At the Oceana Apartments, in a closet, he keeps cheap derby hats to give to particularly deserving visitors. It is something he has always done. Vera, his third wife, would laugh at him for it, but Vera laughed at him for many reasons, none of them good.
The hat supply needs to be replenished.
He has not thought of Vera in a year or more.
He tries not to think of Vera, but she comes back to him at unanticipated moments. He sees her face, and hears her voice.
You’re nothing, Vera goads him. You stole everything you have from Chaplin. You even took his hat.
He does not bother to tell her that he did not steal Chaplin’s hat. If he stole anyone’s hat, he stole George Robey’s, just as Chaplin did, although Chaplin also appropriated George Robey’s frock coat and malacca cane, and Dan Leno’s too-small jacket, and Little Tich’s boots. But it does not matter. They are all part of the same continuum, clowns bequeathed greasepaint from dead clowns, comics built from the bones of forgotten men.
He hears himself talk. He is arguing aloud with the memory of Vera.
God, these women, he says to the soft approaching light, to the shadow skirting the wall.
Mae.
Ruth.
Vera.
Ida.
What would he be without these women?