When Phoebe left for graduate school, she had very clear and beautiful ideas about art, how art is what elevates us, art is the magnificence wrung from the ugly dish towel of existence. Art helps us feel alive. And this had been true for Phoebe—Phoebe used to read books and feel astounded. She used to walk around galleries, inspired by the beautiful human urge to create. But that was years ago. Now she can’t stand the sight of her books. Can’t bear the thought of reading hundreds of pages just to watch Jane Eyre get married again.

“Well, that’s a relief to hear,” the bride says, like they’re old cousins again. “Nobody ever admits that. Everyone at the gallery walks around like, Oh, my, look at this white canvas. Look at what this painter has done with all this white space. He has chosen not to paint it! He has defied the conventions of painting by not actually painting! Isn’t that bold? Doesn’t that make you want to pay thousands of dollars for it? And some of the people are like, Yes, yes, it does, actually.”

Phoebe can feel how easy it would be to slip into this casual conversation about the false promises of art. She can feel herself wanting to rant about literature and how it didn’t end up saving her in the end, but the sun is starting to set. Phoebe is halfway done with her second cigarette. She looks back at the pills on the nightstand.

“What did you come in here for again?” Phoebe asks.

The bride seems offended by the directness of the question.

“I came to tell you to stop smoking,” the bride says with that edge to her voice again. “And to warn you that if you don’t change your mind about…”

But she can’t say the words.

“Killing myself?” Phoebe says.

“Yes. Then I am going to tell the front desk.”

“They can’t make a paying guest leave because the guest is sad.” Phoebe is amused by the thought. “‘I am so sorry, but we’ve all had a vote, and we’ve come to the conclusion that you are too sad to be here.’”

“You’re not sad, you’re suicidal,” the bride says. “You should leave the hotel and seek help immediately.”

“Tried that.”

After her husband left, Phoebe tried so many things. She applied to forty-two teaching jobs. She took a virtual painting class. She purchased a brand-new bike with cute handlebars like her virtual therapist suggested. Go have real experiences, the virtual therapist commanded. Go read real books on your condition. So she read real books on depression. Books by real, depressed people. She journaled in real journals. She downloaded a meditation app. Ate bananas for breakfast every day. Started Lexapro, then stopped, because it didn’t make her feel any better, just made it impossible to orgasm. And that was the only time she felt relief from herself—in those few moments when she could make herself come, thinking of her husband being a terrible man.

But orgasming didn’t save her, because after, she was still herself. She sobbed. She signed up for online dating sites, exchanged texts with a man who called himself Transatlantic and talked a lot about his job in biotech. But then Transatlantic met someone else, someone in real life, he explained, and she deleted her profile, turned on the TV, and basically never shut it off.

“Then at least wait until the wedding week is over!” the bride demands.

“I’m not rescheduling,” Phoebe says. “This is not a dentist appointment.”

“I seriously don’t get it. What’s the rush? You’re going to be dead forever, you know. You might as well wait a week.”

Because if she doesn’t do it tonight, Phoebe knows she will lose the feeling. She knows this is the kind of thing that requires a certain feeling. And if she loses that feeling, she will have to wake up tomorrow and go home. She will have to clean up the crumbs on the counter. She will have to bury Harry. Then, she will have to drive to school in her gray blouse and watch her husband get coffee every morning with another woman.

“It’s not like you’re going to live for much longer,” the bride says. “Might as well wait it out.”

“Do you know something about my medical history that I don’t?” Phoebe asks.

“You’re middle-aged, obviously. And you smoke. And drink. I’d give you like, twenty years, tops.”

“That’s really encouraging. Thanks.”

“My father was perfectly healthy, used to run every other day and take these giant green vitamins from Switzerland, and he didn’t even make it to seventy.”

“Maybe it was the vitamins that killed him,” Phoebe says.

“It was colon cancer.”

Phoebe knows she is supposed to say “I’m sorry for your loss.” But she can’t feel sorry for anyone else right now. So she doesn’t say anything.

“How does it not scare you?” the bride asks. “I’m literally terrified of dying. All I worried about for the last two years was catching Covid and dying before I could have my wedding.”

“Well, that explains it! I already had my wedding,” Phoebe says. “It seems I’m cleared to go.”

“But what if you go to Hell?”

“There’s no such thing as Hell,” Phoebe says.

“How do you know that?”

“I don’t know. It’s just what I believe,” Phoebe says. One of the few things Nietzsche wrote that she agreed with in graduate school. “Seems more plausible that Hell is some revenge fantasy concocted by unhappy people so they could punish all the happy people in their minds.”

“I wish I could believe that,” Lila says. “I always worry so much about going to Hell.”

“Who did you murder?”

“Nobody,” Lila says. “But don’t you think I’m just like, a little too rich? All we ever did in Catholic school was talk about how impossible it was for rich people like me to get into Heaven. And then they had us write this paper on Dante’s Inferno, which I actually got an A on, but for years, I had nightmares about being stuck in his different versions of Hell. It got so bad, I started seeing the guidance counselor about it.”

She said her dread of Hell was extra annoying, because despite going to a Catholic boarding school, her parents didn’t raise her to have any particular religion. Her parents couldn’t decide which one. Yes, she went to Portsmouth Abbey but only because that’s where her Catholic father went to school. And her mother was from a family of Protestants who dated back to the Mayflower and whenever Lila came home for the holidays, her mother whispered things about the Catholics being full of shit.

“And I was like, Hey thanks, this isn’t confusing at all,” Lila says.

The nightmares went on for years.

“They were really creepy, too. Like once I was stuck running around a racetrack getting beaten with my own leg. Another time I was turned into the oak tree outside my father’s house and I bled every time my mother plucked one of my leaves.”

Phoebe releases the smoke so slowly in the air, it’s almost beautiful. She is getting good, she thinks.

“That’s what happens to the suicides in Dante,” Lila clarifies. “Except it’s not my mother plucking the leaves, obviously. It’s like, a bunch of random harpies.”

“So I’ve read,” Phoebe says.

“Then how can you take that risk? I’m not saying Dante is right. But I mean, what if Dante is right?”

Phoebe learned trying to explain her feelings to her husband that you can’t explain this kind of darkness to someone who has never felt it. And the bride is very much like her husband. Phoebe can tell by the way she dresses, everything so tailored to her body. Up close, Phoebe can see that the romantic tangle of braids is actually a calculated system with the exact same number of braids on each side of her head. She is like a character from an Austen novel, sometimes disappointed in the sequence of events, but never psychically destroyed by them. Never paralyzed by existential horror. Always able to find relief from a long walk through the countryside or the busyness of the day. And that’s how Phoebe had been, too, during graduate school and most of her marriage. She couldn’t understand why someone like Tom wanted to die. But Mia is so beautiful? But Tom’s a doctor? But they have a baby? Phoebe could only think practically about such a thing then, just like the bride now.

So Phoebe tries her best to speak the bride’s language.

“The point is, this hotel is very expensive,” Phoebe says. “I can’t afford to stay here and wait all week.”

“Problem solved,” the bride says. “I’ll pay.”

“No,” Phoebe refuses.

“Why not?”

“I don’t even know you. And that’s too much money.”