The bookstore cat, Ferdinand, was sitting in a box on the floor of the back office. Ferdinand had arrived the previous Christmas, theoretically to deal with a rodent issue the store was having. While the rodents had indeed moved out, Ferdinand had moved in and revealed herself not to be an enormous tomcat, but a very, very pregnant ladycat, and several families in the neighborhood now had bookstore kittens. Liz had already named her Ferdinand, inspired by the cat’s commitment to stationary contemplation, and decided not to change it. Ferdinand was no longer pregnant, but she was still built along capacious lines, and the box she had selected—which was the tray-like lid of a box of printer paper—was not. She overflowed enough to obscure the box but didn’t reach the carpet, which was making Nina think of the speeders in Star Wars.

Nina looked up and saw Polly and Laura coming in. “Good afternoon, Polly,” she said, pointedly looking at the time.

“Pfft,” said Polly, dumping her purse and phone under the register. “It’s barely ten a.m., the tourist slowed me down.”

Nina looked at Laura, who shrugged, having already learned that clarifying anything Polly said was a waste of time and effort. The brief drive to Larchmont had been uneventful, and Polly had talked the entire time about other great movies featuring Raquel Welch, of which there were many more than Laura had realized. Perhaps she could take Polly everywhere so scary thoughts wouldn’t have a chance to get a toehold. Laura turned to Nina.

“I was thinking of getting a jump start on school. Is there anywhere good around here to study?”

“How close?”

Laura shrugged. “Walkable.”

Nina nodded. “Sure, but you’ll need to narrow it down. Larchmont has a walkability score of eighty-five.”

“You don’t say,” said Laura weakly, not completely sure what that meant.

“I do say. Are we talking coffee shops or libraries?”

“There’s a library?”

Nina fixed Laura with a basilisk eye and raised her eyebrow. “Are you expressing surprise there are libraries in Los Angeles? Did you think we were all illiterate cultural dilettantes?”

Laura shook her head. “Uh . . . no?” She was pretty sure she knew what a dilettante was, but she wasn’t taking any chances.

“Fair enough.” Nina looked mollified, and continued, “There are actually two—yes, two—public libraries within walking distance of Larchmont, though one is much closer. I’ll find you the addresses.” She made a face. “And the hours. There have been a lot of cuts, and one of them was only open two days a week for a while.”

“Doesn’t the library kind of steal your business?”