“Shh,” I said.

“In our two series, we hoped to ascertain whether the consciousness of the decision affected the outcome.” Dr. Lvov clicked to another black slide. “As you can see, the graph shows no effective difference between the tries in which the experimenter chose the detection apparatus and those in which the apparatus was randomly chosen.”

“You want to go get some breakfast?” David whispered.

“I already ate,” I whispered back, and waited for my stomach to growl and give me away. It did.

“There’s a great place down near Hollywood and Vine that has the waffles Katharine Hepburn made for Spencer Tracy in Woman of the Year.”

“Shh,” I said.

“And after breakfast we could go to Frederick’s of Hollywood and see the bra museum.”

“Will you please be quiet? I can’t hear.”

“Or see,” he said, but he subsided more or less for the remaining ninety-two black, gray, and polka-dotted slides.

Dr. Lvov turned on the lights and blinked smilingly at the audience. “Consciousness had no discernible effect on the results of the experiment. As one of my lab assistants put it, ‘The little devil knows what you’re going to do before you know it yourself.’ ”

This was apparently supposed to be a joke, but I didn’t think it was very funny. I opened my program and tried to find something to go to that David wouldn’t be caught dead at.

“Are you two going to breakfast?” Dr. Thibodeaux asked.

“Yes,” David said.

“No,” I said.

“Dr. Hotard and I wished to eat somewhere that is vraiment Hollywood.”

“David knows just the place,” I said. “He’s been telling me about this great place where they have the grapefruit James Cagney shoved in Mae Clark’s face in Public Enemy,” Dr. Hotard hurried up, carrying a camera and four guidebooks. “And then perhaps you would show us Grauman’s Chinese Theatre,” he asked David.