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Having returned to civilization, Henry behaved like an ordinary person for once and took a commercial flight to New York.
Katie remained behind at his rented home in Los Angeles.
He hadn't brought her with him.
Domestic flights involved little in the way of customs or complicated inspections. After landing, Henry took a taxi straight to East 49th Street in Manhattan, the traditional luxury residential area of Turtle Bay.
Dressed in casual clothes, with long hair and a scraggly beard, Henry looked like a hippie straight out of the 1970s.
When he pressed the visitor intercom, the building's doorman stared at him suspiciously.
The look in the man's eyes practically said that if anything seemed off, Henry would be thrown out onto the street immediately.
"Hepburn Residence. Who is it?" came a voice through the intercom.
"Maria, it's Henry Brown."
Henry waved at the camera.
"Oh my God, Mr. Brown. You look completely different!"
"Haha. I just wanted a change of pace."
Did you know what bothered Henry most after he lost the ability to use heat vision?
It wasn't that his homemade battle-suit project had come to a halt.
It was that he could no longer cut his hair or shave.
This rugged wilderness look was not something he had chosen voluntarily.
"Come up quickly. Oh, right—Tony Stark is here too."
The front door buzzed open.
So the young master is here as well.
Henry didn't think much of it.
He calmly headed upstairs.
As he passed, he even waved at the doorman and deliberately made a ridiculous face, as though declaring victory.
---
Katherine Hepburn herself stood at the apartment door to welcome him.
The smile on her face vanished the moment she saw him.
"Who are you?"
"Katherine, it's me. Henry Brown."
The elderly actress tilted her head and thought for a moment.
"Who's Henry Brown?"
"A filthy, scruffy little punk who thinks far too highly of himself and looks like a hippie."
The comment came from Tony Stark, who stood inside holding a glass of liquor.
The old woman didn't hesitate.
She grabbed Henry's beard and yanked hard enough to make him bend over.
Then she raised her wrinkled hands and began inspecting his face.
Pulling his hair.
Pinching his cheeks.
Even pulling down his eyelids.
"Ah, Henry. It really is you."
She looked him over.
"Why do you look like a caveman? Is Hollywood filming a live-action Flintstones movie?"
Memory problems or not, Katherine Hepburn's ability to mock people remained first-rate.
"Katherine," Henry said helplessly, "that's certainly a unique identification method. How exactly did that prove it was me?"
She ignored the question completely.
"Come inside, child. Don't stand out there."
What could one do when dealing with an elderly child who lived entirely in her own world?
Option one: run.
Run as far away as possible.
Option two: go along with it.
There really wasn't any other choice.
"Coming in, coming in."
Henry held the door for her.
"You should head inside too."
The moment Katherine turned around and spotted Tony Stark, her face lit up.
"Howard! You came to visit me too!"
Mistaken for his dead father, Tony wore an expression of profound emotional suffering.
He clearly wanted to say something.
Nothing came out.
Trying not to laugh, Henry offered an explanation.
"Katherine, that's not Howard Stark."
"That's Tony Stark."
"Tony Stark?" she asked. "Who's that?"
"Howard Stark's son."
Katherine looked genuinely shocked.
"Howard has a son? Impossible."
"That little scoundrel chased women everywhere. If he didn't know how to protect himself, he'd have fathered dozens of illegitimate children by now."
"How could he just casually have a son?"
Katherine Hepburn had been born in 1907.
Howard Stark in 1917.
So when she called Howard "that little scoundrel," nobody present had any grounds to object.
She was ten years older than he had been.
Meanwhile, Tony's emotional pain doubled.
Then Katherine muttered to herself:
"I just hope the boy doesn't take after his father.
"Always chasing women and never settling down.
"Men who spend their lives causing trouble for other people's daughters shouldn't be surprised if fate gives them a daughter to repay their debts."
Henry burst out laughing.
"Too late for that.
"The real question is whether the young master inherited his father's expertise in precautionary measures.
"For all we know, he already has enough illegitimate children out there to form a basketball team."
Tony immediately made a throat-slitting gesture at Henry when Katherine wasn't looking.
Henry simply stretched his neck out and patted it.
Go ahead. Try it.
The silent argument ended when Katherine interrupted them.
Grabbing Henry by the arm, she pulled him toward the dining room.
"Come quickly. I made cookies.
"Help me taste them and see if they're any good."
"That sounds wonderful," Henry replied.
"I just got off a plane. I'm a little hungry."
Watching her shuffle forward with slow, hunched movements was genuinely painful.
It was obvious that good health had long since left her.
Yet as they passed Tony, Katherine suddenly moved with astonishing speed.
She snatched the drink right out of his hand.
"Spencer, your liver is already in terrible shape. No more drinking."
Tony stared at his vanished glass.
He seemed to have many things he wanted to say.
In the end, he simply sighed.
"Alright. I won't drink."
"Good boy."
For a moment, neither Henry nor Tony knew whether Katherine was truly confused or simply taking advantage of the situation.
The entire scene was both funny and heartbreaking.
Placing the glass on a nearby table, Katherine took one man by each arm and led them toward the dining room.
As they walked, she reminisced about old stories unknown to outsiders.
At the same time, she nagged the men beside her like a devoted wife fussing over her family.
Tony remained stubborn.
Unless she called him by his actual name, he refused to answer directly.
Henry, on the other hand, was far more accommodating.
No matter whose name she used, he responded.
Sometimes she called him Spencer.
Sometimes John.
Occasionally Howard.
Only under particularly fortunate circumstances did she remember Henry.
As for this mysterious "John," Henry guessed she probably meant John Ford—born John Martin Feeney—the famous director who had once harbored feelings for Katherine Hepburn.
Incidentally, John Ford had carried a camera through active combat zones during World War II.
He held an official military rank and was eventually promoted to Rear Admiral in the U.S. Naval Reserve.
He was one of only two Hollywood figures to attain general-officer status.
The other was James Stewart, a Brigadier General in the U.S. Air Force.
During World War II, Stewart flew bombers on the European front and even commanded missions targeting Berlin.
Unfortunately, when John Ford pursued Katherine Hepburn, he already had a wife and two children.
Spencer Tracy had been much the same.
During his long relationship with Hepburn, he refused to divorce his wife, citing his Catholic faith.
Even after Tracy's death in 1967, Hepburn once admitted to a friend that she was never entirely certain whether she had been the one he truly loved.
Even so, she cherished every moment they had shared.
For a woman who became famous as one of cinema's most independent and pioneering female figures, Katherine Hepburn's romantic life was strangely full of married men and notorious playboys.
Now, in her twilight years, her mind clouded by age, none of the men she thought about so often remained by her side.
It was difficult not to feel a sense of sadness.
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