“Going twice?” A look of genuine dismay swept her face. She was worried about not delivering money as promised, about not being a good girl that way, and perhaps she worried that she was not that attractive. This touched Chaplin unexpectedly. Every day Chaplin awoke ready to hear he was no longer needed. It was a nightmare to have the crowd tepid to your charms.

“Thirty thousand!”

It was difficult to find the source of this shout. The bidder was highly unlikely: Chaplin.

Pickford herself underwent a quick transformation—the pleasure at a new bid was quickly drawn, quartered, and burned at the stake as she realized whom she might have to kiss.

“Thirty-one,” someone cried from nearby.

“Thirty-three,” Chaplin returned.

The same voice seemed to swallow, then: “Thirty-five!”

“Forty,” Chaplin said, looking at his nails. Suddenly the world made sense. He was going to enjoy this kiss more than all the oysters in heaven.

“Fifty, Charlie.”

Chaplin had not been paying attention until now. But the combination of the jump in price and the use of his name caused him to look to the stage, where now stood his competitor, an annoyed-looking Douglas Fairbanks.

For a moment, he was equally annoyed, and then, as the ramifications of Douglas bidding on a kiss from Mary started to rain down on him, he felt a chill, the rising of goosebumps, a stew of awe and wonder and even the slightest bit of horror.

13

The interior of the Curran Theater was filled with auditioning men arguing with staff members over why their allotted times had come and gone (punctuality was, after all, the hallmark of the Four Minute Man). There were police, Liberty Loan volunteers, the judges, the army recruiter (despairing of making a single new soldier today), and Lee and his mother, who were at the heart of a double half-hitch, half-Carrick-bend knot of cops. That the scene did not descend into fistfights was a credit to the temperament of Emily Wheeler, who found her head clearing by the minute. She excused herself and Lee and found a manager’s office in which an interview could be held, and Lee (she thought) quickly acquitted.

Once in the office, and seated, Lee looked about himself for allies, and noted only then that George Barnes seemed to have melted into the walls of the theater simultaneously with the appearance of the cops.

The manager’s office was dismal, with torn leather chairs and a single waffle-wired window smudged over with soot. Lee and Emily were alone. “Tell me about my father,” he said.

“I don’t know what to say about him.”

“Anything.”

“Oh, Lord,” she whispered. “I am drawing a blank, Lee. All the things I could tell you about him are disappointing.” When she saw his eyes, she shook his head. “I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

“Like he was on a submarine? Like he stole a loaf of bread?”

“I wanted to stimulate your imagination.”

“You what?”