Kubrick turned his head toward the theater as if someone had called his name. He took a subtle step in that direction, signaling that the interview was coming to an end. “Sue is fifteen,” he said uncomfortably. “And we made some adjustments to the book so it would be less shocking. Look, if you see the film, I mean, Lolita is one of the great love stories, isn’t it? If you consider Romeo and Juliet, Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, they all have this in common, this element of the illicit! And in each case, it causes the couple’s complete alienation from society.”

“I saw the film, Stanley,” Goode said. “And it doesn’t matter whether she’s twelve or fourteen—how do you think the National Legion of Decency is going to respond to the reference to Camp Climax for the girls or that line about ‘Your uncle is going to fill my daughter’s cavity on Thursday afternoon’?”

Kubrick coughed and took another step away from Goode. “The general public is a good deal more sophisticated than most censors imagine and certainly more than these groups who get up petitions believe,” he said. “I have to move on now, thank you for your questions!”

Goode tried to squeeze in another but Kubrick had escaped. She turned to Margaret.

“When you were twelve, were you interested in getting your jollies with grown men?” she asked. “Men in their fifties?”

“When I was twelve I had a slight crush on a boy in the eighth grade, but even he seemed too old for me,” recalled Margaret. “I was busy with school and a job at the local grocer’s.”

“The men in this town,” Goode said. “They should be put in a hospital for the criminally insane, not given Oscars. Look at the poster! The little girl barely has breasts and she’s all sultry in a bikini, the lollipop in her mouth.” She exhaled like she was blowing her anger out of her body. “What are you doing here?”

“You haven’t been returning my calls.”

“I haven’t gotten any messages.”

“I left several with that creepy guy, what’s his name, Tarantula.”

Goode laughed. “Tah-ran-too-la,” she corrected her. “Ick. A toad. And a horrible colleague.”

A small ruckus sounded as costar Shelley Winters emerged from her limo and eagerly posed for pictures and waved to fans. Red Buttons, Joan Fontaine, Hugh O’Brian, and other stars slow-walked into the theater, stopping to grin for cameras, sign autographs, and offer up quotes to the press.

“Can we talk somewhere?” Margaret asked as an usher with a brass gong and a rubber mallet alerted any celebrities still on the red carpet that the film was about to begin.

Goode nodded. “Come with me,” she said. She led Margaret out of the crowd, down Hollywood Boulevard, and onto North Orange. The neighborhood immediately turned seedier, with vagrants, hucksters, and star-maps salesmen. Storefronts advertised ALCOHOL and SOUVENIRS.