Phoebe sits in the penthouse trying to feel calm enough to die, but the ordinary details of the room and the wedding reception below keep intruding on the scene she imagined. She tries her old Discman, then goes out to the balcony with chocolate wine and a cigarette, forcing herself to smoke because it fits the version of death she pictured. Looking down at the reception, Phoebe imagines how quickly the world would absorb her absence and tells herself to finally get on with it.

Instead, Lila, the bride, knocks and barges in to complain about Phoebe smoking. Their argument moves onto the balcony and quickly becomes oddly intellectual and intimate: they fight about whether a balcony counts as part of the room, Phoebe shows off her knowledge by explaining the word’s etymology, and Lila asks what Phoebe even does. Phoebe identifies herself as a Victorianist, and their sparring shifts into a conversation about art, work, and meaning, with both women admitting disappointment in the cultural worlds they were supposed to value.

Lila then returns to the real issue: Phoebe’s plan to kill herself. Phoebe says she has already tried help and remembers the failed jobs, therapy, medication, routines, and dating attempts that did not save her after Matt left. Lila urges her to wait until the wedding week is over, even offers to pay for the hotel, and reveals that her dead father gave her a million dollars for this wedding before he died. Phoebe refuses to reschedule her suicide, the fight escalates into shouting, and Phoebe finally explodes with a force she never used on Matt or Mia. As Lila storms out, Phoebe notices food stuck in Lila’s teeth and cannot let her go back downstairs that way, so the crisis detours into a search for floss and a thirty-minute delay while Carlson goes to CVS.

Waiting for the floss on the balcony, the two women begin drinking together and looking down at the reception through binoculars. Lila formally introduces herself as Delilah and starts narrating her wedding world: Gary, her forty-year-old gastroenterologist fiancé; Gary’s dead wife Wendy; Wendy’s brother Jim, who remains constantly in their lives and serves as Gary’s best man; and Lila’s fear that Jim will somehow ruin the week. Lila also complains about Gary’s sister Marla, who mocks Lila’s age and is rumored to have had an affair with a federal judge. Through all of this, Phoebe listens, asks questions, and finds herself unexpectedly interested.

Lila keeps talking about her family, especially her art-curator mother and her late father Henry, whose money is paying for the wedding and whose death still dominates everyone’s thinking. She recounts Henry’s deathbed confession that he hated modern art and then his absurd final words to her, “Herbal Essences,” which makes both women collapse into genuine laughter. After Carlson brings the floss and Lila restores herself, she prepares to return to the reception and repeats her father’s practical question from his illness: when she could not stop crying, what was one thing she could do right now instead? The chapter ends with Phoebe’s suicide still postponed, her isolation cracked open by anger, laughter, and an unexpected connection.