“I’d actually like to stay tomorrow night if there is room,” Phoebe says.
“I’m so sorry, but there are no more rooms available,” Pauline says. “There’s another wedding starting tomorrow. We’re all booked.”
“Oh,” Phoebe says.
Phoebe feels stunned by the way Pauline said “We’re all booked” with such a decisive tone, it left no room for debate. Pauline, too, has transformed this week—she wears a loose gauzy dress, with wavy beach hair cascading over her shoulders. And Phoebe feels proud, but also flustered; she is not ready to leave. Phoebe gives Pauline one more moment to make a miracle happen, to look at the computer and say, Actually, I made a mistake! But Pauline just blinks, her thick lashes like gargoyle wings. It makes Phoebe feel dizzy.
“I’ll be staying just tonight then,” Phoebe says.
“Checkout is at eleven,” Pauline says.
UPSTAIRS, PHOEBE SITS on the balcony. She wonders where Gary is. She considers knocking on his door, considers texting him, but then considers that he probably wants to be alone right now, the way she wanted to crawl into the hole of her bed after Matt left.
But then she considers that this might be a very different situation. Maybe the last thing he wants to be is alone. Maybe he’s just fine. Maybe he’s scuba diving in St. Thomas right now. Maybe she doesn’t really know him, and again, this is the problem: She worries she doesn’t.
Phoebe watches Carlson fold up the tiny circular tables that he put out for the hotel after-after-after-party. He stacks them into one long ladder so tall it looks dangerous. He puts the ladder of chairs on his back and walks out of sight. In his wake, Ryun stabs the white and lilac balloons. He uses an obscenely large kitchen knife. Each pop makes Phoebe startle.
But then they are gone, and it’s just the sound of the ocean and a white ribbon flying off the cliff into the darkness. A waste. The idea is always lurking behind every object, every moment. She imagines the ribbon sinking, and for a moment, she feels herself go with it to the murky bottom.
But then she gets up, walks to Gary’s door. She knocks. When nobody answers, she turns around to see Marla.
“Where’s Gary?” Marla asks.
“I don’t know,” Phoebe says. “Did he check out of the hotel?”
“I don’t know,” Marla says. “He just texted and asked me to watch Juice until he gets back. But he didn’t say when that will be.”
Oliver is by Marla’s side.
“So why don’t you teach Percy Jackson?” Oliver asks. “Do you not like Greek myth?”
The randomness of the question makes Phoebe and Marla laugh.
“Been a little busy,” Phoebe says. “But you know what? I’ll read one of his books soon and let you know what I think.”
BACK IN HER room, Phoebe dawdles, drinks some Everybody Water, eats a complimentary macaron. In a strange way, she feels as she did that first night—unsure of what to do with herself. She will actually have to leave tomorrow, figure out somewhere else to go. Buy a suitcase.
The thought of leaving makes her feel nostalgia for the room. No, she feels love for it. She loves this room, the high ceilings, the marble bathroom, the old wood floors. She wishes she could take it with her, capture the feeling of being inside here forever, bring it everywhere she goes.
And maybe there is some way she can. She opens her notebook.
She rereads her wedding speech. As a speech, it’s terrible. But as literary analysis of the curious absence of weddings in Victorian marriage plots, it’s not bad. She likes the part about Jane Eyre getting married in under a sentence. And the paragraph about Jane’s failed wedding being the only wedding that Brontë describes in actual detail. And why would Brontë do that? Why spend more time writing the failed wedding than the successful one?
Her phone dings.
Geoffrey is interested in offering her the job. And yes, she can have a small dog, as long as it’s a breed common to the nineteenth century.
Reading the email gives Phoebe the same feeling she got when her father said she could go to summer camp one year. She wants to tell Gary. She writes out then deletes a series of possible texts.
Instead, she downloads Jane Eyre on her phone. She rereads the scenes leading up to Jane’s failed wedding. On the hotel pad, she jots down any line that seems to foreshadow the wedding’s ruin. She tries to pinpoint the exact moment when the engagement became a trap; was it on the way to town after he proposed? Or did it start much earlier than that, long before Rochester proposed? Eventually she calls down for another pad. She writes all night. She does not smoke. She does not drink. She is energized by the thought of not knowing what she is even writing, of getting to decide it with every sentence.
MONDAY
The Wedding Brunch
In the morning, Marla is in the conservatory. She says she is not leaving until she sees Gary. In the meantime, yes, she is absolutely going to eat the wedding brunch.
“Carlson is the one who put it out,” Marla says.
“I didn’t say anything,” Phoebe says.
“Is there some rule about only getting to eat the brunch if the wedding takes place?”
“It just feels a little wrong, no?”
“What feels wrong is watching avocado brown right in front of your face.”
“It feels like someone died,” Juice whispers.
“Nobody died,” Marla says. “This is just food. And somebody needs to eat it.”
