“Yeah, like she’s floating up to heaven and looking behind her and saying, What the hell are those two doing?”

“I would think she’d probably be into it, knowing her.”

“That does seem more likely, I guess,” I said.

Someone was going to have to get on the bed first. The window drapes were open, and through the gauzy white curtains I watched the silhouettes of children jumping into the small pool right next to our room. I could hear their laughter as they splashed around and their parents yelled for them to be careful.

“Should we ask to move our room?” I asked.

“No, why?”

The splashing was loud enough so it sounded like they were swimming in the room with us.

“You’re having second thoughts,” he said.

“I don’t know what I’m having.”

He looked at me like he’d been tricked. Tricked into paying $119 for a room with a woman who had led him on. I didn’t want to be that person.

“I’m going to use the bathroom,” he said. “To wash my hands.”

I didn’t want witnesses to what we were doing, or not doing, or going to do, even. When he closed the door I thought about just taking my purse and walking right out the hotel-room door, but realized I’d likely have to face him in that fluorescent-hued conference room—or, worse, over another dying body. Or walk away from the only thing I had in my life.

I watched the shadows of children jumping past the window and got on the bed. First, I just sat on the edge, and then I moved closer to the center, shoes still on, the cheap coverlet scratching my palms. I turned to look at the rest of the bed, to see what we were working with. There were close to a dozen pillows, and I started tossing them off, one by one. I didn’t care how he felt about it. I just did it. I stood up and stared at the bed, pulled the coverlet off to expose the white starched sheets, and took my things and left.

18.

I didn’t make it all the way home, deciding that returning to an empty apartment would be supremely depressing. Nathan tried calling me, probably thinking I had gone for ice. His first texts didn’t betray alarm, and then: I didn’t scare you off, did I? And Hey, this isn’t funny. How am I supposed to get home?

I drove to the beach and pulled my car alongside the Pacific Coast Highway and parked it, and even considered sleeping in the car for the night. I cracked the windows and listened to the waves crashing on the sand. It felt important for me to be by the water. We lived so far away from it, Bobby and I. Only ten miles on the map, but an hour and a half in the car.