“Hullo, I’m Charles Chaplin,” he said, extending his arm toward the ceiling. It sounded pretentious. “Hello, everyone. I’m Charlie.” Was it more pretentious to leave the “Chaplin” off? It was a Trojan horse of informality, because it pretended he was Charlie No-One-Special, when it actually relied on those to whom he was being introduced knowing the last name themselves. He gathered up a few postcards and squared them.

The postcards were images of masterpieces of European artwork. In the spirit of improving himself, he was learning about Proto-Renaissance Florence, and to which master he could attribute what qualities. For instance, Giotto should be praised for his incisive humanity, and forgiven his inadequate perspective. His Virgin Marys were said to be especially luminous examples of the break with the antiquated Romanesque.

It was entirely possible he would not be able to work that into conversation today, for the party was at the beach.

On the other hand, it was being thrown by a man who ran a production company, and such men were legendarily insecure about what they knew. It was always good policy to frighten the men who ran production companies. Thus Chaplin had stayed up the night before, reading the most frightening party topic of them all: Bolshevik theory. Trotsky’s relentlessness and sore lack of humor fascinated him, and he rather enjoyed the idea of redistribution of wealth, permanent revolution, the unity of workers. This would terrify someone like Goldwyn for two reasons, Chaplin thought: the obvious economic one, but also because it represented something more important than the motion picture. Had Mary Pickford fomented revolution? No, she had not. Had Marguerite Clark told the workers they were the means of production? Unlikely. Had House Peters … etc.

He wasn’t sure how to express Bolshevik theory at the beach. So he had also memorized the plots of Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary, and meant to bring them into conversation as if everyone surely knew what he was talking about.

The producer’s name had once been Samuel Goldfish, but his company, when incorporated, was called “Goldwyn,” and so he was changing his name to match it. This strange chase after identity fascinated Chaplin, and he wondered what it would be like to be a businessman and name himself after his product. “Hullo, I’m Joe Coca-Cola.” Then he thought, “Hullo, I’m Charlie Chaplin,” and it depressed him all over again.

He counted out ten postcards. The writing surface of each bore, in his newly beautiful handwriting, a definition and a sample sentence. Iconoclast. Meme. Hegemony. Cynosure. Epistemology. Fungible. Cyclothymia. Casus belli. Trope. Atavistic.

Would there be bathing? It seemed unlikely; producers did not swim in the ocean. It couldn’t be trusted to obey them.