Kinsey and Me by Sue Grafton

receipt, bypassing my standard contract. As young as she was, I wasn’t
     sure it’d be binding anyway.
    I jotted down a description of the man named Gage. He sounded like every stud on the
     prowl I’ve ever seen. Early thirties, five-foot-ten, good build, dark hair, dark mustache,
     great smile, and a dimple in his chin. I was prepared to keep writing, but that was
     the extent of it. For all of their alleged hours of conversation, she knew precious
     little about him. I quizzed her at length about hobbies, interests, what sort of work
     he did. The only real information she could give me was that he drove an old silver
     Jaguar, which is where they “got it on” (her parlance, not mine) the first time. The
     second time was at her place. After that, he apparently disappeared like a puff of
     smoke. Real soul mates, these two. I didn’t want to tell her what an old story it
     was. In Santa Teresa, the eligible men are so much in demand they can do anything
     they want. I took her address and telephone number and said I’d get back to her. As
     soon as she left, I picked up my handbag and car keys. I had a few personal errands
     to run and figured I’d tuck her business in when I was finished with my own.

    M OOTER’S IS ONE of a number of bars on the Santa Teresa singles’ circuit. By night, it’s crowded and
     impossibly noisy. Happy hour features well drinks for fifty cents and the bartender
     rings a gong for every five-dollar tip. The tables are small, jammed together around
     a dance floor the size of a boxing ring. The walls are covered with caricatures of
     celebrities, possibly purchased from some other bar, as they seem to be signed and
     dedicated to someone named Stan, whom nobody’s ever heard of. An ex-husband of mine
     played jazz piano there once upon a time, but I hadn’t been in for years.
    I arrived that afternoon at two, just in time to watch the place being opened up.
     Two men, day drinkers by the look of them, edged in ahead of me and took up what I
     surmised were habitual perches at one end of the bar. They were exchanging the kind
     of pleasantries that suggest daily contact of no particular depth. The man who let
     us in apparently doubled as bartender and bouncer. He was in his thirties, with curly
     blond hair, and a T-shirt reading BOUNCER stretched across an impressively muscular chest. His arms were so big I thought he
     might rip his sleeves out when he flexed.
    I found an empty stool at the far end of the bar and waited while he made a couple
     of martinis for the two men who’d come in with me. A waitress appeared for work, taking
     off her coat as she moved through the bar to the kitchen area.
    The bartender then ambled in my direction with an inquiring look.
    “I’ll have a wine spritzer,” I said.
    A skinny guy with a guitar case came into the bar behind me. When the bartender saw
     him, he grinned.
    “Hey, how’s it goin’? How’s Fresno?”
    They shook hands and the guy took a stool two down from mine. “Hot. And dull, but
     Mary Jane’s was fine. We really packed ’em in.”
    “Smirnoff on the rocks?”
    “Nah, not today. Gimme a beer instead. Bud’ll do.”
    The bartender pulled one for him and set his drink on the bar at the same time I got
     mine. I wondered what it must be like to hang out all day in saloons, nursing beers,
     shooting the shit with idlers and ne’er-do-wells. The waitress came out of the kitchen,
     tying an apron around her waist. She took a sandwich order from the guys at the far
     end of the bar. The other fellow and I both declined when she asked if we were interested
     in lunch. She began to busy herself with napkins and flatware.
    The bartender caught my eye. “You want to run a tab?”
    I shook my head. “This is fine,” I said. “I’m trying to get in touch with a guy who
     was in here last night.”
    “Good luck. The place was a zoo.”
    “Apparently, he’s a regular. I thought you might identify him from a