Chaplin had to recalibrate his finely tuned plans to relax. The hosting chores wouldn’t be courtesy of one insecure Jewish financier who had fled Poland, but instead four young men who had an eye for women. No one was going to care about Trotsky’s speeches, Giotto, or memes of any sort.

“Do you think there will be bathing?” He said this to both women, and Mildred produced from her bag a bathing suit.

“Oh,” he said.

“You look stricken, Mr. Chaplin,” Frances said. “I doubt swimming is required.”

In truth, he was heading into a sort of lions’ den. Jack Pickford was of course Mary’s brother (in the Naval Reserve? the Signal Corps?), Elliott Dexter had been in films with her, and Owen Moore was her estranged husband. As if asking whether there would be sandwiches, Chaplin said, “Is, by any chance, Mary going to be there?”

“Mary who?” asked Frances.

He could not tell if she was teasing. “Mary Pickford.”

“Lord, I hope not,” she said. “I’d like to avoid her today.” Her smile was a confederate’s. She looked relieved to have found a fellow traveler in her plot to escape Mary Pickford. It made him relax. He liked her.

She also liked him, but not for any reason he understood. She had written for Marguerite Clark (one of the Twelve Immortals!), she had done five or six scripts for Gail Kane and Alice Brady, but she wasn’t so foolish as to think Chaplin would know about that. However, she had also written six of the last seven Mary Pickford films, among them Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, The Little Princess, Stella Maris, and The Poor Little Rich Girl. She had three Pickfords in production and three more in development. Pick-ford was shooting one now, and Frances, her best friend, was happy to be away from her for a day. She was positive Chaplin knew this. He was a decidedly handsome man, if more delicate and graceful than her normal type. She had been prepared for him to take himself seriously, to be too cordial and too distant—in short, she had been prepared to despise him. That he was teasing her so grandly made her giddy.

“Not that I dislike Mary,” he was saying.

“Of course not.”

“It’s just that…” Their eyes met, and he noted they were brown and merry and ready to play all afternoon. He imagined Mildred left standing on the curb, and himself biting his mysterious sparring partner, Frank, on the neck. “Here, you be the villain. Look at me like you’re going to shake me within an inch of my life.”

She didn’t even need to ask what he meant. Instead, she folded her arms and let one hand stroke a phantom beard while she glared menacingly.