"No harm done, then."

"But the night before last," she said, and frowned. "You weren't here that night, were you? Wednesday, it would have been."

"The only other time I've been here," I said, "was earlier this evening. I stopped in after work and had one drink."

"Laphroaig?"

"Pellegrino water. You can't really develop a taste for it, but you don't need one."

"You just drink it. And you liked it here and came back."

"Uh-huh."

"After work, you said. What kind of work?"

"I have a bookstore."

"Really? Are you Mr. Barnes or Mr. Noble?"

"Well, nobody ever called me Mr. Noble. Actually I'd have to say I'm more like Mr. Strand. It's a secondhand bookstore. But a whole lot smaller than the Strand."

"It sounds like fun. Half the lawyers I know would love to quit and open a used bookstore. The other half can't read. Where is it? Right here in the neighborhood?"

" Eleventh Street between Broadway and University."

"And you dropped in here after work?"

She was wasted on real estate deals, I decided. She should have been taking depositions and cross-examining witnesses. I'd been in the neighborhood delivering a book to a good customer, I told her, and Parsifal's had caught my eye.

"And you popped in for a Pellegrino."

"For a Perrier, actually, but Pellegrino's what they had."

"And you're adaptable." She put her hand on mine. It was just conversational, but I've noticed something. When a woman starts touching you, it is a Good Sign.

"This is really strange," she said. "See, I didn't go home alone Wednesday night."

"You're just saying that to shock me."

"Silly," she said, and touched my hand again. "There's no reason for you to be shocked, butI am, a little. Not at the idea of going home with somebody. I mean, if two grownups get a sort of mutual urge, what's wrong with that?"

"Nothing that I can think of."

"But I don'tremember it, Bernie! I don't know who the guy was or what happened, andthat shocks me. In fact it scares me a little. Who the hell did I bring home? It could have been Mr. Goodbar." She'd been looking down, and now she raised her eyes to mine. "It wasn't you, was it?"

"I wish."

"That's the second really sweet thing you've said in, what, ten minutes? Bernie, I know it wasn't you, there's no way it could have been you, you've never even been here before. But why do I have the feeling we've been-"

"Lovers?"

"Well, intimate, emotionally if not physically. I had that feeling the minute I walked in here."

"Past lives," I said. "Karmic ties."

"You think?"

"What else could explain it?"

"Do you feel the same way, Bernie?"

Somehow I'd taken her hand, and I liked the way it felt in mine. There was something going on, and it had been so long that I didn't recognize it at first.

"This apartment you took someone home to," I said. "Is it nearby?"

"Right around the corner."

"I wonder," I said, "if I'll have the feeling I've been there before."

"Do you think it's possible, Bernie?"

"I think we should find out."

"I think you're right," she said. "I think we owe it to ourselves."

Twenty-Five

If it's all the same to you, or even if it's not, I'll omit details for the next half-hour or so. Suffice it to say that there are certain things which, unlike a taste for Laphroaig, don't wear off and needn't be reacquired. Things which, once learned, are never forgotten. Like falling off a bicycle, or drowning.

"One thing's certain," she said. "It wasn't you."

"What wasn't me?"

"Wednesday night. I mean, I knew it wasn't, but now I really know."

"How's that?"

"If it had been you," she said, "I'd have remembered."

"If it had been me," I said, "I wouldn't have waited until tonight to refresh your memory."

"It was the damnedest thing, Bernie. I woke up with a splitting headache, and of course I'd forgotten to set the alarm, so I had to rush to get to the office. I swallowed some aspirin and took a quick shower and was out the door without my usual cup of coffee. I hopped in a cab, hit the Starbucks across the street from my office, and was at my desk at nine o'clock."

"I'm impressed."

"And I sat there wondering what had happened. I knew I'd been talking with somebody at the bar, but I couldn't picture him or remember anything about him. And the next thing I remembered was waking up with a headache."

"So maybe you didn't bring him home after all."

She shook her head. "I thought of that myself, but when I got home last night I could tell that someone had been here the night before. Whoever he was, he'd evidently made himself at home. It's sort of creepy. I mean, he'd been in my things, and he'd moved stuff around."

"Creepy's the word for it."

"My jewelry was arranged differently from the way I'd left it. But he must have just poked around, because he didn't take anything. But you know what he did take?"

"What?"

"Well, you're going to think I'm crazy, but he took my electric shaver."

"I don't think you're crazy. I think he's crazy. Why would he-"

"I know, it's strange, isn't it? But I looked everywhere and I can't find it, and it's always in the same spot, on the shelf in the bathroom. A little Lady Remington, shaped to fit a dainty feminine hand. I mean, what kind of man would want something like that?"

I took her dainty feminine hand in mine. "Not the kind who'd want to come home with you in the first place."

"Exactly. The only thing I could think of is he took it home for his girlfriend."

"Talk about creepy."

"Well, if he wanted a souvenir, wouldn't he take something more intimate, like panties or a bra?"

"That's a point."

"He went through my purse, but he didn't take any money. I actually had more money than I thought I did. So he wasn't your basic crook. Have you ever been robbed?"

A couple of times, but rather than recount either of them I made one up. "A few years ago," I said. "A burglar came in off the fire escape. He dragged my TV over to the window, but I guess he decided it was too heavy to carry and left it there. He took a combination radio and CD player that I'd just bought, along with the CD that was in it at the time, and which I had a hard time replacing." It's funny how a lie can build up a momentum all its own. I reined it in, and, if you'll allow a change of metaphors, turned the wheel hard right. "He got a few dollars, too, whatever I had around the house. But the thing that bothered me, because there was no way I could replace it, is he took my high school ring."

"That's really funny."

"It is? It didn't seem funny at the time."

"No, funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha. Because I can't findmy class ring."

"You're kidding. You don't think it was the same guy, do you?"

We both laughed, and she said she wasn't sure he'd taken it, that it might have disappeared a while ago. "Because he left a really good pair of earrings, and a watch, and a bracelet I never wear, but it's gold, and there are all these gold coins on it. I mean, anyone who looked at it would know it was worth some money. And class rings, well, the gold is no better than ten karat, and the stone is glass."

"Sounds like the one I lost. If it brought ten bucks in a hock shop, the pawnbroker was generous. What color was it? Maybe he liked the way it went with your pink electric shaver." I rolled onto my side, put a hand on her. "Barbara, those GTs have worn off by now, right? I mean, you'll remember this in the morning?"

"How could I forget?"

"I was just thinking that maybe we should make sure."

"Oh," she said, and reached for me. "Oh, my. What a lovely idea."