"Last copy, only copy, same thing," said Filomena. "I bought one in 1983 because Amadeu said a store should have class. In two and a half years it has been rented four times. Twice by me." She looked at them over her half-glasses. "And now tonight two people run in out of the rain like the building is on fire, both of them for this movie. So. Before I decide anything, I want to know. What's going on? Is it on a test? Did somebody on the television say something about it? Is it the anniversary?"
"It's a long story," said Theda.
"I have seven minutes."
"I have a presentation tomorrow morning," Theda said, "at nine thirty. For a buyer from Jordan Marsh."
"The department store," said the man.
"No, the other Jordan Marsh." She turned back to Filomena. "I design costume jewelry. For Corso Brothers, on Chestnut Street. Pins and earrings and charm bracelets, that kind of thing. We've been trying to get a line into Jordan Marsh for two years, and three weeks ago the buyer came down from Boston to look at our fall samples, and she didn't like any of them, and at lunch she said the only thing she'd ever really wanted to wear was the jewelry in the old movies. Thirties movies. And she said the most perfect film ever made was It Happened One Night, and she looked at me and she said, You've seen it, naturally."
"And you said," said the man.
Theda closed her eyes briefly. "Naturally."
"Ah," he said.
"And my boss heard me say it. Mr. Corso. And his face lit up like the Biltmore sign, and he said Theda, design us a line, design us an It Happened One Night line, and we'll bring Mrs. Kimball back down in three weeks and blow her socks off. So I went to the library. I got a book of stills. I've designed twenty-two pieces off the stills. I have a brooch shaped like a little bus. I have earrings shaped like a doughnut, I don't know why there's a doughnut, there's a picture of him holding a doughnut. I have a charm bracelet with a tiny trumpet on it, because the last still in the book is a trumpet and the caption says The Walls of Jericho fall. I don't know what the walls of Jericho are. I don't know why they fall. Tomorrow at nine thirty Monica Kimball is going to sit across from me and ask me what my favorite scene is, and I have to have one."
Filomena looked at her for a long moment.
"You said naturally," she said.
"I say naturally," Theda said. "It's a problem. Somebody asks if I've read a book, I say naturally. Somebody asks if I know how to change a tire, I say naturally. I said it to a man at a party once who asked if I'd ever been to Portugal. I've never been to Portugal. He was from Portugal. We talked for forty minutes about the Algarve."
"How'd you do?"
"I think he thought I was a spy."