95

At the Oceana Apartments, he wakes in his chair. He had not intended to doze, and now the best of the day is gone.

This is his world, his lot, his stage. He haunts its three rooms, knowing his every mark: here for his correspondence, there for his meals, a turn for his bed. It is life as a vaudeville routine.

He takes up his pen and his yellow legal pad. He has an idea: a prison escape, except the prisoner is a woman. She has murdered her husband’s lover in an act of jealous rage, and remains infatuated with him. She hears that her ex-husband is about to marry again, and so breaks out of jail to prevent the wedding from going ahead.

Hal Roach always claimed that he had a macabre side.

The light dims ever so faintly: a momentary darkening, as of a cloud drifting, or a shadow briefly cast, or a figure seated just beyond the periphery of his vision shifting its position, signaling its unease.

He does not write this idea down. Better to let it go.

Babe would not like it.