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I was thinking these things when my cell phone sounded.

“Hey, Molayo.”

“Hi. Did I wake you?”

“No, but you could have, if that’s what you wanted.”

“Sorry. I didn’t have a chance to call you before now.”

“The boyfriend?”

“His parents took us out for dinner. After that we had a fight.”

“About what?”

“Do you care?”

“Sure I do. I took you to lunch because I wanted to hang out with you, not to get you to work for me.”

“But you asked me for information.”

“Only because you seemed to want to be involved in what I was doing.”

“Oh.”

“So what was the fight about?”

“Sex. He always wants it, but he really doesn’t know what to do when he gets it. I finally said that to him, and he got mad.”

“You can’t blame him for that.”

“Can’t blame me either.”

“True.”

In the ensuing silence I imagined her smiling.

“I got a name for you,” she offered. “A Ms. Shelly Toomes. They don’t take things like phone numbers or the addresses of visitors, but one of the girls on the desk said that Ms. Toomes said that she was a librarian for LA.”

“Whoa,” I said. “That’s a deep find.”

“It helps?” she asked.

“A lot.”

“Um.”

“Yeah?”

“Can I come over?”

“It’s late.”

“That’s okay, then.”

“No. This hotel has a bar that always seems to be open. We could meet there.”

“Okay.”