Dancing at their wedding. Toasts. Nuptial bed. They would build a bassinet together even though neither of them would be handy, and she would scrape her knuckles because she insisted on doing it herself, and he would be in the other room, painting blue on one wall and pink on the other, and hear her cry out, and he would kiss the skin on the back of her hand. He would lie in bed and hear her brushing her hair, and when she felt a snag he would feel it, at first. They would enter that odd year of the marriage, the fifth, when it went from looking at your loved one to overlooking. She would have rashes and ask him what that smell was, and he would say he didn’t smell anything, and he would misplace the natural pearl stickpin she’d given him, and she would think it meant something more than it did, and they would also love each other’s work and make it better. This is your best, you are making art as good as you are, Frances, and you are, too, Charlie. He would buy flowers and notice on the way home that petals had fallen out and would be torn between giving her damaged good and nothing at all. She would think of leaving him, and every time she didn’t, it would be her deciding to fall in love again, and that would be a miracle.

He stopped the music. He told the orchestra to take a break, and he walked back to his apartment, and closed the door and sat on his sofa, his fingertips pressed to the bridge of his nose, eyes on the bulbs of his size-sixteen workboots, newly scuffed to hell.

Mildred was sitting in the overstuffed wing chair.

“Oh,” he said. “Darling. How long have you been here?”

She wore a wonderful smile. “I didn’t want to disturb you while you were working.”

“Not disturbing, not in the slightest. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She smiled. And then she laughed.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. Things are terrific.” Another laugh.

“I just—” It was good to see her. He felt the desire for Frances slip away like a lover hiding under the rug. “You know, it’s funny—just now, I was just thinking of you. The boys screened Borrowed Clothes last night. It was quite good.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“You have talent. I know I don’t say that often enough, but it’s true.” When her smile continued, radiant, he laughed. “Why do you look so good today? You have a secret.”

“I do.”

“Tell me!”

“I don’t know,” she teased. Her eyes went hooded, as if the secret were saucy indeed, and then she exploded with it. “I joined a new church.”

Chaplin laughed now, good and hard. Then, “Oh.”