“How extremely interesting,” Ben said, and then, when she wasn’t looking, he snuck away to the restrooms. Outside the door to the men’s room, an old woman was grappling with the drinking fountain. She had to stand on the tips of her orthopedic shoes in order to reach the spigot. When she was done drinking, she turned from the fountain only to knock over her bag, whose contents spilled onto the floor. Geriatric piñata, Ben thought. Among the mess was a crusted tube of ointment, a troubling number of sugar packets, and a toothbrush whose bristles frayed out like an ancient broom. An orange prescription bottle rolled to Ben’s feet. He picked it up and brought it to the woman, who was struggling to get down to the level of the purse.

“Let me help,” Ben said, gathering her things.

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” the woman began, but by this point the job was already done.

“Do you want the toothbrush back?” he asked. “The bristles touched the ground.”

The woman frowned. “Go ahead and put it in. And the sugars. I guess this is my punishment for pilfering them in the first place.”

“Everybody steals sugar,” Ben said, hoping she did not feel embarrassed. He handed her the purse, which she hauled onto her shoulder as if it were filled with sand. She thanked him, and he went to join the others in line, forgoing the bathroom altogether. He hoped Freddy and the girls had witnessed his little moment of heroics, but Freddy was in business with the hotel clerk and the girls were turned toward each other, deep in chatter. They jolted into character when they saw him.

“Where’d you go?” his girl asked, pressing a hand to his chest. “I thought you’d abandoned me.”

“Just the bathroom,” Ben said. He looked back and saw that the old woman was smiling at him. He smiled back at her, hoping he did not look like the type of man who was about to do whatever it was he was about to do.

Like the girl’s white dress, the room was minimal in a modern way. Everything was ordinary except for the bed, which was a king. The bed excited Ben—he’d never slept in anything larger than a queen. Beside it was a mirror that reached from floor to ceiling, so that people making love could glance over and watch themselves. Ben thought about this mirror, how behind it was the room where Freddy had taken Samantha.

His own girl was busy inspecting the desk in the corner. Ben watched as she opened a drawer, removed a pen, and placed it in her little opales-cent bag. It was the kind of behavior Alana frowned upon—the taking advantage of anyone or anything, including corporations—but which she would sometimes engage in with a criminal frivolity. One time she nearly died of the giggles while pocketing a bottle of Tabasco from an Applebee’s. Sitting on the bed, Ben found that he missed her. He was used to being with her at night and would have liked to have her there if only to hear her opinion of the situation. If nothing else, she would have appreciated the subtleties of the night: the Muzak version of “Rich Girl” that played in the elevator, the chintzy fleur-de-lis night-light, the bowl of pastel jelly beans at the reception desk. He hated himself for missing her—for wanting milk when he’d been served champagne. They would be brushing their teeth and Alana would say something like, Don’t you love how, even when you think a tube of toothpaste is gone, if you just squeeze it hard enough you can get another week out of it? and then she would look at him, hoping for a lengthy dialogue about the economy of toiletries. But, Alana, she would want him to ask, what happens after that week, when you think the toothpaste is really gone? It was the sort of thing someone like Freddy would never understand. Wealth made people colorblind to certain pleasures.