You can feel how fast Los Angeles runs after a vacation somewhere like Hawaii. No sooner have Simone and I been seated at Bossa Nova that we have a waitress hovering over us.

"Are you ready to order?" she asks us right away. Simone already knows what she wants. They both look at me like I'm brain damaged when I peruse the menu. I finally settle for the mozzarella bruschetta and Simone picks up right where she left off in the conversation.

We're talking about a guy she recently stopped seeing. The guy—let's call him Brett—does PR for a major hotel, is sexy, smart, and amazing in bed. The problem? He takes forever to return Simone's texts and calls. OK, maybe not forever. But in a world where we're always plugged in and used to receiving information as it happens, a couple of days might as well be forever.

"I like him so much, he's amazing," Simone says. "But I already have another date on Saturday night and a coffee date on Sunday. Why shouldn't I? I called him on Sunday and he texted me back—didn't even call—he texted me back on Wednesday."

"Did he mention what kept him?" I ask.

Simone scoffed. "Work thing."

I sipped my coffee.

No one needs to read He's Just Not That Into You to know what "work thing" means. We've all done it. The crazy thing is that we all know it only takes two seconds to call or text someone back to let them know we're swamped, because we've all managed to squeeze the time to do it, no matter how busy we are—when we care enough about the other person. And though we all know this, we still all say it as though it makes perfect sense, as though work really takes up every second of the day and the night, and when people tell us this, we never confront them.

We rarely buy it, but we're complicit. Maybe it's because we don't want anyone calling us on our fib. Maybe it's because we're saving it, just in case someone we really like feeds us the line, so that we can try to convince ourselves it's true. You know, just this once.

The waitress appears with my bruschetta and Simone's salad.

"Have you told him you expect a faster turnaround in his responses?" I ask Simone.

"Who doesn’t?" she responds. It's true.

"I think you should call him and tell him you're disappointed in him for lagging and that he needs to make it up to you. Tonight." I smile mischievously.

"I deleted his number," Simone tells me, taking a bite of her spinach salad.

Deletion is the ultimate act. To an ADD generation spoiled by how easy it is to store data to the point we no longer memorize anything, deletion is tantamount to annihilation.

"Gone," Simone says. "I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to be the idiot that keeps calling. You get one get out of jail free card and that's it. I won't wait by my phone. I refuse."

Less than three miles north, our mutual friend Lisa was still hiding at L'Ermitage where she'd checked in four days before to convalesce after a powerful new peel left her looking like someone had put a flamethrower to her face.

"I'm going out of my mind!" she screamed when I returned her call a few hours after touching down. "I've been here for days and I have no idea what else I can do. I have answered every single e-mail in my inbox. I've cataloged all my photos. I've gone through every single song file in my iTunes library to make sure it has the correct album cover image, year, track number—everything. I'm going absolutely insane."

"Honey," I told her. "Go home."

"I can't! I would just die if The Boys saw me like this."

The Boys are her neighbors. Lisa has the particular Los Angeles blessing (or curse, depending how you look at it) of living next to six actors or models. Never mind that the six of them live in a one-bedroom apartment, have only one car among them, hardly look a day over twenty-three and are quite possibly gay—they're beautiful. And, according to Lisa, beautiful men must never see you looking ugly.

"You can't see me," I told her then, "so I want to let you know that I'm rolling my eyes so hard, I'm afraid they're gonna get lodged in the back of my head."

So there was Lisa: slim, fit, tan, blonde. Gorgeous, except for her face—for now, anyway—and trapped in her room. She called room service for vodka. When they asked her if she cared to specify a label, she responded, "whatever works fastest," and hung up.

And then, her iPhone lit up with a new message.

It was an e-mail from a man she'd met three or four weeks earlier at a bar, of all places.

She doesn't remember how she ended up at the Hideout. What she does remember is that it was almost totally dead but she was too tired to find somewhere better and too lonely to go home. She'd scanned the four other patrons: all of them guys and none of them appealing. One, a bit older and somewhat overweight, had suddenly made a move to sit near her when a stranger swept in out of nowhere and put a hand on the small her back.

"There you are," he'd said.

Lisa’d looked up at the handsome, sandy-haired man in his late thirties, then, on a whim, turned to the bartender and blurted out, "we just got married in Las Vegas over the weekend."

"Hard to find parking for some reason," the stranger had said. "You’d think the place was jammed. Sorry to keep you waiting."

"I would have gotten you a drink, baby, but I actually don't know what you like—besides champagne."

Lisa never giggles, but she was giggling.

The stranger had smiled at the bartender, "this is the real reason why you never should marry on an impulse."

The stranger, who, as it turned out, didn’t even live in L.A., took Lisa back to his hotel and they had the dizzying kind of session you have when you really want to have sex but end up only making out all night instead.

This had never happened to Lisa. When she first told me about it, she confessed she hadn't made out with a guy since high school.

"It's usually just sex," she told me. "You know? I mean, we kiss, right, but usually it's like, 'oh, baby, fuck me!' And then we do."

It was true for me, too.

She and the stranger—whose first name she still doesn't know, by the way, because they called each other Mr. and Mrs. Smith all night long—had a furious back and forth over text after he left the next day. Their messaging lasted a week and then as fast as he'd appeared, he was gone. Lisa's last message, an inoffensive, "About to jump in the shower, wishing you were with me," went unanswered.

"I would call him," Lisa told me when we met for tea and macarons before I left. "But I've been busy."

"Besides, it's never good if you extend it," I said, feeling a little like I was handing her a consolation prize. "You know? This is such a perfect fantasy—the way he swept in and saved you, the story of the fake marriage, you both running drunk around a dark, deserted, wet Santa Monica, the steamy make-out later, the lack of strings and names. It's a wonderful story. For the memoirs, as my mother would say."

"Yeah," she responded, looking across the street at a couple walking two shih tzus and a chihuahua.

So now, weeks later, out of the blue, just as he came and just as he disappeared the first time, the fantasy of Mr. Smith was back.

Darling, I have missed your voice and mind. Too many visitors, travel, etc., over here. Worse yet, my phone was stolen and I don't have your number any longer. I have had many thoughts I want to share with you. Put us back in touch.

Lisa rolls her eyes. She's pretty sure she'd e-mailed him her number. Gmail is the ultimate junk-drawer. No one throws anything away. If he'd really wanted to call her, all he would have had to do is run a quick search. Besides, who has their phone stolen?

"Do I call him?" she asks my voicemail. I'm so absorbed while talking to Simone about her own phone issues, I don't hear my phone ring.

After lunch, Simone and I walk back toward her office. I'm about to jump in a cab when her phone vibrates.

"I don't know who this is," she says looking at her Blackberry. "But the only person who'd be calling who isn't a contact is Brett."

"Are you going to answer?" I ask.

"I don't know," she says, still holding the phone without answering. "I'm tired of playing games."

I laugh at the obvious irony and close the cab door. "You like him, just call him!" I yell out the window before the cab pulls back onto S. Beverly.

It's the same advice I would have given Lisa if I'd picked up the phone when she called. It goes against the "don't be too available" rule, but I could care less. I believe in treating others how I want to be treated. If someone calls or messages me and I'm interested in talking with them or seeing them, I will let them know it by being prompt in answering.

Back at L'Ermitage, Mrs. Smith dials Mr. Smith. Why not? He was perfect the first time when he swept in at the nick of time and he's perfect now when he can keep her company without actually seeing her.

BLOGGIE TREATS

Lisa and Simone aren’t the only ones wondering whether they should call a guy back. Bad Mutha Blogger suffered her own panic attack while wondering if she should call back a guy who had taken two weeks to get back to her after their first date. She finally did.

In another corner of the blogosphere, Average Jane also faced the question of whether or not to call a guy back when she missed a call from the cute boy working at her local Whole Foods. She called him, too.

You’d be surprised how many people write in to dating experts or post on forums asking whether they should call someone back. At Datingish, Living_Vs_Existing7 wonders if she should call her dream guy back. At A Real Guy Ville, a reader asks Victor M, resident “typical guy,” if she should call a love interest back after a lukewarm run around. And over at Answerology, a woman shares how guys have lost interest in her for not calling back right away.

Verdict: we’re the instant generation. The three day rule is now officially the three minute rule. You’ve been warned.