Kayo never gave a thought to jealousy.
Every day she went through the entertainment magazines and weeklies strewn about my bedroom, cut out every column or interview that I appeared in, and diligently pasted the clippings into a scrapbook. Her favorites were the photographs of me chatting with gorgeous actresses, the gossip columns about me and gorgeous models, and the endless debates over who I was going to marry.
“This one says you’re engaged to Midori Masaki. Hah! That’s a laugh. Everybody knows her uterus is chronically inflamed.”
Most of all she loved the interviews where I was asked about the type of woman I preferred. She found one called “A Dreamboat’s Musings on the Ideal Girl” and began to read aloud: “I’m a sucker for a pretty face, but I’m especially drawn to slimmer pixie types. And there’s something irresistible about a woman’s ankles…”
“Perfect!” she said. “Stick with that. There’s no need to be hopelessly romantic. Modern stars need to speak in a way that clearly frames the woman as a sex object.”
“Watch out, or they’ll switch you to the PR Office.”
“How about my ankles, Rikio?”
Kayo shook off one of her slippers, gestured her leg in the air like an Indian dancer, and presented me with her bare foot. The knob of her girthy ankle was tough, rugged, and discolored. If the ankle of a girl is like an almond in a thin, delicate skin, Kayo’s was a big brown chestnut. What makes a woman’s ankles beautiful is this immodesty, the sudden appearance of something animalistic along the otherwise smooth leg, yet Kayo’s ankles were like knots in old wood, the evidence of some oppressive natural law.
But I can’t say I felt anything like disgust◦— that was for the real world, the world I had forsaken.
I lifted Kayo’s foot with one hand and met her ankle with my lips. It went limp, lost its stiffness and its dryness, and became a giant yellow rose, or the face, carved from boxwood, of a meditative buddha. It gave off a smoldering light and took on subtle undulations. The presence of cool bone was palpable beneath the skin, and I imagined it was bare bone I was kissing.
At that moment I kissed the essence of my fallacy. This was the very core of my existence, and the ultimate expression of the world that I had chosen, the world where I belonged. It was something no one else had ever tasted.
Kayo squealed and pulled her foot away◦— she saw straight through my most obscure emotions.
“Playtime’s over, little prince,” she said. “You’ll always be my handsome little prince, even when you’re sixty.”
“Let’s do it, Richie.”
The second assistant director walked over to where I sat. “Richie” was the cutesy nickname favored on set and among my fans.
I looked away from the little mirror, handed it to Kayo, and stood up.
We were shooting at the busy center of a suburb, in a neighborhood along one side of an elevated railroad. The embankments leading up to the tracks were covered with grass, but trash was piled at the bottom of the slope, and scraps of litter tangled in the shallow roots. The sunlight inside of a tin can shimmered on a little pool of yesterday’s rain.
On this side of the tracks there were cheap bars and saloons. It was the middle of the day; everything was closed, but the windows were full of faces, locals peeking out to catch a free show whenever the camera was pointed away. Outside, the fans pushed and shoved behind the ropes strung up on both sides of the street.
With my striped shirt barely buttoned, I slung my jacket over my shoulder.
The cinemascope camera was perched on a wooden tripod, its lens pointed at the road.
When we were filming, Takahama was always squatting by the camera. He was lanky, skeletal, and had a long, hyperactive nose and a tiny little mouth. His whole face was darkened from incessant exposure to the brutal world of dreams. Habitually dismissing the commotion of his surroundings to give himself the space to think, his gaze was lonely and parched, a gaze most people could never wear in public. It felt so private, like something I was never meant to see. He had the eyes of a child locked naked in a secret room.
“We’ll open with you over there,” he said, almost talking to himself, and stood from his crouch, clutching the script.
“You kick the empty can into the air. Water goes flying. The camera tilts up. Then you say… what’d we say?”
“Damn, even that trash rolls better than me.”
“Right. At the end of the line, on ‘better than me,’ we’ll dub in the whoosh of the train. Squint like you’re annoyed. That’ll do it.”
We got ready for the test run. Because the camera couldn’t catch the water in the can effectively, the assistant director had to crouch down on the ground and painstakingly adjust the way it pointed. There were peaches on the label. With its jagged lid flipped up, the blown-out can looked awfully solemn.
It should come as no surprise, but whenever we’re filming on location, whether in a town like this or somewhere way off in the mountains, “nature” is nowhere to be found. After passing through the camera, the scenery is no more than a dense collection of objects. Alluring forests or mesmerizing temples separate into their various constituents, with every scene a garbage dump of information, another miscellaneous, wild heap of things that are cold, or dark, or twinkling, or stagnant, a confusion of unmanageable shapes. Amid all this, some trivial or unlikely object◦— like a broken bottle in a wall of garbage◦— declares its splendor.
“Try not to hit this thing with your foot during the test run,” the assistant director told me.
“Which direction am I supposed to kick it?”
“That depends…”
“Up!” cried Takahama. “It’s gotta be up! Otherwise the water won’t go anywhere. Alright! Test!”
Takahama was already on edge. Maybe he’d been cursed by the tumbling scraps of paper.
Every time the train whooshed above us during the test run, I squinted in a way that failed to satisfy.
“It doesn’t look like you’re annoyed. Looks like you’re squinting at a light that’s shining in your face. That’s not gonna cut it. Try not to let your eyes close. It’s not like you’ve suddenly gone blind or something. Alright?… You’re squinting because of the train, but your face has to make sense with the previous line. You’re not even thinking about the train. What train?”
I found myself adrift in the lonely expanse that an actor enters upon being criticized, but I remained enveloped in my role as if it were an invisible skin, close and protective. It traced the contours of my mind and body, wafted up like ether, shielding me from reality. I may as well have been behind a castle wall. Even if the director lost his temper and threw a punch at me, his fist would swim through unreal air and never actually hit me. I knew this, I was certain, but the real world has no parallel for such certainty.
After the test run, we were finally ready to shoot. Everything depended on the train, and since I had to do the lead-up with my back turned to the tracks, it was going to be difficult to time. I had measured it by listening to the train as it crossed the overpass and approached the tracks above us.
“What time’s the next one?” Takahama asked.
“3:18, on the dot,” the assistant director answered. “Or rather, that’s when it reaches the station. It should hit the overpass at 3:16 and thirty seconds.”
“Alright, start shooting when it hits the overpass.”
The assistant director hushed the crowd with his megaphone.
“Quiet down, please, we’re about to begin.”
Kayo came over with the little mirror. Her shoddy black slacks, snug at the thighs, barely contained her ample hips. I glanced in the mirror and then gave it back to her. She looked over my face as if inspecting fabric for imperfections.