The cat jumped back into place, and Chaplin stroked her cheek. It was eight o’clock. The crew was waiting. But William McAdoo was walking across the courtyard. He hadn’t expected McAdoo. A moment later, Chaplin was in the courtyard.

“Bill!”

McAdoo drew up short. “Hello, Charlie. How’s Sunnyside?”

“It’s fine.”

“Are you finished with it yet?”

“Almost. To what do I owe the visit?”

McAdoo rubbed his chin. “Honestly …” His eyes wandered toward Edna’s bungalow, and then, because he hadn’t the soul of a criminal, he looked away. He could not have been more conspicuously not looking at Edna’s bungalow had he started whistling.

Chaplin folded his arms. “She isn’t here, you know.” And as he said it, he hoped this meant McAdoo was just a suitor with no particular understanding of Edna’s schedule.

“No? No, well, right, I know that.” McAdoo looked slightly red. “I just wanted to, to— I’m not very good at subterfuge here, and—”

“Oh, that’s all right. Would you like a cup of tea?”

“I don’t really have time, Charlie, but…”

The discomfort delighted him. McAdoo seemed about twelve years old. Chaplin forcefully led him to the stage, which was now converted to the dingy Sunnyside hotel set, floorboards interrupted with clumps of grass. There was a check-in desk smeared with dirt, a general-store counter dotted with preserves and tins of food, and four broken chairs around a potbellied stove, next to a shabby excuse for a barber’s chair.

The stove was a working one; Chaplin put a kettle atop it and indicated that McAdoo should sit, which he did, with difficulty, on a chair that might not hold his weight.

“How goes the Big Store?” asked Chaplin.

“Golly, it’s bad.”

Which Chaplin hadn’t expected. “Is it?”

“These are ruthless folks, it turns out.”

“Well. I can play that game,” Chaplin said.

McAdoo took off his spectacles, fogged them, and put them back on. “Yeah. Huh. I don’t think so.”

“Perhaps you underestimate me,” he said, while staring at his teapot.

“No, it’s not that. It’s just math, is all. Your films bring in, what, four million a year, maybe five? Well, they want an industry that’s about a quarter billion a year when they’re done.” McAdoo put his hand high in the air. “That’s them.” He put it near the ground. “That’s you. And that’s not to scale.”

“I understand.”

“I could do it to scale….” He shrugged. “They’ll crush you.”

“They can’t keep me from making movies,” Chaplin declared after a moment.

“If they own the means of production and distribution, sure, they can.”

“Production and … Oh.”