“Oh no,” she says. In the brutal light of morning, the speech is all wrong. It is way too honest. Nothing at all about Gary and Lila. Part op-ed, part long literary analysis, part sermon on the most extravagant, wasteful weddings in literature. “Every wedding, even a successful wedding, is a waste,” Phoebe wrote, followed by a series of examples from literature that prove how the modern wedding has gotten totally out of control, how she blamed Queen Victoria for most of it, because prior to her big white dress, weddings in nineteenth-century literature were small affairs that happened in a sentence: “Reader, I married him.” Then, a final and totally random concluding side point about how annoying it is when the female protagonist claims she never wants to get married, yet somehow gets to have the biggest wedding in town.

It seems I’ll just be winging it, Phoebe thinks, and feels surprised at how excited she is by the challenge. She always gave her best lectures when she didn’t plan them too much, when she was too busy to prep. If she planned too intensely, if she wrote it all beforehand, she got flustered halfway through, because they were always longer than she realized. She overdid it. She rarely trusted herself to be herself, even though the students liked it more when she looked at them, when she just stood there like a person and was honest about all the things she knew and all the things she didn’t know.

GARY WAITS OUTSIDE the lobby in his car—a nonvintage, regular Hyundai. He is already in the passenger seat. Phoebe gets in to drive.

“I hear you’re in pain,” Phoebe says.

“So much pain,” he says. “Do you want to hear all about it?”

“If it will make the pain go away, sure.”

“It will make the pain feel … useful. Give us something to talk about, you know.”

Phoebe rolls down her window. She wants to feel the ocean air.

“So, the pain,” he says.

“Is it … painful?”

“Right. That’s the word. Painful.”

They laugh. They take off. He talks about his aches and pains, and then she talks about her aches and pains, and then they talk about how much more fun it is to talk about their aches and pains than their younger selves expected it would be.

“It honestly doesn’t even feel like complaining,” Gary says. “It’s just like, valid subject material.”

“I agree,” she says. “How are we not supposed to talk about the slow decay of our bodies?”

“It’s truly the most dramatic thing that will ever happen to us,” he says. “It’s basically like being on a sinking ship. Except you’re never allowed to acknowledge that the ship is sinking.”

“And then people roll their eyes every time you mention that the ship might be sinking,” Phoebe says.

A car pulls up next to them at the light, blasting Kesha so loudly, it ends the conversation. They just sit there and wait, two faithful subjects of Kesha’s universe.

“I truly cannot believe it when people drive by with their music that loud,” Gary says after Phoebe takes a right.

“Maybe they think we like it,” Phoebe says. “Sort of like when you’re obsessed with a favorite song and you can’t imagine anyone else not wanting to hear it a thousand times. They’re probably just driving around thinking they’re doing us a service, like, Everybodyyyy likes my music!!”

She sings that last part loudly, and Gary cracks up. He rolls down his window and repeats her song. “Everybodyyyyyy likes my music!”

This is her last day with Gary. She knows this. It deeply saddens her, and yet, at the same time, she is grateful for it. Excited, even. Determined to enjoy it, to want nothing from it but the day itself.

“I aspire to be them, in some way,” Phoebe says.

“Really? I’m so embarrassed about my musical tastes, I don’t even like turning the radio on when someone is in the car.”

“What would you do if I asked you to turn on some music right now?”

“I would deflect the question and ask what you would like to listen to since you’re the driver. Dealer’s choice.”

“Oh, so you’d make your anxiety seem like some noble self-sacrifice.”

“Exactly.”

She feels playful, like everything is a grand laugh. Even their aches and pains—just a joke between them. A thing to be shared. She turns left onto Bellevue Avenue, and if Phoebe forgets he is getting married tomorrow, and that her life is over, it is a beautiful drive.

They stop at the liquor store. “This should only take a minute,” he says. “It’s preordered.”

They go inside and Gary moves to pick up the box but can’t do it with his back. “Shit.”

“I got this,” Phoebe says. As she brings the box of booze to his car, it occurs to her that she is literally helping Gary and Lila get married with her own brute strength. But that is her job.

Back inside the car, her phone dings.

“It’s Geoffrey!” Phoebe says. “Craigslist isn’t just for murderers!!”

“Huh? Who is Geoffrey?”

“The mansion keeper,” she says. She hands him the phone. “The winter guy. Hey, can you read this aloud?”

“In any particular accent?” he asks.

“You do accents?”

“Only around total strangers.”

“What are my options?”

“New York,” he says. “Boston. Rhode Island. I’m limited regionally.”

“When in Rhode Island.”

“Hi, Phoebe,” he says, in a Rhode Island accent, which is just a more pronounced version of the way his mother talks. “Thank you for your interest in the Newcombe Mansion. I must say, I am keen to meet you, as I am very delighted to hear you have a PhD in nineteenth-century literature. As you know, the Newcombe Mansion was built in 1845 by a Civil War hero, Jonathan Newcombe, so this seems fortuitous. I hope I have the chance to meet an applicant with your level of expertise.”

“Wait, a winter keeper?” Gary asks, in his regular voice. “What are winter keepers?”

“People who caretake mansions. In the winter, when the owners are at their real homes. Turns out it’s a job in Newport.”

“Newcombe is a twenty-room property,” he reads again in his accent. “I would love to show you. I am available to meet you anytime this afternoon or tomorrow. I am hoping to have the matter settled before the end of the weekend.”

“Holy shit!” she says. “Tell him I can meet him later after I drop you off.”

“No, sorry,” he says. “I’m coming with you to see this mansion.”

“But we have to get your tux,” she says.

“That can wait.” He writes back to Geoffrey, and she puts the address in Waze.

“Wait, why don’t you have a Rhode Island accent?” she asks. “Aren’t you from Rhode Island?”