Harris leaves for a week and a half to work with Caro and the London Symphony Orchestra in London. The narrator is left alone with Sam and struggles to maintain presence and responsibility while consumed by her obsessive inner life. She runs a tight household schedule, but the days feel hollow and performative. Jordi visits and challenges her about whether Sam truly knows her, suggesting that performing emotional sameness for the world—and for her child—is a form of self-flattening. They discuss how hormonal cycles define women's experience of time differently from men, connecting it to Arkanda's philosophy that "every day is Tuesday." Jordi also shares that she wants to quit her ad agency job, encouraged by Mel.

When Harris returns from London, the narrator notices how his different energy benefits the household, but she struggles to connect with him. They sleep in separate rooms; she stays up at two a.m. while he adjusts from jet lag. She remembers they should have sex but doesn't act on it. The narrator visits Dr. Mendoza and begins bioidentical hormone replacement therapy—Estradiol cream and a progesterone pill—hoping the treatment will restore her skin and vitality in time for the dance she is preparing for Davey. Dr. Mendoza explains the broader health benefits, including reduced dementia risk.

After a month, the hormones take effect. The narrator's emotional regulation improves markedly: she sleeps deeply, no longer feels trapped in perpetual crisis, and even makes up a playful song for Sam. Harris joins in on the song, and for a moment the household feels harmonious. But the narrator privately resists the idea that hormones have resolved her turmoil, clenching her fingers around a sponge as a secret signal that something unresolved remains beneath the surface.

She commits fully to her gym routine and begins choreographing the seductive dance video for Davey. She selects a 1960s record by Hedgehoppers Anonymous, drawn to its lyric about being afraid of love. She calls her father to ask about the song and pivots to asking about his mother and sister, who killed themselves. He explains they lived in a "fantasy" of being swept off their feet and couldn't bear the realization that they were "too old" for it to happen. This revelation deepens the narrator's understanding of aging, loss, and despair.

The narrator designs the dance around a repeated gesture—lunging to stop the record before the word "love" is sung, rewinding, and dancing again—until finally she dances too hard, misses the word, surrenders, and crawls toward the camera. She conceives of this crawl as the emotional centerpiece: an expression of the devastating knowledge that only decline and death lie ahead, a truth hidden from the young. She spends weeks crafting the caption for the video—"rn"—to signal to Davey that she is filming in real time and waiting for him in room 321.