“His endearing customs?”

I couldn’t seem to help myself. “This one tribe in particular,” I said. “Or maybe it was more than one.”

“What did they do?”

“They ate their dead.” For God’s sake, why was I talking like this? She didn’t say anything, and my eyes dropped to the page, where a sentence caught my eye. “The Fuegans,” I reported, “preferred women to dogs.”

“As companions?”

“As dinner. They said that dogs tasted of otter.”

“And that is bad, otter?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I suppose it tastes of fish.”

“Fuegans. I have never heard of them.”

“Until now.”

“Well, yes. Until now.”

“I never heard of them, either,” I said. “I gather Darwin wrote about them. They lived in Tierra del Fuego, at the southernmost tip of South America.”

“Do they live there still?”

“I don’t know. I’ll tell you, though, if I ever go visit them I’m taking my own lunch.”

“And your own woman?”

“I don’t have a woman,” I said, “but if I did I don’t think I would take her to Tierra del Fuego.”

“Where would you take her instead?”

“It would depend on the woman. I might take her to Paris.”

“How romantic.”

“Or I might take her to the movies.”

“Also romantic,” she said. A smile played on her lips. “I want to buy a book. Will you sell me a book?”

“Not this one?”

“No.”

“Good,” I said, and closed Our Oriental Heritage, and set it on the shelf behind me. She’d been holding a book, and she placed it on the counter where I could see it. It was Clifford McCarty’s Bogey: The Films of Humphrey Bogart, the hardcover edition published thirty years ago by Citadel Press. I checked the penciled price on the flyleaf.

“It’s twenty-two dollars,” I said. “And, because I’m honest to a fault, I’ll tell you that there’s a paperback edition available. The title’s slightly different but it’s the same book.”