“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.”

“We’re going to the movies.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, that’s always a good choice on a first date. What are you going to see?”

“A double feature. Chain Lightning and Tokyo Joe.”

“Did they just open?”

“Not exactly.”

“Because I never heard of them. Chain Lightning and Tokyo Joe? Who’s in them? Anybody I ever heard of?”

“Humphrey Bogart.”

“Humphrey Bogart? The Humphrey Bogart?”

“It’s a film festival,” I explained. “It’s at the Musette Theater two blocks from Lincoln Center. Tonight’s the first night, and I’m meeting her at the box office at a quarter to seven.”

“The program starts at seven?”

“Seven-thirty. But she wants to make sure we get good seats. She’s never seen either of these films.”

“Have you, Bern?”

“No, but-”

“Because neither have I, and what’s the big deal? I never even heard of them.”

“She’s a major Bogart fan,” I said. “She learned English by watching his films over and over again.”

“I bet every other word out of her mouth is ‘You dirty rat.’”

“That’s Jimmy Cagney.”

“‘Play it again, Sam.’ That’s Humphrey Bogart, right?”

“It’s close.”

“‘You played it for her, you can play it for me. I can take it if she can.’ Right?”

“Right.”

“That’s what I thought. What do you mean, she learned to speak English? Where did she grow up?”

“ Europe.”

“Where in Europe?”

“Just Europe,” I said.

“Just Europe? I mean, France or Spain or Czechoslovakia or Sweden or, uh-”

“Of the four you mentioned,” I said, “my vote would go to Czechoslovakia. But I can’t really narrow it down because we didn’t get into that.” I recapped our conversation, leaving out the dietary excesses of the Tierra del Fuegans. “There was a lot that went unspoken,” I explained, “a lot of significant glances, a lot of nuance, a lot of, uh-”