The narrator spends the morning motionless in bed at the Excelsior motel, savoring the weightlessness of having no parental responsibilities. After being warned by the housekeeper Helen that checkout was at eleven, she pays for another night. She walks to the antique mall and buys a salmon-colored 1920s quilted bedspread for two hundred dollars after a tense exchange with the older saleswoman, then drops it at a dry cleaner, which gives her an excuse to stay yet another night. She unpacks her suitcase into the motel's drawers and closet, carefully curating her most feminine, form-fitting outfits for the stay. While walking around Monrovia in a red shirtwaist dress, she spots the Hertz lot where Davey works.

The narrator contacts Claire, Davey's wife, who works as a receptionist for an interior designer named Stephanie Rosenbaum. She hires Claire to redecorate her motel room for twenty thousand dollars, framing it as a rush job. Claire proves to have excellent taste: she replaces the carpet with a rich Sarouk wool rug, installs wallpaper, brings in a new bathtub and rainshower, lays Portuguese hexagonal tiles, and furnishes the room with velvet "great chairs," Audubon prints, a marble-topped desk, chintz curtains, a sound system, and luxurious towels. She even replaces the mattress with her and Davey's own memory foam one, leaving the couple on an air mattress. The motel's manager, Skip, objects but is charmed into compliance by Claire. Helen, the housekeeper and Claire's uncle's ex-wife, is enlisted to launder the new towels.

Throughout the renovation, the narrator maintains her lie to Harris, who believes she is driving across the country on schedule. She cancels her Carlyle hotel reservation, her New York appointments, and her friend dates, confiding only in Jordi and her close friend Mary. Mary jokingly asks if she's having an affair or going through menopause; the narrator denies both. Jordi likens the narrator's three encounters with Davey to a folktale about a troll appearing three times—it's the number that matters, not the troll himself.

On the renovation's final day, Claire gives the narrator a dramatic reveal of the finished room, complete with Chopin playing, rosy-gold light filtering through new curtains, and every detail harmonized. The narrator is genuinely moved. She pays Claire via check after discovering Venmo's limit. When Claire leaves, the narrator collapses to the floor as depression rises. Claire briefly returns for her room key, glimpses the narrator on the floor, and departs with a flicker of alarm. The narrator also notes a brief, odd encounter with Davey on the street: he offered to show her around for Memorial Day but neither of them mentioned Claire's renovation work in the room, a conspicuous omission that unsettles the narrator.