“Fine,” Pickford said. She played with her glasses, tugging them. Chaplin was a bit dazed. Had he just done something for Pickford’s benefit? “We have an urgent situation here,” she said. “I don’t tend to lose. It behooves McAdoo and me to work with you on the larger project. I think Doug will be involved. Perhaps Bill Hart. Others, maybe,” she said.

“What are you thinking?”

She shook her head. “You need to do something else first.”

“Yes?”

“Finish Sunnyside. Do whatever that takes.”

When Chaplin left the bungalow, he saw McAdoo back on the stage set, holding a teacup between his big, soft hands. McAdoo gave a brief nod. Chaplin’s hand was on the doorknob behind him for longer than he meant, and then he broke contact.

It was nine-thirty in the morning. Chaplin stood in the courtyard of the studio built upon his popularity. He started walking. Quickly.

There was trouble at the mill, but there was always trouble at the mill. And it was never flax thieves, or a sabotaged conveyor belt, or fire menacing a poor, deaf servant girl. No, it was the owner himself, wondering if he was meant for a different life. Perhaps, with each turn of the mighty mill-wheel, the owner thought of the sole moment of stolen joy when he kissed the millboy, and how the shameful moment of passion blossomed in his chest until it felt as if it would crush him.

Oh, Mary, how can you fix that ache? There’s no medicine you can speed across the frozen river to cure that pain. All the winsome orphans it takes to scrub a foster mother’s kitchen floor are shot once in the back of the head by sheer existence.

Here’s how it worked in pictures: The Little Fellow is down, and a cop fingers him unjustly. He spends fifteen minutes pulling himself out of the soup, until the end.

But in life, it actually worked like this: diphtheria.

There was no end to trouble. There were only the moments in between.

When he reached his office, he stroked the cat on his desk. There was a typewritten plea from a group of Four Minute Men, now unemployed, that someone hire them in the motion-picture industry. The cat rolled atop it. Frances never thought about him. His hand was trembling.

“Helen?”

His secretary appeared at his door.

“Do you know about girls’ clothes? What kind of things my mother would like?”

“I can ask Rhiannon.”

“Did she shop for her?”

“When she came.” Helen smiled. “Hannah loved it. She bought yards of silk. She said she just wanted to unroll each bolt and lie down, which I thought was so—”

“I want a wardrobe for my mother. Several of everything, hats, gloves, coats, dressing gowns, whatever she needs. Have Rhiannon go to Bullock’s and put it on my account. Oh, shoes, of course, and underthings, toiletries, and so forth.”

Helen excused herself.