“There most certainly is.”

“Oh, come on.”

“What do you mean, ‘Oh, come on’? The AHDA is leading the fight against the worst canine crippler around. They’re sponsoring some of the most important research going on in veterinary medicine.”

“You’re serious,” I said.

“Of course I’m serious. Look, Bern, I’m in the business, I don’t take dog diseases lightly. And I give an annual donation to the fight against hip dysplasia, not a whole lot but as much as I can afford. I mean, there are a lot of worthy causes out there. Look at feline leukemia.” She heaved a sigh, while I wondered where I was supposed to look for feline leukemia. “I was just surprised that you know about the AHDA, Bern, seeing that you’re not a dog person. But now it turns out you don’t know about it after all.”

“Well,” I said, “I do now.”

“You do, and you can give me twenty dollars right now and I’ll send it in for you. Unless you want to write a check so you can take it off your taxes.”

I found a twenty and handed it over.

“Thanks, Bern. I bet you feel better already, don’t you?”

“How much do you want to bet?”

“Well, you will,” she said, and tucked the twenty away. “So tell me,” she said. “How were the movies?”

“The movies?” I said. “The movies were great. Virginia City and Sabrina. What’s not to like?”

“ Virginia City,” she said. “It sounds like a western. Actually, it sounds like a southern western, if you stop and think about it. What is it?”

“A western.”

“Humphrey Bogart in a western?”

“Errol Flynn’s the hero,” I said. “Bogart’s a half-breed bandit.”

“Give me a break, Bern.”

“With a mustache and sideburns, and it is a sort of a southern western, because it’s during the Civil War and Confederate sympathizers in this Nevada mining town are planning to ship a load of gold bullion to Dixie.”

“But Errol Flynn saves the day?”

“And Bogie’s killed, of course. Flynn won’t say where the gold is because he hopes it’ll be used to rebuild the South after the war. That’s his story, anyway. I figure he wanted a retirement fund for himself. Anyway, Miriam Hopkins pleads for his life and Abraham Lincoln commutes his sentence.”

“Who played Lincoln?”

“I missed the credit. Not Raymond Massey, though.”

“And Sabrina’s with Audrey Hepburn, right? She’s in love with Alan Ladd and winds up with Bogart.”

“William Holden.”

“She winds up with William Holden?”

“Holden’s the brother she starts out with, and Bogart gets her in the end.”

“Yeah? What happened to Alan Ladd?”

“He must have been off making another picture,” I said, “because he sure wasn’t in this one.”

We were in her apartment on Arbor Court, where I’d gone, flight bag in hand, after the credit crawl at the end of Sabrina. No one was home when I got there, unless you want to count Archie and Ubi. I let myself in and played with them and made a pot of coffee, and before I’d drunk half a cup of it she’d come in, relieved to see me.

We were sitting at the kitchen tub-table now, and I’d switched from coffee to Evian water while Carolyn sipped Scotch. “I don’t particularly feel like a drink,” she said, “but it’s not a good idea to miss a day. It’s like exercise. If you want to stay in shape, you should make sure you get out there and do something every day. Even if it’s just a slow jog around the block or two laps in the swimming pool, at least you’re hanging in there.”

“I’d join you,” I said, “but I might work tonight.”

“It’s kind of late for it, Bern.”

“I know, and I don’t think I will, but I might. It’s called keeping my options open. While you’re hanging in there, I’m keeping my options open.”

“I think it’s great the way it looks as though we’re just sitting here with glasses in our hands,” she said, “when we’ve each actually got a sound philosophical basis for what we’re doing. I was glad to find you here when I got in, Bern. I was a little worried when I didn’t hear from you all day.”

“I called,” I said.

“And we talked? Better bring on the ginkgo biloba, because I don’t remember a thing.”

“I couldn’t reach you,” I said. “I tried you here and at the store. Two, three times minimum. You were never at either place.”

“Which store, Bern?”

“The Poodle Factory, of course. How many stores do you have?”

“Just one,” she said, “but you’ve got one, too, and that’s where I was.”

“At my store?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Barnegat Books?”

“No. Lord and Taylor. How many stores do you have, smartie?”

“I was closed today, Carolyn.”

“That’s what you think.”

“You opened up for me?”

“Well, I had to go in to feed Raffles,” she said, “and I got to thinking that somebody might be trying to get in touch with you. Like Tiggy, for instance, or Candlemas, or the other one whose name was mentioned. The fat man. Sarnoff.”

“Tsarnoff,” I said.

“Whatever you tsay, Bern. I figured nobody could reach you at home, and they didn’t know you were staying here, and you don’t have an answering machine on either of your phones, so how could they get in touch with you?”

“They can’t,” I said, “which should make it hard for them to kill me.”

“Well, I didn’t think anybody would try to kill me, so I figured I’d spend the day in the bookstore. It’s not as if I had anything else to do. My store’s closed for the weekend.”

“So was mine. How did you manage? The bargain table must have been a bitch to move.”

“For a small weak woman like me? That’s what I figured. I left it inside.”

“Really? It’s a good draw, it lets people know they’re passing a bookstore.”

“ Bern, I wasn’t looking to do big business. I just wanted to be open in case anybody came by with a message for you. I sold some books, but that wasn’t the point.”

“You actually sold some books?”

“What’s so remarkable about that? You sit behind the counter, people bring up a book, you check the price and add the tax and take their money and make change. It’s not nuclear physics.”

“How much did you take in?”

“I don’t know, a little under two hundred dollars. Whatever it was, I left it in the register.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t send it to the hip dysplasia people.”

“I wish I’d thought of it. A lot of your regular customers asked about you. They wanted to know if you were sick. I told ’em you were up till all hours and had a killer hangover.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“People like hearing that sort of thing, Bernie. It’s a humanizing flaw, they identify with you and feel superior to you at the same time. Anyway, I didn’t want to say you were sick or they might worry.”

“You could have said I had hip dysplasia.”

“You think that’s funny, but-”

“I know, I know, it’s no laughing matter.”

“Well, it’s not.” She poured herself a little more Scotch, hanging in with a vengeance. “Mowgli came by with a shopping bag full of treasures from the Twenty-sixth Street flea market. He said he was sure you’d want them, but I said I couldn’t do any buying.”

“Is he going to come back?”

“He’ll have to. I gave him a ten-dollar advance and got him to leave the books for you to look at. If they’re not worth ten dollars-”

“They’ll be worth it. You did the right thing, otherwise he’d have taken them to somebody else. Anybody else come in that I should know about?”

“Tiggy Rastafarian.”

“Rasmoulian.”

“I know, I was being funny.”

“You’re joking anyway, right? He didn’t really come in.”

“Sure he did. I think that book confused him, Bern. He didn’t know what to make of it. He’s a snappy dresser, the way you said, and I guess he’s pretty short, but you made him sound like a midget.”

“For a full-grown person,” I said, “he’s not.”

“He’s taller than I am, Bern.”

“That’s different.”

“How is it different? Because I’m a woman? Why should that make a difference?”