She smiled and, when we started moving again, she said, “He wasn’t the right man for me. And . . . and after tonight I will have to stop seeing you too.”

I think she wanted me to say something or ask something, but I stayed silent because I agreed with both of her decisions.

“Because,” she continued, “as long as I see you I will want you.”

We made love as quietly as a couple can when they know this might be the last time. Afterward we sat intertwined on the veranda beneath a quilt of silver and gold cloth.

The telephone rang.

“You ’ave replaced me already?” Asiette teased.

“I told her not to call until after you fell asleep.”

“Easy?”

“It’s kinda late, isn’t it, Lola?”

“I can’t sleep and I don’t know what to do. As long as I knew I’d be talking to Craig in a day or so I felt calm, peaceful. But now he’s dead and . . .”

“I understand,” I said. “I have a son about Craig’s age.”

“You do?”

“He’s adopted but I love him so much that I couldn’t imagine the world without him in it.”

We were both silent for a time there.

“Did you just want to talk to with somebody?” I asked after a while.

“Donata Delphine used to work for the Stephanopoulos Talent Agency.”

“Oh.” I scribbled down the name on a little pad I kept next to the first-floor extension.

“I had forgotten it before. She just mentioned it that time Craig brought her over. It’s up on Sunset, the talent agency is. She told me that she got fired because of dating one of the clients.”

“I thought she was a burlesque dancer.”

“She does a lot of things, but through all of it that girl has ambition. She won’t stop until she’s on top of the mountain or underneath it.”

“Anything else about her?”

“Like what?”

“Who else she worked for, if maybe there was somebody angry when she got dismissed. Maybe the name of the client she was dating.”

“I don’t, I don’t remember. She turned up her nose at the little bit of money the modeling agency paid. Like all young, beautiful women she thought she was worth her weight in gold.”

I felt a hand on my bare back and actually gasped.

“What’s wrong?” Lola asked.

“Nothing,” I said, turning my eyes to Asiette. “I just thought I saw a mouse.”

The French girl had donned her violet dress and also an old orange, button-up sweater that I let her wear sometimes when she got cold.

“Oh my God,” Lola moaned. “You got to fumigate. If you see one there’s a thousand.”