“I’ll be vague. It’s a glory hole sort of situation. Wandering guys with their dicks poking out of their jeans. Naked women are behind the walls. The guys wander around trying out one hole, then another. Like they’re shopping. Then the camera switches behind the holes to where the women are lying on their platforms. They are deeply bored. Like they’re thinking they don’t get paid enough to do this. Like they wish they’d brought their phones so they could play Toon Blast while they’re getting banged. They’re not attractive or aroused. Neither are the guys. Everyone has skin problems. They all look like they’ve already given up hope for anything good. Doesn’t this seem like too sad an idea of sex to have at twelve?”

“He probably just tripped over it cruising through regular videos.”

“But maybe not. Maybe all his fantasies are Czech. Maybe he’s already seen numbers one through seven. Maybe because he doesn’t have two happy parents to model healthy sexuality for him. And I don’t know what I can do about that. I’m in a business that’s like ninety percent women. I’m never going to find anybody new. Anybody good. I’m worn out. And too alone. I hate going down in the basement to replace fuses at night. Not to mention living in a house that’s so old and unrenovated that it still has fuses.”

“Don’t they have internet locks so kids can’t get to that stuff?”

Neale pushes this advice aside. “I can see it’s a problem that I think of him and me as buddies. I hate when he’s gone way off-road on his own and I have to come down hard as a parent. And I don’t really want to let him know I’ve been snooping.”

“Oh, but you really have to. He can’t watch that stuff. Think of who he’ll be at thirty if he does. You’re going to have to have a talk.”

“I hate when you’re strict with me.”

“You don’t. You love it. And you know I’m right. As usual.”

Someone driving an ancient Lincoln Town Car glides from the right lane across the middle lane, into the left-turn lane in one long move, then doesn’t turn left, just slides back in ahead of a by-now-frantic reassembly of traffic. Cate lays on her horn, just to assert herself in a situation over which she has no control.

“Major drugs” is Neale’s guess, which is always her guess about these sorts of drivers—extremely calm but totally clueless. Cate takes a quick left at the super-cheap car wash (and wristwatch outlet, if you count the guy with a few hundred of them pinned to the inside of his coat). Next door is her branch of the public library.