Lee found himself walking like Chaplin. It was contagious. The crowd was thick but separating, the end-of-parade noises winding down, the streets littered with streamers and trash and sawhorses, automobiles parked half on the sidewalk, and with every obstacle, Lee had the urge to doff his hat, politely spin around pedestrians, step onto a roller skate, backflip over a man pouring concrete, and tumble into a trough of bluing.

He faced the crush of people with supreme confidence, as if for a moment he understood it. The world was at war, but the world also seemed like a Charlie Chaplin movie, full of scowling society matrons, mountainous mustachioed toughs, pretty girls who hadn’t enough to eat, and pies left at dangerous angles at the edges of tables.

There had been something extra in the movie that he’d never seen before in a Chaplin, and it began with the dog. It was an extension of sympathy, and even now, thinking of the single, small moment of Chaplin offering the dog milk from a bottle, Lee was again at the edge of tears.

He thought of his father again, quickly, and his heart fell as if down a lonely well. He wanted to be away from the crowd. There was a newsstand inside the lobby of a hotel, so he went through the revolving door.

The newsstand was a blaze of primary colors and pastel cover models, and Lee’s eye spotted the bright-red May issue of Motion Picture. The image, painted by Leyendecker, was the face of Mr. Charlie Chaplin, as the Tramp, forlorn and with a single smudge of soot on his weary cheek. The text read, “A Dog’s Life for Charlie? Or an Immortal’s?”

The lobby was all dark oak, marbled floors with brass fittings and tall fluted columns, rather smart. The wealthy stayed here, the type with matching, monogrammed, leather-bound, silk-lined portmanteaux, which made Lee feel inadequate. He would make this quick: he did have the ten cents for the magazine, which he wanted to reach for, but there was someone in the way.

It was a small, dapper man with unruly black hair smartly parted to the side. He smelled, almost too much, of Mitsouko by Guerlain, which made Lee assume he was rich. He was admiring the magazine rack, it seemed, the whole thing, top to bottom, as if everything interested him equally. And his hand stole toward the Motion Picture number, then withdrew.

Lee was thinking about how he would answer questionnaires in the future. “Name: Lee Duncan. Hobbies: Lee Duncan.”

“It’s all right, go on, get it,” Lee said.

The man glanced up, slightly red. “Get—which?”

“The Motion Picture magazine. It’s all right.” Men tended to be shy about admitting they read about movies, particularly when Chaplin and not a pretty girl was on the cover.