Summary

After the event with Linda (which is not described in the text) Faye went to the hotel’s garden to meet a local newspaper to conduct an interview. The reporter and Faye had met before, more than ten years earlier, and had an encounter that stuck with Faye. She particularly remembered the description the reporter had offered of her happy marriage, and her hometown (not far from the hotel), and the famous bells that regularly marked time there. The reporter was both impressed and somewhat moved that certain details of her life stuck with Faye.

The reporter then told Faye a story about a couple, friends of hers, whose relationship the reporter watched dissolve. The reporter told Faye that she and her husband took a kind of perverse pleasure in watching their friends’ marriage fall apart, while their own stayed intact. She also...