By nine o’clock Billie has been down to the business center twice. She checks e-mail, checks FarAway, checks all the chat rooms. No Boggle. No Paul Zell. Just chess pieces, and it isn’t her move. She writes Paul Zell an e-mail; in the end, she doesn’t send it.

When she goes upstairs for the last time, no one is there. Just the suitcase. She doesn’t really expect anyone to be there. The jeweler’s box is still down at the bottom of the suitcase.

The office building in the window is still lit up. Maybe the lights stay on all night long, even when no one is there. Billie thinks those lights are the loneliest things she’s ever seen. Even lonelier than the light of distant stars that are already dead by the time their light reaches us. Far down below, ant people do their antic things.

Billie opens up the minibar again. Inside are miniature bottles of gin, bourbon, tequila, and rum that no one is going to drink unless Billie drinks them. What would Alice do, Billie thinks. Billie has always been a Lewis Carroll fan, and not just because of the chess stuff.

There are two beers and a jar of peanuts. Billie drinks all of the miniatures and both normal-sized cans of beer. Perhaps you noticed the charges on your bill.

Here is where details begin to be a little thin for me, Paul Zell. Perhaps you have a better idea of what I’m describing, what I’m omitting. Then again maybe you don’t.

It’s the first time Billie’s ever been drunk, and she’s not very good at it. Nothing is happening, that she can tell. She perseveres. She begins to feel okay, as if everything is going to be okay. The okay feeling gets larger and larger until she’s entirely swallowed up by okayness. This lasts for a while, and then she starts to fade in and out, like she’s jumping forward in time, always just a little bit dizzy when she arrives. Here she is, flipping through channels, not quite brave enough to click on the pay-for-porn channels, although she thinks about it. Then here she is, a bit later, putting that lipstick on again. This time she kind of likes the way she looks. Here she is, lifting all of Paul Zell’s clothes out of the suitcase. She takes the ring out of the box, puts it on her big toe. Now there’s a gap. Then: here’s Billie, back again, she’s bent over a toilet. She’s vomiting. She vomits over and over again. Someone is holding back her hair. There’s a hand holding out a cold, damp facecloth. Now she’s in a bed. The room is dark, but Billie thinks there’s someone sitting on the other bed. He’s just sitting there.

Later on, she thinks she hears someone moving around the room, doing things. For some reason, she imagines it’s the Enchantress Magic EightBall. Rummaging around the room, looking for important, powerful, magical things. Billie thinks she ought to get up and help. But she can’t move.