“Six foot five.” There was more news about Frances, news of nurses and drivers and Hello Girls, but Charlie could not hear it. He wanted the day to end. He needed Doug to come back so he could leave gracefully. Mary was hesitating.

“Yes?”

“I noticed something about this one.” She inclined her head toward the projector, rather than the screen, as most people would have. Her eyes were careful. “He doesn’t change.”

“He changes,” Chaplin said, as automatically as if someone had fed a nickel into him, but he saw something forgiving in Mary’s face. “Well, you’re right, I suppose. I couldn’t actually have him be a hero. You know, the role of heroism is no longer understood in this complex—”

“I agree with you,” she said. As if she were sharing a secret, she leaned in, and even in the weak light of the little theater, the bounce of her curls made Chaplin’s wary heart melt a fraction. “It’s an odd trick, Charlie. You play the Tramp every time, and every time he has to stick up for himself, and by the end he’s changed. And then you make the next one, and he’s back where he started.”

“Well, he’s the same all the time and he’s different. He’s a pooka,” Chaplin said. “That’s a kind of spirit—”

“I know what a pooka is,” Mary whispered. “But he doesn’t change this time.”

Chaplin swallowed. The way she said it, she sounded like a physician who had just thumped on his chest and found something wanting. “No, he doesn’t. I hope that’s still all right.”

“It’s all right,” she said hazily. “Tell me, does he have a family, ever?”

“Oh! Well, originally, I had given him children and a wife, and he joins up because they’re so horrible.”

“A mother? Does he have a mother?”

“Mary, I don’t know.”

“It’s just an odd thing, fifty or sixty movies into it, and you don’t know if he has a mother.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, that’s nonsense, why would he have something like that?”

She didn’t respond. The question had not been probing or cruel, he now realized. She had been offering him the services of an expert storyteller. When had he started yelling at her?

But then Doug was behind him, expelling a sigh of satisfaction, having returned from his trip to the Chaplin Studios toilet as if he’d been leading a safari. He threw his arms around Mary and was telling Chaplin how much he had laughed, how Shoulder Arms would make a mint, and was inviting him out again, telling him to cancel his three o’clock.

“Say,” said McAdoo. He looked around the room, and his accountant’s eye was just counting heads. Chaplin, Fairbanks, Pickford, and Syd were the only ones left. “Could I talk to you folks for a moment?”