Ack! It was Pickford! He blinked. No, it was just a girl with the same perfect curls. She darted from one of the bedrooms, nearly bumping into him, her drink splashing over the rim of her glass. She was short, her hair a highly organized simulacrum of Pickford’s, and her mouth hung open so fully he imagined he could hang a bucket of water from her jaw.

“Hullo,” he said, “I’m Charlie Chaplin.”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes. You are. Oh!”

He could find nothing attractive about her in a glance, and so he stayed. “Is it a good party?”

“Yes. Good.”

“I just arrived,” he said, brimming with love of all humanity, even the plain, speechless girls. “I’m hoping you can tell me where to get a cup of tea.”

“I don’t know.” Her hand clenched around her drink, and the other reached behind her, finding the wall. “I’m sorry,” she said, and walked past him, back toward the living room. He sighed, and proceeded down the hall. He shouldered past more people, nodding at them and smiling, until, aghast, he saw Pickford! No, it was Mae Murray, whose hair was also professionally and slavishly done like Pickford’s, so Chaplin slumped backward, directly into the path of a waiter with a tray of food. They barely missed each other.

He was face to face with Mildred.

“Oh,” he said, for she had changed into her bathing costume. It was black mohair, and belted, with a modest skirt that ended far below the hips. His grandmother could have worn it. “You look lovely,” he said.

She played absently with the strap of her bathing cap, which was red. “I think I’m going to swim, but I might be too cold. I don’t like cold.”

“Neither do I. How can you trust someone who says he likes to be cold?”

“You can’t,” she said, shaking her head. “Goodbye, Mr. Chaplin.” She trotted out the door, onto the patio, where she found a towel to wrap around her waist. She slowed and stopped, joining the crowd. Her curiosity was intense enough that Chaplin strolled outside, too.

The fog absorbed the edges of the scene, making him feel as if he were on an island. The crowd was of perhaps twenty people, more of them in swimming costumes than not, and all of the women, like Mildred, draping their thighs and legs with knotted towels.

Beside the dead oak tree was a short marble pillar, and on it stood a balding man with tufts of black hair above his ears and a crêpe ring-beard glued to his face. He was dressed in velvet breeches, like a courtier in Shakespeare, and he was reading aloud “Thanatopsis.”

Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.