In the car, Chaplin was so nervous he folded the newspaper in his hand and smacked it against his thigh. When Kono didn’t turn right on Sunset, he opened his mouth to correct the course, and then remembered he no longer lived at the Athletic Club, but near Beverly Hills.

He wanted to tell Mildred he was doomed. He wanted to tell her to pack her bags, to flee with him. Suddenly the fact that he owned things excited him in a way it never had before. The world was coming to an end. Money gave him something to defend. Syd was right about Mildred. She was funny and intelligent, and there was something more: she was a demon in the sack.

Chaplin envisioned her tied to a brass bed, a villain (himself) who hovered over her, laying his hand to her cheek, throwing his head back and cackling. Without warning, the villain is clubbed over the head and the hero (himself) is rescuing her. Her arms around his neck. Gratitude.

He recalled all the questions he had asked her, all of the “Have you ever …” questions, and how, the first time she had heard them, she had blushed so vividly it was like viewing her skin through the light cast by a wineglass. And then she began to answer them. “I will, with you. With you, I will. All of those things. Teach me the French word again. With you. Tell me about Nazimova. With her? For you.”

The meanders of the front drive made him impatient for his rococo house, and Kono hadn’t even opened the rear door before Chaplin flew out and up the staircase to the bedroom.

He woke Mildred from her nap and threw her nightgown to the floor, and she was almost weeping with pleasure, she was apologizing for the night before, and he was saying to her “my angel,” and at the moment when they were rising toward crisis, he thought that there was another person inside of her and that was that.

The next day, he told his company to strike the museum set. They were returning to Jack of All Trades. He did not dismiss the life models who had come to the studio; he arranged for them to be villagers, and he ordered Wardrobe to find them gingham dresses or plaid workshirts. Make some of them farmers, and give others stations at butter churns. Alf complied, surprised when a representative from the Academy gave him a one-page contract agreeing to the change. They’d never had contracts before. No difference in price, just keeping track, it was explained.