Baker indulges in some red velvet–cake ice cream but resists the temptation of marijuana.

At nine fifteen, his phone rings. It’s Ayers.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey.”

“You heard?”

“I did. Cash sent me a picture of Mick slipping the ring on your finger.” Baker pauses. “I guess the breakup didn’t last long.”

“I was taken by surprise,” Ayers says.

“But you said yes, right?” Baker says. “And it was still a yes once you were alone with him? I mean, I understand the manipulative nature of public proposals…” He shakes his head; he’s parroting Ellen.

“Yes,” Ayers says. “It was manipulative. Good choice of words.”

Ellen has never steered him wrong, he thinks. “You’re going to marry Mick? Even though he cheated on you? Even though you said yourself that you can’t trust him?”

“Do you have time for a story?” Ayers asks. “This is something I’ve never told anyone—not Mick, not Rosie, not anybody.”

“I have all night,” Baker says.

She takes a breath. “When I was Maia’s age—younger even; ten or eleven—I lived in Kathmandu with my parents.”

“Kathmandu.” Baker remembers all the photographs on Ayers’s wall. Story for another day. “In Nepal?”

“Yes,” Ayers says. “Kathmandu used to be this frenetic, dirty, dusty, poverty-stricken place where emaciated cows roamed the streets along with the cars and the motorbikes. My parents and I lived in a backpacker hostel. My mother, Sunny, tended bar at an expat pub, I can’t remember the name, only that it had a snooker table, and while my mother worked, my father would try to teach me to play, but my arms were too short to hold the cue stick. Anyway, the manager of the pub was this guy named Simon and he was the most handsome man I have ever seen in my life—and he liked my mother. Even at my tender age, I figured out that was why my father kept me in the pub playing snooker rather than exploring the city.” She sighed. “But my father couldn’t keep me there too late, so eventually every night we’d go back to the hostel. One night, something must have happened with Simon because my mother didn’t come home. For three days, we didn’t see her.”

“What did your dad do?” Baker asks.

“He moved us to this place called the Hotel Vajra, which looked like it was pulled out of a fairy tale. The beds had crimson silk spreads and the doors were made of carved teak. At night they lit pillar candles up and down the hallways, and my father and I would go to the rooftop terrace restaurant and eat lamb momos. It was a big change for me, having a hotel room to myself and eating out in a fancy restaurant, and I knew, somehow, that we were doing it only because my mother wasn’t there. I think I even knew that we were doing it to get back at her.” Ayers sighs. “Anyway, one morning as we were headed over to Mike’s, this place that served a real American breakfast, we saw my mother sitting in the front garden, waiting for us. She linked her arms through ours and we all went to Mike’s and ordered big stacks of pancakes.”