I left the refrigerator unopened.

And, when I let myself out at last, I locked up after myself and left the little brownstone house without incident. The blind woman on the first floor might have heard my footfall on the stairs, the neighbors across the street might have seen me emerge from the entranceway, even as they might have seen me go in some hours earlier. But I’d given them no cause to note my passage. I’d come and gone, leaving no trace.

In King of the Underworld, Bogart plays the title role of Joe Gurney. Kay Francis and John Eldredge play a husband-and-wife team of doctors, Eldredge with a mustache almost as unfortunate as Bogie’s in Virginia City . Eldredge saves a wounded henchman of Bogart, who enlists him as the gang’s doctor. When their hideout is raided, Bogart decides Eldredge must have ratted, and shoots him. Bogart and his men get away, but the cops arrest Kay Francis.

Then, in what I thought was a terrific touch, Bogart kidnaps a writer and forces him to ghost his autobiography, planning to kill him when he’s done. First, though, he busts two captured gang members out of jail, gets wounded in the process, and manages to find Kay Francis, who’s been trying to dig up evidence that will clear her at the trial. A big help she turns out to be; she tips off the cops, infects Bogart’s wound, and blinds him with tainted eyedrops. He’s stumbling around the hideout after her and the writer, trying to kill them even if he can’t see them, when the cops burst in and gun him down.

I watched this from my usual seat, with my usual barrel of popcorn on my lap, and what was becoming my usual second ticket in the hands of the ticket-taker. While I was on line to buy the popcorn I’d caught the eye of the tall guy with the goatee and the glasses. He smiled and looked away quickly, not wanting to stare at the poor loser who was all by himself once again. Reflexively he slipped an arm around the barely perceptible waist of his girlfriend, the Pillsbury doughgirl. I guess he wanted to make sure she couldn’t get away, lest he wind up like me.

A lesser man than I might have felt sorry for himself.

During the intermission I stayed right where I was. I had plenty of popcorn left, and I didn’t need to use the john or duck out for a quick smoke. I stayed put, and after a decent interval the lights went down again and the second feature began.

Beat the Devil. Directed by John Huston, who shared the screenplay credit with Truman Capote. The cast included Gina Lollobrigida as Bogart’s wife and Jennifer Jones as a compulsive liar married to a fake English nobleman. Peter Lorre’s in it as well, along with Robert Morley and a bunch of great character actors whose names I can never remember.

I settled into my seat, thinking that maybe this time I’d be able to understand what was going on on the screen. I must have seen the movie three or four times over the years and was never able to make head or tail out of it. Everybody was trying to hoodwink everybody else, and when Jennifer Jones prefaced a statement with “in point of fact” you knew for certain she was about to come up with a whopper, but beyond that I could never quite manage to follow the plot. Maybe this time would be different.

Five or ten minutes in, I sensed a presence in the aisle. Without averting my eyes from the screen, where Morley and Lorre had their heads together, I listened hard for approaching footsteps. But I don’t know that I actually heard her draw near. It was more a matter of simply knowing, some extrasensory awareness that quickened the pulse and made it hard to breathe.

Then she was settling into the seat beside me. I still couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. A leg bumped mine momentarily, then drew away. A hand dipped into the vat of popcorn and brushed my hand before closing around a fistful of popped kernels.

I watched the movie and listened to chewing sounds.

Then came an urgent whisper. “You were right, Bern. This is really dynamite popcorn.”

Throats were cleared and programs rustled in the row immediately behind ours. I put a finger to my lips and glanced at Carolyn, who mimed a wordless apology.

And, side by side, we ate the popcorn and watched the movie.

On the way out, the ticket-taker gave me a big smile and the guy with the goatee flashed me a thumbs-up. “They’re happy for me,” I told Carolyn. “Isn’t that nice?”

“It’s wonderful,” she said. “One of those heartwarming little New York vignettes. Imagine if they knew you spent the past two nights at my apartment.”

“Please,” I said. “They’d start wondering when I’m going to make an honest woman of you.”

Across the street they had tables set up on the sidewalk, and it was a nice enough night to sit at one of them. I ordered cappuccino and Carolyn asked for Caffè Lucrezia Borgia, which sounded as though it might be poisoned but turned out to be the house special, a production number consisting of espresso with a slug of Strega in it and a topping of whipped cream and shaved chocolate. She pronounced it excellent and offered me a taste, but I passed.

“Not even a taste? It’s not going to get you drunk.”

“Without principles,” I said, “where are we?”

“I’ve got to give you credit,” she said. “Of course you’re going to be way out of shape by the time all this is over. Anyway, I’m starting to wonder if I’m in better shape than I ought to be.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I kept the store open until I finished ‘A’ Is for Train, and I only had one drink at the Bum Rap after I closed up, and I swear I didn’t even feel it, and afterward I ate a full meal at the Indian place, but even so I’ve got to admit I had trouble following the movie tonight.”

“No one can follow it,” I said. “It’s Beat the Devil. I think they must have been making it up as they went along, and I’m positive they didn’t have any prissy little rule about not having a drink when they had work to do. No worries about getting out of shape, not on that set.”

We talked some about the film, and I gave her a rundown on the first feature, King of the Underworld, which she was sorry to have missed. “Except I like it better when he doesn’t get killed at the end,” she said. “You know me, I’m a sucker for a happy ending.”

“In King of the Underworld,” I said, “the ending’s not happy until he dies. But I know what you mean. Maybe that’s why they usually show the older picture first. He tended to be alive at the end of the later ones, when he was a bigger star.”

“Makes sense. What’s the point in being a star if you’re just going to get killed the same as always?” She sipped her fancy coffee. “I brought your flight bag.”

“So I see.”

“Ray came to the store. He was actually pleasant to me, which made me a little nervous. It was him sitting in your lobby, but I suppose he told you that himself.”

I shook my head. “I never asked.”

“Well, he won’t be sitting there anymore, so I thought you might want to sleep at home. There’s stuff in there you might need if you do. But I’m not trying to get rid of you, Bern. If you want to stay downtown, I’ll just take the bag home with me. Or we’ll go together.”

“I’ve got a late appointment.”

“Oh.”

“And if Ray was sitting in my lobby, who was in the car outside?”

“I didn’t ask about that.”

“Maybe it was a couple of other cops. And maybe it was somebody with no interest in me whatsoever.” I frowned. “And maybe not.”

“So you’ll sleep at my place. Why be silly about it?”

I hefted the flight bag, put it on the ground next to me. “It was a good idea to bring this,” I said. “I’ll hang on to it.”

“But you’ll sleep at my place, right?”

“Who knows where I’ll sleep?”

“ Bern…”

“There’s always a little furnished room on East Twenty-fifth Street,” I said. “The accommodations are on the Spartan side, but I know for a fact that the bed’s comfortable. Or there’s the subway. Or a bench in the park, on a beautiful night like this.”