Still Mae makes her demands, still Mae seeks her roles, but a new bitterness creeps into her claims upon him.
Mae wants her cut.
They fuck less often now. He tries to stay out of her way, using work as his excuse—and it is a valid one, for the most part, although he still likes a drink, even needs a drink, especially before returning home to this woman.
—Why don’t you get rid of her?
It is Jimmy Finlayson who asks, Jimmy Finlayson with his Scottish burr, and his false mustache, and two toes missing from his left foot. Jimmy Finlayson has moved from Jack Blystone to Mack Sennett to Hal Roach, and now Hal Roach has promised to make Jimmy Finlayson a star, like Ben Turpin. Jimmy Finlayson doesn’t entirely believe Hal Roach, but whatever happens, it’s better than working and dying in a Larbert foundry.
They are drinking in the basement of Del Monte’s in Venice. He thinks Del Monte’s has improved since it was forced to become a speakeasy. The company is better.
Jimmy Finlayson has married a woman named Emily Gilbert, who is nineteen and believed herself to be marrying a man of thirty, because Jimmy Finlayson, like an elderly spinster seizing the moment, has shaved some years from his age. Maybe Emily Gilbert wasn’t thinking at all, because fond though he is of Jimmy Finlayson, Jimmy Finlayson is nobody’s idea of an Adonis. Now Emily Gilbert is living with Jimmy Finlayson and Jimmy Finlayson’s sister, Agnes, in a house in Los Angeles that would be too small for all three of them even if it were ten times the size and occupied an entire city block. This is why Jimmy Finlayson is sitting here in the speakeasy of Del Monte’s, just as he is sitting with Jimmy Finlayson for very similar reasons.
Jimmy Finlayson is convinced that the marriage to Emily Gilbert will not endure for very much longer. Jimmy Finlayson is grateful for this. Jimmy Finlayson also believes that, in a similar manner, the man beside him would be happier if Mae were no longer in his life.
I can’t divorce her, he tells Jimmy Finlayson. We’re not married.
If that joke was ever funny, it has long since ceased to be.
I wasn’t talking about divorcing Mae, says Jimmy Finlayson. I was talking about killing her.
He almost chokes on his bourbon—in Del Monte’s the liquor is good, for those who can afford to pay—until Jimmy Finlayson gives him that squint, and he has to hide his face in a handkerchief, he is laughing so hard.
It is September 21st, 1923. They are at leisure because Mother’s Joy has finished production. The picture is poor, but he has not yet begun to worry. Roughest Africa is about to be released, and the word is that Motion Picture News will describe it as a humdinger. And he works well with Jimmy Finlayson, so well that Hal Roach has begun to pair them regularly.
But there is no respite from Mae, not at home and not in the studio. Mae is with him for Mother’s Joy, and will be with him when Near Dublin begins filming on Monday. At least Mae has a named role in Mother’s Joy. In Near Dublin she will be credited only as a Villager, along with Hal Roach’s other makeweights.
Why didn’t Mae ever get a divorce? Jimmy Finlayson asks.
—Her husband wouldn’t grant her one.
This is not, of course, the only reason why he and Mae have remained unmarried. He is sure that Rupert Cuthbert might be persuaded to let Mae go, for money if for no other reason. Mae knows this, too. He could probably afford to make it happen. He does not think it would take much for Rupert Cuthbert to sign the papers. But some fuss might arise, and the gossip hounds would sniff it out. Hal Roach would not like this.
In truth, he would not like this either.
How bad is it between the two of you? asks Jimmy Finlayson.
—Bad. Bad as it’s ever been. What about you and Emily?
—The last time I fucked her, I got frostbite.
He laughs again.
—How old is Emily now?
—Twenty-three, going on a hundred.
—And how old does she think you are?
—She still thinks I’m thirty. Arithmetic was never her strong point. At least I can say I once got to fuck a nineteen-year-old.
Mother’s Joy is inaptly named. Filming it is a chore: cheap sight gags, and Mae’s unhappiness at playing old fruit beside the new. Increasingly, she is being given jobs only to satisfy his stipulation that she should work with him, even when there is no suitable role for her. Flavia in Mother’s Joy is another of these parts, and Mae knows it. Her detachment is visible on the screen, so much so that it’s hard to tell if the chill she exudes is real or assumed.
But there is one scene in which Mae manages to display genuine emotion: the wedding sequence, when she, as the heiress, rejects him at the altar, announcing that she has taken a dislike to him, and he responds in kind. As he watches Mae say her lines in her wedding gown, he understands that at this moment she is not acting, and neither is he.
But he will not let Mae go, and Mae will not let him go.
Not yet.