Rancho Cucamonga, California slumped on the slightly poisoned fringe of the marine layer.
The text instructed her to be at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf at six thirty. She was to leave her phone in the car and wear a UCLA sweatshirt. She appreciated the caution. She was expecting a man, likely unkempt and dissolute.
But it was an older woman who sat down at her table. A refined woman in a muted Armani business suit, dignified and cordial. The polish of her European accent rippled and reassured.
Dull morning sunlight tinted their table. Pleasantries were exchanged which curiously shifted into a discussion of Richard Diebenkorn.
The woman in the suit suggested this neighborhood in Rancho Cucamonga, California looked like something Diebenkorn would paint. The younger woman agreed and said even the rich shades of green Diebenkorn was partial to appeared here, at least for now following the unusually prolonged winter rains.
She said the aerial views Diebenkorn often favored to create warbling geometric patterns may have inspired city planners. The older woman laughed at this comment. She had not expected the Diebenkorn reference she tossed out to catch such an informed response.
The refined woman then slowly removed a large manilla envelope from her bag and set it between them. This was reciprocated by the nonchalant slide of a business envelope stuffed with hundred-dollar bills.
The business envelope was slid back to the woman in the UCLA sweatshirt, who was stunned to hear payment was not necessary. The book was a gift. After all, it was impossible to assign an accurate valuation to the knowledge it would reveal.
This was hardly what the younger woman was expecting.
Not after the elaborate hoops she had been put through for the past two weeks that led up to this meeting. All the back-and-forth texting, last-minute lurches from one messaging platform to another, the nature of the questions asked, the undercurrents of paranoia, none a prelude to gift-giving.
Now the book was hers. She could head back to the Hotel Bel-Air.
For the first time in years, she seemed to have made a new friend.
