding the wrinkles from this angle. Something in his big, beautiful eyes had begun to turn, like dark ripples approaching from the distance. His mouth had slackened, and unless he kept it firmly shut the youthful line of his bottom lip was lost.

His handsome face had become a dingy plaque, a place to hang a mask◦— the mask of the handsome face that he had lost.

I was struck by an unfathomable terror and looked back into the mirror.

The old barber shifted his attention to Kokura and stepped away from my chair. The only thing remaining in the mirror was my young face poking from the bleach-white sheet.

Kayo entered the frame. The real Kayo, who existed. With her hair in a bun and no trace of makeup, she brought her lips to my ear and smiled at me through the mirror. Her silver teeth flashed between her lips.

She whispered to me in a voice almost too low to hear but hot with zeal.

“Even when you’re sixty, I’m still going to call you my handsome prince.”