The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart

  Manx or no, he’s a good working cat, and since he took up residence in my store I haven’t lost a single volume to mice. It struck me that I owed him a lot. Suppose a mouse had gnawed the spine of Bogey: The Films of Humphrey Bogart, so that I’d had to toss it in the trash or consign it to the three-for-a-buck table? Just as she had walked into my store, so would she have walked on out of it, and I’d have gone on reading Will Durant, as unaware of the whole business as Raffles.

  I reached for the phone and called the Poodle Factory, where Carolyn spends her days making dogs beautiful. “Hi,” I told her. “Listen, I’m not going to be able to join you at the Bum Rap tonight. I’ve got a date.”

  “That’s funny, Bern. I asked you at lunch if you had anything on for tonight, and you said you didn’t.”

  “That was then,” I said.

  “And this is now? What happened, Bern?”

  “A beautiful woman walked into my store.”

  “You’ve got all the luck,” she said. “The only person who walked into my store all afternoon was a fat guy with a saluki. Why do people do that?”

  “Walk into your store?”

  “Buy inappropriate dogs. He’s bandy-legged and barrel-chested and he’s got an underslung jaw, so what the hell is he doing with a dog built like a fashion model? He ought to have an English bulldog.”

  “Maybe you can persuade him to switch.”

  “Too late,” she said. “By the time you’ve had the dog for a few days you get attached and you’re stuck with each other. It’s not like human relationships where everything falls apart once you really get to know each other. Bern, this beautiful woman. Is it someone you knew?”

  “A perfect stranger,” I said. “She came in for a book.”

  “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—”

  “Heat,” she suggested.

  “I was going to say romance.”

  “Even better, Bern. I’m a sucker for romance. So you’re meeting her at the Musette and you’re going to see two old movies back to back. I don’t suppose they’ll be colorized, will they?”

  “Bite your tongue.”

  “And then what? Dinner?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Unless you both pig out on popcorn. So you’ll be getting out of the theater around ten-thirty or eleven and you’ll grab something in the neighborhood. Then what? Her place or yours?”

  “Carolyn—”

  “If the Musette’s just a couple of blocks from Lincoln Center,” she said, “then it’s not much more than a couple of blocks from your place, because your place is just a couple of blocks from Lincoln Center. But maybe her place is just as convenient. Where does she live, Bern?”

  “I didn’t ask her.”

  “So you’re saying she lives in New York, right? She comes from Europe and she lives in New York, and you haven’t managed to narrow down either of the parameters any more than that.”

  “Carolyn, we only just met.”

  “You’re right, Bern. I’m being silly. I’m probably just jealous, because God knows I could use a mystery woman in my life. Anyway, if she’s a mystery woman, it’s more interesting if there are things you don’t know about her.”

  “I guess so.”

  “And you know the important things. She’s beautiful and she likes Humphrey Bogart.”

  “Right.”

  “And she comes from Europe, and she lives here now. What’s her name, Bern?”

  “Uh,” I said.

  There was a pause. “Hey, what’s a name, anyway, Bern? You know what they say about a rose. Hey, maybe that’s it.”

  “Huh?”

  “Rose. Lots of European women are named Rose, and they’d smell as sweet even if they weren’t. Bernie, have a great time, you hear? And I want a full report at lunch tomorrow. Or call me tonight, if it’s not too late. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. “Sure.”

  CHAPTER

  Five

  Two weeks later it was Wednesday again, and it was still May, and a little before one o’clock I hung the clock sign on my door to let the world of book lovers know I’d be back at two. Ten minutes later I was at the Poodle Factory with lunch for two.

  I opened containers and dished out the food while Carolyn locked up and hung her own CLOSED sign in the window. She sat down opposite me and studied her plate. “Looks good,” she said, and sniffed. “Smells okay, too. What have we got here, Bern?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “It’s the daily special,” I said.

  “And you didn’t even ask what it was?”

  “I asked,” I said, “and the guy answered, and I have no idea what he said.”

  “So you ordered it.”

  I nodded. “‘Give me two of them,’ I said, ‘with brown rice.’”

  “This is white rice, Bern.”

  “I guess they only had white rice,” I said. “Or maybe he didn’t understand me. I didn’t understand a word he said, so why should I expect him to understand everything I said?”

  “Good point.” She picked up her plastic fork, then changed her mind and chose the chopsticks instead. “Whatever it is, it tastes okay. Where’d you go, Bern?”

  “Two Guys.”

  “Two Guys From Abidjan? Since when do you get chopsticks with African food? And this doesn’t taste African to me.” She picked up another morsel of food, then paused with it halfway to her mouth. “Besides,” she said, “they closed, didn’t they?”

  “A couple of weeks ago.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “And just reopened yesterday, under new management. It’s not Two Guys From Abidjan anymore. Now it’s Two Guys From Phnom Penh.”

/>   “Say that again, Bern.” I did. “Phnom Penh,” she said. “Where’s that?”

  “Cambodia.”

  “What did they do, keep the old sign?”

  “Uh-huh. Painted out Abidjan, painted in Phnom Penh.”

  “Must have been a tight fit.”

  Indeed it was; Two Guys From Phnom Penh was what it looked like. “Cheaper than getting a new sign,” I said.

  “I guess. Remember when it was Two Guys From Yemen? And before that it was Two Guys From Someplace Else, but don’t ask me where. It’s got to be a hard-luck location, don’t you think?”

  “Must be.”

  “I bet there was a restaurant there back when the Dutch owned Manhattan. Two Guys From Rotterdam.” She popped a cube of meat into her mouth and chewed it thoughtfully, then chased it with a swig of Dr. Brown’s Celery Tonic. “Not bad,” she announced. “That was Cambodian food we had up near Columbia, wasn’t it?”

  “Angkor Wok,” I said. “Broadway and a Hundred and twenty-third, a Hundred and twenty-fourth, somewhere around there.”

  “I think this is better, and God knows it’s handier. I hope they stay in business.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it. A few months from now it’ll probably be Two Guys From Kabul.”

  “Be a shame, but at least that would fit on the sign. Did you get the celery tonic at Two Guys?”

  “No, I stopped at the deli.”

  “Because it goes really great with Cambodian food, doesn’t it?”

  “Like it was made for it.”

  We ate some more of the daily special, sipped some more celery tonic. Then she said, “Bern? What did you see last night?”

  “The Roaring Twenties,” I said.

  “Again? Didn’t you see that Monday night?”

  “You’re absolutely right,” I said. “They tend to run together in my mind.” I closed my eyes for a moment. “Conflict,” I said.

  “Conflict?”

  “And Brother Orchid.”

  “I never heard of either of them.”

  “Actually, I may have seen Conflict years ago on late-night TV. It was vaguely familiar. Bogart’s in love with Alexis Smith, who’s his wife’s younger sister. He hurts his legs in a car crash, but then he hides the fact that he’s recovered so that he can kill his wife.”

  “Bernie—”

  “Sydney Greenstreet’s the psychiatrist who sets a trap for him. See, the way he does it…You don’t care, do you?”

  “Not hugely.”

  “Brother Orchid was pretty interesting. Edward G. Robinson was the star. He’s a gangster, and Bogart takes over the mob while Robinson’s in Europe. He comes back and Bogart’s men try to rub him out, and he escapes and takes shelter in a monastery, where he takes the name Brother Orchid and spends his time growing flowers.”

  “What did you do after the movie, Bern? Take shelter in a monastery?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. You went out for coffee, right? Espresso for two at the little place down the block from the movie house.”

  “Right.”

  “And then you went home to your place, and Ilona went wherever Ilona goes. I’ve never met anybody named Ilona before. In fact the only Ilona I’ve ever heard of is Ilona Massey, and I wouldn’t know her if it weren’t for crossword puzzles. ‘Miss Massey, five letters.’ She’s right up there with Uta Hagen and Una Merkel and Ina Balin.”

  “Don’t forget Ima Hogg.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it. The two of you went your separate ways after the movie. Right?”

  I sighed. “Right.”

  “What’s going on, Bern?”

  “For God’s sake,” I said. “It’s the nineties, remember? Dating’s a whole new ballgame. People don’t jump in bed on the first date the way they used to. They take time, they get to know one another, they—”

  “Bern, look at me.”

  “I wasn’t avoiding your eyes.”

  “Of course you were, and I don’t blame you. ‘People don’t jump in bed on the first date.’ How many dates have you had with this woman?”

  “A few.”

  “Try fourteen.”

  “It can’t be that many.”

  “You’ve been out with her every night for two weeks. You’ve seen twenty-eight Humphrey Bogart movies. Twenty-eight! And the closest you’ve come to physical intimacy is when your hands bump into each other reaching for the popcorn.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It’s not?”

  “Sometimes we hold hands during the picture.”

  “Be still my heart. Is it some sort of platonic thing, Bern? You’re soul mates and there’s no real physical attraction?”

  “No,” I said. “Believe me, that’s not it.”

  “Then what’s going on?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Have you just been playing it ultracool? Waiting for her to make the first move?”

  “No,” I said. “The first night I offered to see her home. I didn’t really have anything in mind beyond possibly kissing her good night, but she said no, she’d take her own cab, and I didn’t press it. I was just as glad. Why ride all the way across town just so I could ride all the way back again?”

  “Is that where she lives? On the East Side?”

  “I think so.”

  “You don’t know where she lives?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Not exactly?”

  “I mentioned that I lived just a few blocks from the Musette. And she said I was lucky, that she lived a long ways away.”

  “Didn’t you ask where?”

  “Of course I did.”

  “And?”

  “‘Oh, a great distance,’ she said, and then she changed the subject. What was I going to do, cross-examine her? And what real difference does it make where she lives?”

  “Especially since you’re never going to wind up there.”

  I sighed again. “The third or fourth date, I forget when, I suggested she might like to see my apartment. ‘Someday,’ she said. ‘But not tonight, Bear-naaard.’”

  “‘Bear-naaard.’”

  “That’s how she says it. You know something? I hate rejection.”

  “How unusual.”

  “I mean I really can’t stand it. She was very nice about it, but all the same I felt like an oaf for asking.”

  “So you never made another move?”

  “Of course I did, a few days later, and I got to feel like an oaf a second time. And then Saturday after the movies I said I hated to see the evening end, and we wound up going for a walk.”

  “And?”

  “We walked up Broadway as far as Eighty-sixth Street, and then we walked downtown again on the other side of the street, and we stopped here and there along the way for what you might call a heated embrace.”

  “Hugs and kisses?”

  “Hugs and kisses. And when we got to Columbus Circle we kissed again, and then she leaned back and looked into my eyes and told me to put her in a cab.”

  “And she didn’t want you to get into it with her?”

  “’Zis is not ze right time, Bear-naaard.’”

  “I didn’t realize her accent was that heavy.”

  “It is when she’s delirious with passion.”

  “And her passion propelled her—”

  “Straight into a cab.”

  “What do you figure, Bern? Is she a tease?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Or a freeloader, just stringing you along, taking you for all you’re worth.”

  “Then I can’t be worth very much,” I said. “She buys her own ticket and pays for her own cab.”

  “Who buys the coffee afterward?”

  “We take turns.”

  “How about the popcorn?”

  “I buy the popcorn.”

  “Well, there you go. She’s only in it for the popcorn. Maybe she’s a little bit married. Ever think of that?”

  “
I thought of it right away,” I said. “Then I asked myself how a married woman could possibly sneak out for four hours every night.”

  “She could tell her husband she’s taking a course in Crockpot Macramé at the New School.”

  “Seven days a week?”

  “Who knows? Maybe she doesn’t have to tell him anything, maybe he works from seven to midnight hosting a talk show on an FM station. ‘All right, callers, the topic tonight is Wives Who Don’t Cheat and the Men They Don’t Cheat With. Let’s see those boards light up now!’” She frowned. “The thing is,” she said, “she’s doing things sort of ass-backward for a married woman. The ones I’ve been fool enough to get involved with just wanted to go to bed. The last thing they wanted was to go out in public, let alone do a little smooching on a street corner.”

  “I don’t think she’s married.”

  “Well, what’s her story?”

  “I don’t know. She doesn’t seem in any great rush to tell it. We had four or five dates before she got around to telling me where she came from.”

  “I remember. For a while the best you could do was narrow it down to Europe.”

  “It’s not as though I didn’t ask her. It’s not an impolite question, is it? ‘Where are you from?’ I mean, that’s not like asking to see her tax return or hear her sexual history, is it?”

  “Maybe it’s a sensitive subject in Anatruria.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You want to know something, Bern? I never heard of Anatruria.”

  “Well, don’t feel bad. Most people never heard of it. See, it never used to be a country, and it still isn’t. I heard of it, but that’s because I collected stamps when I was a kid.”

  “It never used to be a country, and it still isn’t, but they issued stamps?”

  “Around the end of the First World War,” I said. “When the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires broke up, a lot of countries declared themselves independent for about fifteen minutes, and some of them issued stamps and provisional currency to increase their credibility. The first Anatrurian stamps were a series of overprints of Turkish stamps, and they’re pretty rare, but they’re not worth all that much because overprinted stamps have always been easy to counterfeit. Then there was an actual series of Anatrurian stamps printed up during the winter of 1920–21, with the head of Vlados I in a little circle in the upper right corner and a different scene on each stamp in the series. Churches and public buildings and scenic views—you know the kind of things they put on stamps. They were engraved and printed in Budapest.”