“Zukor is showcasing him. Arbuckle is going to make three million, guaranteed. If the films work, he could make six million.”

“Three—” Chaplin stopped. “Six? To make features? I thought everyone was getting cut out of the money.”

“Arbuckle is the proof that the new trust will be generous to those of us who play well with others,” she said.

He felt as if he were dissolving, as if someone were leeching the life from his body. He sat back down. “I can’t…”

“I think we can fight them. Bill does, too. We have an idea, but we can’t do it without you.”

“Mary, I’m having a very difficult time right now. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m …”

“Just calm down. Can I show you something?” Her eyes were soft behind her spectacles as she thumbed through the folder on the table. “Here.” The way she said it, childlike, soothing, he imagined she was going to show him a photo of a kitten, a drawing of a castle.

It was a mathematical formula. The hand was familiar. It took up most of the page, with delta signs, functions and integrals, imaginary numbers in strange repetition, like place settings at a table, and tucked among them like dinner guests were odd words like “stand-in,” “ego,” “audience,” “diegetic effect,” “fear,” “pleasure,” “earning capacity.”

Pickford explained: McAdoo had been working on this since the Liberty Loan campaign. He felt there was some function to movie stardom that had its own value beyond simple dollars. It was based in part on work by a German psychologist, she couldn’t remember the name. “‘It was the darnedest thing,’” she said, imitating McAdoo with a precision that annoyed Chaplin. “‘I thought I found an integer these producers don’t know about. And they found it and they use it every dingdong day. Golly,’” she finished. “Well, you know how he gets.”

Chaplin laughed meekly. “Squirrels and pigeons and … Gosh …”

“He says our whereabouts are a commodity. He says that’s something new.”

This was the moment he was supposed to turn around and launch an offensive. Scrappy. But Chaplin felt like a hollow log, no heart, just a quiet urge to decay alone somewhere. “Can I explain something?” He knew she was the one person on earth it was important to tell this to. “Sunnyside. It ends with the Little Fellow’s death,” he whispered.

Pickford sat back in her chair. She moved her jaw from side to side, an old exercise from her theater days. “I don’t think so.”

“It’s inevitable. It’s— What do you mean, ‘I don’t think so’?”

He waited for her to say more, even as she was waiting for him to understand. He tried to put what she was saying in a positive or negative light, and he could not.

“Finish your film.”

“I want it to be good.”

“I’ve seen what you’ve shot.”

“You have?”