Mordecai watched his daughter carefully. The proceeds from the jewelry-store enterprise would keep them in clover, but he was preparing for his next job. Whatever it was. He was a little tired, and was thinking, as he occasionally did, of going straight. To that end, he had a stack of books on the grass next to him, and he was currently keeping his thumb and forefinger in a text on Bolshevik theory, which struck him as having interesting applications. “What are you wondering, Pumpkin?”

“No one negotiated for me. I make ten dollars.”

“Oh, sweetie.” He put his book down and gave her a hug. “You’re worth more than ten dollars.” Then his smile faded. He began to see what she meant. “Hmm. That’s a tough row to hoe.”

“What about Betty Blythe? Someone like her? Helen Chadwick?”

“What’s to negotiate?” He put his hands over his head in a protracted yawn. “The studio offers a contract. They take it.”

“Hmm,” she said.

“I thought I saw what you were driving at, but now I’m not so sure. If one of them says no to terms, then Alice Joyce or someone will come in and sign. It’s supply and demand. Uncle Harvey does a little skimming, of course.”

She said her “Oh” and then, without further comment, she kissed her father on the cheek and went to her room, where she lay on her bed and stared at her dolls.

Since there was not much to do at the studio, she had become bored, and it was unwise to let Rebecca be bored.

The next day, Chaplin called the day players back in and sent them to Wardrobe. He assembled the others, his core troupe, those few who had been in film after film with him, on the main stage, which was empty of props. It was a windy day, with the underbellies of thick clouds jutting by overhead. “We are going to turn the Little Fellow loose in a museum,” he said.

“Roller skates?” Loyal Underwood called out.

“No. How many of you are familiar with tableaux vivants?” Most of them were, since they had been to vaudeville shows. There was some laughter as people realized the excellence of this idea: the Little Fellow loose among the School of Athens, or pushing clumsily on Fragonard’s swing.

Waiting quietly near him was a girl he’d seen three nights before, in How Could You, Jean?, a terrible Pickford film whose rare critical drubbing had caused him to stand on the tips of his toes and spin in ecstasy. The girl, however, interested him. She was frail and ugly and stole every scene.

“Come here,” he said, his eyes taking in the boy’s cap, the sagging blouse, the sad tweed skirt. Her name was Zasu Pitts, and her body was like a bucketful of coat hangers. Her secret weapon: her face.