Barnegat Books is on East Eleventh Street between Broadway and University Place. When I’d finished locking up I carried my shopping bag two doors east to a dog-grooming salon called the Poodle Factory. Carolyn Kaiser had a skittish Yorkie up on the grooming table and was buffing its little nails. She said, “Hey, is it that time already? Just let me finish with Prince Philip here and I’ll be ready to go. If I don’t get a drink in me soon I’ll start yipping like a chihuahua.”

I got comfortable on the pillow sofa while Carolyn put the final touches on the terrier’s pedicure and popped him back in his cage. During the course of this she complained at length about her lover’s misbehavior. Randy had come home late the previous night, drunk and disheveled and marginally disorderly, and Carolyn was sick of it.

“I think it’s time to end the relationship,” she told me, “but the question is how do I feel about ending the relationship? And the answer is I don’t know how I feel because I can’t get in touch with my feelings, and I figure if I can’t get in touch with them I might as well not feel them altogether, so let’s go someplace with a liquor license, because all I want to feel right now is better. And how was your day, Bernie?”

“A little long.”

“Yeah, you do look faintly tuckered. Let’s go, huh? I’m so sick of the smell of this place. I feel like I’m wearing Wet Dog perfume.”

We ducked around the corner to a rather tired saloon called the Bum Rap. The jukebox leaned toward country and western, and Barbara Mandrell was singing about adultery as we took stools at the long dark bar. Carolyn ordered a vodka martini on the rocks. I asked for club soda with lime and got a nod from the bartender and a puzzled stare from Carolyn.