“I have it.”

“It’s around fifteen dollars, if memory serves, and sometimes it does.” I blinked. “Did you just say you have it?”

“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?”