The narrator arrives at the Hertz to see Davey but must wait while he helps a customer. A gray-haired woman sitting next to her remarks that the narrator is "admiring his physique," which shocks her. The woman introduces herself as Irene—Davey's mother. Irene reveals she knows about the narrator's daily "four o'clock dates" with Davey, having heard from the uncle who owns the Hertz franchise. Irene takes the narrator to Sesame Grill, where she delivers a torrent of revelations: she knows everything about the affair because Davey told her; she insists Davey is "deeply aroused" by the narrator but channels that energy through kundalini practice; and she recounts how, when Davey hit puberty, she arranged for her older friend Audra to become his sexual mentor, teaching him about women's bodies and making sex ordinary for him so he wouldn't be a typical clogged-up teenage boy. Irene dismisses Claire's sexual skills, says she always told Davey Claire "wasn't the end of the story," and frames the narrator's situation as a midlife crisis. The narrator, horrified, walks out.

Back at the Excelsior, the narrator confronts Davey by phone about telling his mother everything. Davey defends the choice, saying Irene is the only person who takes their connection seriously. He admits he masturbates after every visit—undermining his mother's kundalini narrative—and asks to move past the subject. The narrator softens. He asks about Audra and whether that experience gave him a thing for older women; he insists he sees the narrator as roughly his age. He then climbs through the motel window and they hold each other. An Arkanda song leads the narrator to mention her upcoming meeting with the singer, which thrills Davey. She privately imagines connecting him to Arkanda as a dancer. He slides his leg between hers and she grinds against it—a new physical escalation.

On her "last night in New York," the narrator films a video for Harris and Sam with the Excelsior's wallpaper visible behind her, acknowledging the risk of being caught but wanting them to glimpse something real about her. The next afternoon Davey arrives, darkens the room, and lights a joint. They dance together in near-total darkness, trading moves—the narrator performing a squatting, pelvis-rocking move she calls "fishing," which Davey adopts and improves. In the dark, she studies his mustache and buttoned-up shirt and all the details she once found off-putting suddenly flip into the things she loves most. She realizes she is fully, helplessly in love with him.

After Davey leaves, the narrator calls Jordi in tears and confesses she is "so crazily in love with him." Jordi asks if she wants to leave Harris; the narrator says no—she loves Davey as a lover, not as a co-parent or life partner. Jordi reassures her that a French man would find this perfectly acceptable. A digression about the narrator's nightly Benadryl use reveals a potential dementia risk. Finally, the narrator fantasizes about her post-trip future: the Arkanda meeting leading to a glamorous creative partnership, tours, hotel-room calls with Davey, and professional "massages." She concludes she has "a lot of things, including a meeting with someone who had it all."