Summary

Section 3 begins only a year after Popkey’s narrator’s conversation with Laura. It is 2012 and she is in San Francisco; the section opens with the narrator in a hotel room, attempting to role-play with a man with whom she is cheating on John. In the meantime, we learn that John is on a health kick to help try and have a baby. Popkey’s narrator resents his good-natured attempts to help and eats unhealthy food to spite him. She hates her “normative” life, hates working in HR, hates she she has not finished her dissertation, and hates that she married so young and will never live alone.

Popkey’s narrator backtracks from the opening scene in San Francisco and describes her driving to what she knew was a slimy hotel, the kind of hotel where affairs happen. She arrives at the bar...