At the Oceana Apartments, he recalls Hats Off. He has not seen it in decades.
No one has.
Hats Off has been lost. The Rogue Song, a picture he and Babe made with Lawrence Tibbett, is also gone. Someone at MGM informs him that old nitrate film stock in the studio vault has ignited, incinerating who knows how many pictures, The Rogue Song included.
He liked Lawrence Tibbett. Lawrence Tibbett could sing.
But Lawrence Tibbett is dead. Lawrence Tibbett—arthritic, alcoholic—stumbles in his apartment in July 1960 and hits his head on a table. Lawrence Tibbett possessed a copy of The Rogue Song, but it decomposed after Lawrence Tibbett died.
Which is unfortunate, he thinks, but apposite.
Other pictures he made are missing music and effects, or entire scenes. When he inquires about them, he receives the written equivalent of a shrug, if he receives any reply at all. These things happen, they tell him. Pictures get mislaid. Pictures get damaged. Pictures go up in flames. He accepts this, just as he remembers that distributors once destroyed prints after pictures finished their runs.
Yes, he says, yes. Thank you for letting me know.
The truth is that no one cares enough.
But he would just like to see Hats Off one more time.
He would just like to see The Rogue Song one more time.
He has seen so many of the rest, over and over. He always watches them when they come on television. Yet countless details of these others, the lost pictures, he has forgotten. To view them now would be to watch them anew.
To view them would be to see Babe again.
To view them would be to be with Babe again.