“She left me, divorced me in New York. I don’t blame her. It was terrible for a long time. I wasn’t working. I was desolate, depressed, and angry and we were both homesick. Marriage is . . . well, in the best of times, marriage is taxing, and what we went through, that was the worst. I was so angry with Leon, so angry at being forced to leave my own country, torn from my career, my friends, my family, I thought I could never forgive him. But in truth, I’m grateful to him.” Jerrold waved his cigarette. “Now I see it as fate. I will never return here to live, no matter what. Think how Americans would treat my African wife, how they would treat us both.”

“No one knows that better than we do,” said Terrence. “People look at us like we’re Sodom and Gomorrah on the hoof.”

“Do you still live in the same little Montparnasse flat?” I asked.

“Oui.” He laughed. “And I still use the Oscar for a hat rack. I am working, contented. My wife is teaching. She came to Paris years ago, as a student from Ivory Coast, and she stayed on to teach. We love Paris, but lots of my old Hollywood compatriots, they are not so fortunate. For some, to be driven from one’s country is like a sickness, eating at the heart. Simon and Max were both dying down in Mexico. But now, thanks to you, Roxanne, they’re working again. Everyone is so grateful to you.”

“The money isn’t even a fraction of what any of you used to make.” I noticed the satchel he had put on the floor. I knew what was coming next. A script needing a front. Oh well—as they say, in for a penny, in for a pound.

“But working is what keeps a man alive. And that Leon would buy Max’s picture! When Max wrote me that, I thought, Roxanne has pulled off an incredible coup!”

“Yes, well, I thought so too. I thought I was very clever and ironic, like Julia, poking a finger in Leon’s eye when she financed your film, Les Comrades.”

“And now?” asked Jerrold.

“Now I think it was foolish of me. I’m sure Leon thinks I betrayed him. Maybe I did.”