“Wait a minute. Budapest ’s in Anatruria?”
“No, it’s in Hungary.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“The stamps never got to Anatruria,” I explained. “As a matter of fact, the only government independent Anatruria ever had was a government in exile. A little band of patriots scattered all over Eastern Europe proclaimed Anatrurian independence. Then they tried lobbying the League of Nations, but they didn’t get anywhere. They even put Woodrow Wilson on one of their stamps, for all the good it did them.”
“Why Woodrow Wilson? Did he have relatives in Anatruria?”
“He was big on self-determination of nations. But by the time they got the stamps printed, Warren G. Harding was president. I doubt the Anatrurians ever heard of him, and I’d be willing to bet he never heard of Anatruria.”
“Well, neither did I. Where is it, exactly?”
“You know where Bulgaria and Romania and Yugoslavia come together?”
“Sort of. Except there’s no more Yugoslavia, Bern. It’s five different countries now.”
“Well, part of one of them is part of Anatruria, and the same thing goes for Bulgaria and Romania. Anyway, that’s where Ilona was born, but she hasn’t been home in quite a while. She lived in Budapest for a year or two, or maybe it was Bucharest.”
“Maybe it was both of them.”
“Maybe. And she was in Prague, which used to be in Czechoslovakia.”
“Used to be? Where’d it go?”
“There’s no more Czechoslovakia. There’s Slovakia and there’s the Czech Republic.”
“Oh, right. You know what’s weird? At the same time that Europe is deciding to be one big country, Yugoslavia ’s deciding to be five little countries all by itself. Now you’ve got the former Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union and the former Czechoslovakia. It’s like Formerly Joe’s. Remember Formerly Joe’s?”
“Vividly.”
“Oh, right, we didn’t like our meal, did we? I guess lots of people felt the same way, because they didn’t last long. There was this restaurant called Joe’s at the corner of West Fourth and West Tenth, and it was there for years, and then it was out of business for years. It just sat there vacant.”
“I know.”
“So then, when a new restaurant finally moved in, they called it Formerly Joe’s. And now it’s gone, in fact it’s been gone for a long time, and when somebody finally takes it over what are they gonna call it? Formerly Formerly Joe’s?”
“Or Two Guys From Anatruria.”
“I guess anything’s possible. You seeing her tonight, Bern?”
“Yes.”
“And seeing more Bogart movies?”
“Uh-huh.”
“How long’s this festival going on, anyway?”
“Another ten or twelve days.”
“You’re kidding.” She looked at me. “You’re not kidding. How many movies did the guy make, anyway?”
“Seventy-five, but they didn’t manage to get them all.”
“What a shame. How long are you gonna stay with it, Bern?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m kind of enjoying it. The first week there were times when I was wondering what I was doing there, but then it became this magical other world that I would slip into for a few hours every night.” I shrugged. “After all,” I said, “it is Bogart. He’s always interesting to watch even in some dog of a movie you never heard of. And when it’s a picture I’ve seen a dozen times, well, who can get tired of Casablanca or The Maltese Falcon? They get better every time you see them.”
“What’s the program for tonight?”
“The Caine Mutiny,” I said, “and Swing Your Lady.”
“I remember The Caine Mutiny. He was great in that, playing with those marbles.”
“Ball bearings, I think they were.”
“I’ll take your word for it. What’s the other one? Swing Your Partner?”
“Swing Your Lady.”
“I never heard of it.”
“Nobody did. Bogart’s a wrestling promoter in the Ozarks.”
“You’re making this up.”
“I am not. According to the program, Reagan has a small part.”
“Reagan? Ronald Reagan?”
“That’s the one.”
“Well, at least it’s only a small part. Wrestling in the Ozarks. And square dancing, I’ll bet. Why else would they call it Swing Your Lady?”
“You’re probably right.”
“Wrestling and square dancing and Ronald Reagan. You know what, Bern? I bet you get lucky tonight. Any woman who’d make a man go through all that has got to reward him for it.”
“I don’t know, Carolyn.”
“I do,” she said. “Better pack your toothbrush, Bern. Tonight’s your lucky night.”
And, after Bogart had followed his electrifying portrayal of Captain Queeg with a stint as barnstorming wrestling promoter Ed Hatch, and after his wrestler had quit the business to marry a lady blacksmith and spend the rest of his life shoeing horses, we’d gone across the street for a quick espresso and a little holding of hands and trading of long looks. Then we went outside and I hailed her a cab, and when I held the door for her she came into my arms for a kiss.
“Bear-naaard,” she murmured. “Come with me.”
“Come with you?”
“Come home with me. Now.”
“Oh,” I said, and was ready to stammer out some lame excuse when fifteen nights at the movies came along and rescued me. “Not tonight, sweetheart,” I drawled. “I’m afraid I’ll have to take a rain check.” And I kissed her lightly on the lips and tucked her into the cab and watched her ride away from me.
Some lucky night.
CHAPTER Six
I woke up surprisingly clear-headed, if not entirely thrilled about it, and was downtown in time to open my store at ten. I fed Raffles and refilled his water dish, dragged my three-for-a-buck table outside, and settled myself behind the counter with Will Durant. The world, he reassured me, had always been a pretty nasty place. I found this curiously comforting.
I had the front door closed against the chill of the morning, and so I got to hear the tinkling of little bells each time it opened. I had a couple of early browsers, rang up two sales for a few dollars each, and looked through the sack of books that Mowgli brought me. He’s a curious creature who looks as though he might indeed have been raised by wolves-gaunt, hollow-eyed, with a mop of hair and a scraggle of beard. Speed and acid have burned some substantial holes in his brain, and he’d dropped out of a doctoral program in English at Columbia to take up a nomadic existence, shifting his residence from one abandoned building to another as circumstances dictated.
He’d collected books during his student days, and on the way down he sold them off piecemeal. His stock was pretty much gone by the time he found his way to Barnegat Books, but I’d bought a few things from him then, including a nice clean set of Kipling. He’d disappeared for the better part of a year, and I gather he started sucking on a crack pipe and pretty much lost touch with the planet for a while there, but when he turned up again he had his act together, in a marginal sort of way. He nowadays limited his chemical adventures to a little righteous herb and the odd hit of organic mescaline, and supported himself by buying books at street fairs and thrift shops and flea markets and reselling them to people like me.
I picked out a few things, passed on the rest. He had some nice fifties paperback noir, David Goodis and Peter Rabe, but my customers wouldn’t pay collector prices for that kind of material. “Figured as much,” he said. “I’ll run these by Jon at Partners and Crime. Thought you might like to see them, though. Don’t you love the covers?”
I agreed they were great. I picked out a biography of Thomas Wolfe and Mark Schorer’s life of Sinclair Lewis and a couple of other books I thought I could sell, and we hemmed and hawed until we found a price we could both live with. Toward the end I asked him a question I ask most of my regular suppliers.