I had finished most of the bottle before I looked at the list of ingredients.

THE CRAMPS RETREAT, but they retreat slowly. And by the time I’m able to bring my heart rate down to the speed limit, Mimi has eaten most of the pizza.

“Kitty is going to come along any minute and tell you that it’s cancer of the muscle,” says Mimi. “But there’s no such thing.”

“There could be.”

The buffalo head on the wall looks embarrassed. The drum is covered in dust. Mimi pats my hand. “You going to eat that last piece?”

THE THIRTY-TWO-OUNCE sports drink contained about eleven teaspoons of sugar and salt. Just for fun, I put the same amount of sugar and salt into a coffee cup and showed it to Mimi.

“Nobody cares,” she said. “Have you looked at what’s in a hot dog?”

I held the bottle up with the Nutrition Facts label facing out. “Heart disease? Obesity? Diabetes?”

“That’s why,” Mimi reminded me, “the companies spend so much money on advertising.”

SO WE’RE IN PRAGUE. We’ve had lunch, and now Mimi is energized for the afternoon that lies ahead.

“How about the astronomical clock in Old Town Square?”

“You want to see a clock?”

“It’s a famous clock.”

“Is it close by?”

“Remember where we started?”

I look down the street in the hope that I might spot a taxi. Mimi waits on the sidewalk, her hands firmly on her hips.

“So, were they real?”

“What?”

“The cramps.”

“Of course they were real.”

“You weren’t just trying to get out of our talk.” Mimi squeezes a little more sternness out of her lips. “Eugene and the gang?”

I shake my head.

“Because that would hurt my feelings. You not wanting to talk to me about your problems.”

“I don’t have any problems,” I tell her. “And I don’t want to talk about them.”

It takes a while, but we find Old Town Square without too much difficulty. The astronomical clock is easy to spot. It’s an elaborate thing set on the side of a stone building, two giant circles, one on top of the other.

“The top one with the non-concentric circles is the clock,” says Mimi. “The four figures at the side are supposed to be Vanity, Greed, Death, and the Pagan Invasion.”

One of the figures is holding a mirror, so I guess that this is Vanity.

“Greed was originally pictured as a Jewish moneylender,” says Mimi, “but after the Second World War, the figure was altered to reflect more contemporary sensibilities.”

Death is easy to spot. A skeleton.

“Each hour, Death rings a bell and turns his hourglass upside down, and the twelve Apostles march past the two windows above the clock. You want to know who they are?”

“Nope.”