On my side of the wall, the picture of the moose would start to rattle out another little tap dance. I had to reach up and hold it, lest the frame jounce right off the hook and smack me in the face. She was a screamer, sounding more like a woman in labor than one in love. The tempo picked up. Finally, she uttered a little yelp of astonishment, but I couldn't tell if she came or fell off the bed. After a moment, the smell of cigarette smoke wafted through the walls and I could hear their murmured postmortem. Twelve minutes later, they were at it again. I got up and took the picture off the wall, stuffed a sock in each cup of my bra and tied it across my head like earmuffs, with the ends knotted under my chin. Didn't help much. I lay there, a cone over each ear like an alien, wondering at the peculiarities of human sex practices. I would have much to report when I returned to my planet.

At 4:45,I gave up any hope of getting back to sleep. I took a shower and washed my hair, returning to the room wrapped in a motel towel the size of a place mat. As I pulled on my clothes, she was beginning to yodel and he was yipping like a fox. I had never heard so many variations on the word oh. I locked the door behind me and headed out across the parking lot on foot.

The smell of desert air was intense: sweet and cold. The sky was still an inky black with strands of dark red cutting through the low clouds at the horizon. I was nearly giddy from lack of sleep, but I felt no sense of endangerment. If someone were waiting in the bushes with an Uzi, I would leave this world in a state of sublime innocence.

The lights in the cafe" were just blinking on, vibrant green neon spelling out the word cafe in one convoluted loop, like a squeeze of tooth gel. I could see a waitress in a pale pink uniform scratch at her backside at the height of a yawn. The highway was empty and I crossed at a casual place. I needed coffee, bacon, pancakes, juice, and I wasn't sure what else, but something reminiscent of childhood. I sat at the far end of the counter, my back against the wall, still mindful of the plate-glass window and the gray wash of dawn light outside. The waitress, whose name turned out to be Frances, was probably my age, with a country accent and a long tale to tell about some guy named Arliss who was systematically unfaithful, most recently with her girlfriend, Charlene.

"He has really tore himself with me this time," she said, as she plunked down a bowl of steaming oatmeal in front of me.

By the time I finished eating, I knew everything there was to know about Arliss and she knew a lot about Jonah Robb.

"If it was me, I'd hang on to him," she said, "but now not at the expense of meeting this doctor fella your friend Vera wants to fix you up with. I'd jump right on that. He sounds real cute to me, though personally I've made it a practice not to date a man knows more about my insides than I do. I went out with this doctor once? Actually he's a medical student, if the truth be known. First time we kissed, he told me the name of some condition arises when you get a pubic hair caught down in your throat. Tacky? Lord God. What kind of person did he think I was?" She leaned on the counter idly swiping it with a damp rag so she'd look like she was busy if the boss stopped in.

"I never heard of a doctor dating a private eye, have you?" I said.

"Honey, I don't even know any private eyes, except you. Maybe he's tired of nurses and lab technicians and lady lawyers and like that. He's been dating Vera, hasn't he? And what is she, some kind of insurance adjuster…"

"Claims manager," I said. "Her boss got fired."

"But that's my point. I bet they never sat around having long heart-to-heart chats about medical malpractice, for God's sake. He's bored with that. He's looking for someone new and fresh. And think of it this way, he probably doesn't have any communicable diseases."

"Well, now there's a recommendation," I said. "You better believe it. In this day and age? I'd insist on a blood test before the first lip lock."

The front door opened and a couple of customers came in. "Take my word for it," she said, as she moved away. "This guy could be it. You could be Mrs. Doctor Somebody-or-other by the end of the year."

I paid my check, bought a newspaper from the vending machine out front, and went back to my room. All was quiet next door. I propped myself up in bed and read the Brawley News, including a long article about "palm gardens," which I learned was the proper term for the groves of date palms strung out on both sides of the Salton Sea. The trees, exotic transplants brought in from North Africa a century ago, transpire as much as five hundred quarts of water a day and have to be pollinated by hand. The varieties of dates-the Zahid, the Barhi, the Kasib, the Deglet Noor, and the Medjool- all sounded like parts of the brain most affected by stroke.