“What’s on the program for tonight? More Bogart?”

“What else?”

“So afterward you’ll take her to your place.”

“Maybe.”

“Bernie? Look at me, Bern. Are you in love?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Does that mean yes?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I think it does.”

The rest of the morning passed without incident. With Carolyn off getting a tooth filled, I didn’t want to make a big deal out of lunch. I ducked around the corner and ate a slice of pizza standing up (I was standing up, the pizza was essentially horizontal). I wasn’t away from the store for more than ten minutes, but that was long enough for Ray Kirschmann to make his appearance. I found him leaning against my bargain table, thumbing a Fodor guide to West Africa.

“Some security system you got here,” he said. “I wasn’t as honest as the day is warm, I coulda walked off with all of these here.”

“You’d get yourself a hernia before you hurt me much financially,” I pointed out. “The books on that table are three for a dollar.”

“Even this here?”

“It’s four years old.”

“You got books a lot older than that an’ charge ten, twenty bucks for ’em. Sometimes more’n that.”

“What you’ve got is a guidebook for travelers,” I explained, “and they don’t improve with age. They actually depreciate pretty rapidly, because people planning trips generally want up-to-date information. How would you like to fly all the way to Gabon and find out your hotel went out of business a year ago?”

“You’d never get me there in the first place,” he said. “You gotta be crazy to go someplace like that. You’re layin’ on the beach there, drinkin’ somethin’ with fruit in it, and the next thing you know they’re havin’ theirselves a cootie tah.”

“A what?”

“You know, where they overthrow the government. Before you know it you’re the main course at a cannibal banquet.” He tossed Fodor back on my table, where it glanced off Vol. II of The Life and Letters of Hippolyte Taine-God alone could tell you what had become of Vols. I and III-and skidded the length of the table before dropping to the pavement.