“Take a breath, sister,” Kennedy said.

Maude turned to him. He had a cigarette bobbing out the side of his big bullet head.

“Slow down when you talk,” Kennedy said. “Makes it easier to breathe.” She snarled at him. She gave a short bow to Matheson. Kennedy opened the door wide. He used the hand gesture of a doorman, a smirk on his face as he pretended to tip his hat.

The bastard didn’t even have a hat on his fat Irish head.

“HOW WAS I TO KNOW?” MABEL Normand asked. “I thought it was some kind of fever. All I knew is that Mack didn’t want that girl on the lot. He was afraid it would infect the whole crew.”

“You know what it was?”

“Mack would know,” Mabel said. “He’s had all those social diseases. Isn’t it funny that they call them that, ‘social diseases’? Makes it almost seem dignified, as if you got ’em from shaking hands or doing the waltz.”

Mabel Normand reminded Sam of a child’s doll, with her milk-colored skin and saucer black eyes. Her hair in ringlets. She looked even more like a toy as she perched on top of a cracker barrel, her feet drumming on the wood while she talked about the good ole days with Fatty and Minta and the craziness on the lot at Keystone.

“Minta’s a good egg,” Mabel said. “I don’t know if I’d stand by Roscoe in all this.”

“She says she loves him.”

“That’s another kind of sickness. I got the same sickness and it’s terminal, brother. Say, do you have a smoke?”

Sam fished out a cigarette and handed it to her.

She remained in her stage costume, that of a turn-of-the-century washerwoman, complete with a frumpy dress and slouch hat. When Minta introduced them on the back lot at Sennett Studios, Mabel showed off the pruning of her hands from all the wash she had to do for the part in Molly O’.

“I swore to myself I wouldn’t step foot back on this lot without killing Mack, but, here I am, crawling back to the son of a bitch. I shoulda stayed with Goldwyn. He’s an all right fella, if he’d just keep his hands off my ass.”

“I heard that Roscoe had a thing for Virginia.”

“A thing? He had a hard-on like a divining rod for that piece. Every man on the lot did. She showed up here from somewhere back east, with her polite smile and those gorgeous clothes, and every boy knew they had some pie fresh from the oven. Little did they know she gave it away for free.”

“Was she ever with Roscoe?”

“She wouldn’t,” Mabel said. “Said he was too fat. She said she didn’t like fat men. But he sent her flowers and candies and took his hat off when she walked by. Even when she was with Lehrman, he tried.”

“You know this?”

“I saw this. He acted like a fool.”

“You know, I saw you once in a nickelodeon in Baltimore,” Sam said.

“I never been to Baltimore.”

“I saw you in one of those things you crank and the photos flip.”

“Anyone ever tell you that you look like Wallace Reid?” Mabel asked.

She smiled at him and Sam decided she had a very nice smile.

“All the time.”

“Well, you do. If the detective thing doesn’t work out, you could make a fine living as his double.”

“I don’t think I could live here.”

“How come?”

“Too spread out. I like a city where you can walk and get to know the neighborhoods and back alleys. A real city you can know on your feet. I’d get lost here.”

“This is no city,” Mabel said, looking down the row of wooden barns and façades of a city set. “Sometimes I think I live in purgatory. I had the craziest dream the other night. I dreamed I was bleeding from my mouth and couldn’t breathe or see. Say, you wanna get a drink, Sam?”

“I’m catching the three o’clock back to Frisco.”

“Too bad,” Mabel said, finishing the cigarette and flicking it into the dusty streets of the lot. “Next time you’re here, give me a ring.”

“Does the name Hibbard mean anything to you?”

Mabel Normand, the old little girl in makeup and ringlets, looked to Sam like he was some kind of rube.

“Don’t you read the papers?”

“Mainly the comics,” Sam said. “I love Mutt and Jeff. ”

“That’s Roscoe’s buddy.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Fred Hibbard. The Romanian. He calls himself Fishback now. He thinks it’s pretty goddamn funny because he directs comedies.”

“I LOVE YOU.”

“I love you, too, W.R.”

“Are you ready to open your eyes?”

“Where are we?”

“Quit fiddling with that blindfold,” Hearst said. “Two more steps and we’re there.”

“I been b-blind since you picked me up,” Marion Davies said in that cute staccato Brooklyn accent. “You ride me all over the city up and down hills and around c-corners and I don’t know which way is up. Do you call that fair?”

“What’s that?”

“K-keeping a person blind for the whole goddamn drive? It’s c-c-cruelty.”

“It’s a present.”

“Because you love me.”

“Yes.”

“Can I t-take this off now?”

Hearst was silent. And then he thumbed open the bottle of champagne, making Miss Davies jump back, maybe thinking it was a gunshot, as she fingered open the silk blinds on her eyes and smiled. He could almost hear her smile, the moist parting of her lips, that small cracking noise of lip on teeth, as she spun around in the center of the theater, in the middle of all those slabs of wooden seats. She crooked her head up at the ceiling, still half done-the sloths-but enough done to see those Spanish patterns and curves and buttresses and delicate designs he’d had hand-copied from Madrid.

“Where are we?” Miss Davies asked.

“Miss Davies, we’re in your theater.”

“Mine? Don’t k-k-kid me, W.R.”

“Have you ever known me to joke about a gift?”

Davies raised her eyebrows and shrugged a bit, pursing her lips. “No.”

“It’s called the Granada. Isn’t that just a wonderful name? The perfect place to premiere Enchantment.”

“You b-bought a whole theater for one picture?”

“Why not?”

He walked tall and erect down the aisle toward the stage, not a soul in the place, just as it was supposed to be. The screen wasn’t up yet, or the big red curtains he’d handpicked from a hundred samples, but he just couldn’t wait another moment. She had to see it.

“The stage will be set on the seventeenth of November. When the clock strikes one, the guarding doors will swing wide for those lucky San Franciscans who will first taste the glories of the new Granada. ‘A surprise upon surprise awaits. A foyer smiling beautiful-a palace where quiet luxury warmly glows-and then thousands of comfortable, hospitable seats.’ ”

“You ham.”

“Now for the program,” Hearst said, mounting the steps and comfortably finding the stage. “Enchantment. Heralded and accepted by New York-of course New York, letting all these San Franciscans know about the true tastemakers-as an exquisite photo comedy-and chosen for the Granada’s opening program in competition with the best current, super features, ‘Enchantment will add a captivating climax to an event already big.’ ”

“You fool.”

“Do you love me?” Hearst asked from the stage.

“I love you.”

“Even as a ham?”

“Even as a f-fool.”

The theater was as large, or larger, than any movie house in New York.

The façade was just grand, the opening mouth to a palace, a castle, a cathedral onto Mission Street. He could see all those faces on opening night, their mouths agape, looking at the black-and-white images floating across the screen. Miss Davies’s angelic profile, her lithe form, the goddess in ringlets smiling at all of them. He felt his heart shift inside him.

“W.R.? You okay up there?”

“Fine.”

“You looked as if you’d pass out.”

“I did this all for you, Miss Davies.”

“C-come down this instant.”

“I like it up here.”

He mouthed the words “All for you.”

Marion found the staircase and the stage and walked to him, finding a spot under his big arm. He pulled her into his stiff black suit, the kind George said reminded him of an undertaker, her head not even reaching his shoulder.