“Yes,” she said. “It’s called The Complete Films of Humphrey Bogart, and your memory serves you quite well. The price is fourteen ninety-five.”
“And you already own it.”
“Yes. I want a hardcover copy.”
“I guess you’re a fan.”
“I love him,” she said. “And you? Do you love him?”
“There’s never been anybody quite like him,” I said, which, when you come right down to it, could be said of just about anyone. “He was one of a kind, wasn’t he? He had-”
“A certain something.”
“That’s just what I was going to say.” The tips of my fingers rested on the book, scant inches from the tips of her fingers. Her nails were manicured, and painted a rich scarlet. Mine were not. I fought to keep my fingers from reaching out for hers, and I said, “Uh, I have a copy of the Jordan Manning biography. At least I did the last time I looked.”
“I saw it.”
“It’s out of print, and difficult to find. But I guess you already have a copy.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want it.”
“Oh? It’s supposed to be good, but-”
“I don’t care,” she said. “What do I care about his life? I don’t care where he was born, or if he loved his mother. I don’t give a damn how many wives he had, or how much he drank, or what he died of.”
“You don’t?”
“What I love,” she said, “is what you see on the screen. That Humphrey Bogart. Rick in Casablanca. Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon.”
“ Dixon Steele in In a Lonely Place.”
Her eyes widened. “Everyone remembers Rick Blaine and Sam Spade,” she said. “And Fred Dobbs in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep. But who remembers Dixon Steele?”
“I guess I do,” I said. “Don’t ask me why. I remember titles and authors a lot, that’s natural in this business, and I guess I remember character names, too.”
“In a Lonely Place. He’s a screenwriter, Dixon Steele, do you remember? He has to adapt a novel but he can’t bear to read it, and he gets a hat-check girl to come tell him the story. Then she’s murdered, and he is a suspect.”
“But there’s another girl,” I said.
“Gloria Grahame. She’s a neighbor and gives him an alibi, and then she falls in love with him and types his manuscript and prepares his meals. But she sees the violence in him when his car is in an accident and he beats up the other driver, and again when he beats his agent for taking his script before it was finished. She thinks he must have killed the hat-check girl after all, and she is going to leave him, and he finds out and starts choking her. Do you remember?”
Vaguely, I thought. “Vividly,” I said.
“And there is a phone call. The hat-check girl’s boyfriend has confessed to the murder. But it’s too late for them, and Gloria Grahame can only stand there and watch him walk out of her life forever.”
“You don’t need the book,” I said. “Not in hardcover or in paperback. You’ve got the whole thing memorized.”
“He is very important to me.”
“I can see that.”
“I learned English from his films. Four of them, I played them over and over on the VCR. I would say the lines along with him and the other actors, trying to pronounce them correctly. But I still have an accent, don’t I?”
“It’s charming.”
“You think so? I think you are charming.”
“You’re beautiful.”
She lowered her eyes, drew a wallet from her purse. “I want to pay for the book,” she announced. “It is twenty-two dollars, yes? And then there is the sales tax.”
“Forget the tax.”
“Oh?”
“And forget the twenty-two dollars. Please, I insist. The book is my gift to you.”
“But I cannot accept it.”
“Of course you can.”
“I want to pay for it,” she said. She put a five and a twenty on the counter. “Please,” she said.
I slipped the book into a paper bag, handed it to her, and gave her three dollars change. I didn’t ring the sale and I didn’t collect the tax. Don’t tell the governor.
“You are very sweet,” she said. “But how can you make money if you give your books away?” She put her hand on mine. “I think there is more to you than shows on the surface. Do you know what I think? I think you are like him.”
“Like-?”
“Humphrey Bogart. Has anyone told you that?”
“No,” I said. “Never.”
She cocked her head, studying me. “It is not physical,” she said. “You do not look like him. And your voice is nothing like his. But there is something, yes?”
“Well, uh-”
“Do you have a secret life?”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
“Perhaps,” she said. “Are you secretly violent, like Dixon Steele?” She cocked her head, took a long look at me. “I don’t think so. But there is something, isn’t there? It is a very romantic quality, I can tell you that much.”
“It is?”
“Oh, yes. Very romantic.” A knowing smile played on those lips. “Take me out this evening.”
“Wherever you say.”
“Not to Paris,” she said. “That would be romantic, wouldn’t it? If we were to meet like this, and tonight we flew to Paris. But I don’t want you to take me to Paris, not yet.”
“ Paris can wait.”
“Yes,” she said. “We’ll always have Paris. Tonight you may take me to the movies.”
After she left, I went over and touched Raffles to make sure he was alive. He hadn’t changed position during her visit, and it was hard to imagine he could have ignored her. I scratched him behind the ear and he swung his head around and gave me a look.
“You missed her,” I told him. “Go back to sleep.”
He yawned and stretched, then sprang lightly down from the sill and hurried to check his water dish. He is a gray tabby, and Carolyn Kaiser, my best friend in all the world, has assured me that he is a Manx. I’ve since given the matter some study, and I’m not so sure. As far as I can tell, the only thing Manxlike about him is the tail he doesn’t have.
Manx or no, he’s a good working cat, and since he took up residence in my store I haven’t lost a single volume to mice. It struck me that I owed him a lot. Suppose a mouse had gnawed the spine of Bogey: The Films of Humphrey Bogart, so that I’d had to toss it in the trash or consign it to the three-for-a-buck table? Just as she had walked into my store, so would she have walked on out of it, and I’d have gone on reading Will Durant, as unaware of the whole business as Raffles.
I reached for the phone and called the Poodle Factory, where Carolyn spends her days making dogs beautiful. “Hi,” I told her. “Listen, I’m not going to be able to join you at the Bum Rap tonight. I’ve got a date.”
“That’s funny, Bern. I asked you at lunch if you had anything on for tonight, and you said you didn’t.”
“That was then,” I said.
“And this is now? What happened, Bern?”
“A beautiful woman walked into my store.”
“You’ve got all the luck,” she said. “The only person who walked into my store all afternoon was a fat guy with a saluki. Why do people do that?”
“Walk into your store?”
“Buy inappropriate dogs. He’s bandy-legged and barrel-chested and he’s got an underslung jaw, so what the hell is he doing with a dog built like a fashion model? He ought to have an English bulldog.”
“Maybe you can persuade him to switch.”
“Too late,” she said. “By the time you’ve had the dog for a few days you get attached and you’re stuck with each other. It’s not like human relationships where everything falls apart once you really get to know each other. Bern, this beautiful woman. Is it someone you knew?”
“A perfect stranger,” I said. “She came in for a book.”
“And walked out with your heart. It sounds romantic. Where are you taking her? The theater? The Rainbow Room? Or some intimate little supper club? That’s always nice.”