Lionel had laughed. He claimed Max’s hashish helped him think.

But if this toy-shop flicker was his scenario, Pin didn’t believe he’d thought much. She watched as Beery grabbed a hammer and tapped at a doll head so hard it broke. Everyone in the studio laughed, and she took advantage of the moment to search the crowd for Lionel.

She sighted him on the far side of the crowded room. Slipping past several actors dressed as policemen, she hopped over coils of wires and other equipment until she reached him.

Lionel looked down and elbowed her. “Hiya, kid. This is one of mine.”

Pin furtively dug the box of hashish cigarettes from her pocket and gave it to him.

“Thanks, kid,” Lionel murmured, and slid the box into his pocket. He was old, almost thirty, medium tall, but he slouched. Even though he only wrote photoplays, he dressed like an actor: beautifully pressed trousers and shirts, his dark hair beneath his boater slicked back and smelling of Lilac Vegetal. He looked rich, which Pin figured he was, if he could afford to spend three dollars a week on hashish.

He nudged her again. “See who that is?”

Lionel cocked his head to indicate a man in the near corner, posing for a publicity photo with two girls. The girls were maybe twelve years old but costumed to look younger, in matching buttercup-yellow dresses embroidered with white daisies. Enormous yellow bows perched on their dark curls like butterflies. Close by stood several cameramen and a man in a business suit—Mr. Spoor, the S of the S and A in Essanay Studios, like Bronco Billy Anderson was the A.

Chaplin draped an arm around the shoulders of each girl, lowered his head, and pulled them close to him, grinning for the photographer.

“Charlie Chaplin?” marveled Pin. “He came back?”

“Just for a visit. Too cold here, he says.”

“It’s not cold now.”

“Wait a few months. He asked your gal Glory to lunch with him at the canteen. She turned him down, so he asked her pal Valerie.”

Pin watched Chaplin mug for the camera, playing with his hat, a boater, not the bowler he wore in the movies. He was much smaller than he looked on screen, and much younger, slender and tan, with tousled black hair, his face clean shaven. Of course she knew the mustache was only greasepaint, but it was still surprising how boyish he looked without it; also to see the color of his eyes, a brilliant lake blue.

The photographer lifted his head from his camera to adjust the tripod and signaled Chaplin with a finger: One more shot. Chaplin dropped his arms and hugged the prettier of the two girls, burying his face in her ringlets.

“Smile, Maria!” yelled the photographer.