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Summary
Mimi, Jess, Mimi, Sophie, Mimi, Jess, Mimi, Nick, 72 Hours Earlier
Mimi
Mimi is overwhelmed by the crowded party, though nobody pays any attention to her until a friend of Camille notes that she hasn’t seen her since they danced together in a bar a few months ago, claiming that Mimi was acting “crazy” that night. Mimi then reflects upon that evening. She decided to dress in a more provocative fashion than usual, and, as she left the building with Camille, they ran into Jacques, who rudely criticized Mimi’s outfit, embarrassing her. At the bar, an upset Mimi accepts a pill from Camille and begins dancing wildly on the dance floor. While dancing, she sees Ben, who realizes that she is under the influence of drugs and takes her outside. Sitting on a bench, they chat about Jacque’s cruel words and Ben encourages her to accept her status as an outsider. Encouraged, Mimi kisses Ben, though he politely rejects her. Mimi misinterprets the rejection and believes that he wants to wait for a better time to initiate their relationship.
Jess
At the party, Jess speaks with a young man named Victor and pretends that she needs to use the bathroom, asking him to get the keys to Camille’s apartment. They go up the old elevator and Jess asks him to mix them some drinks to distract him while she investigates the rooms. In Mimi’s room, she finds one of Ben’s shirts and several paintings of him, including at least one nude portrait of him. Even more disturbingly, the eyes have been violently cut out of the painting. As Jess exits the room, she suddenly feels dizzy and realizes that someone has put drugs in her drink.
Mimi
The next morning, Mimi goes back down into the basement where she sees Ben’s Vespa scooter, noting that she was the person who destroyed the front-wheel so that she could more easily follow Ben on foot. One day, while following him, she is dismayed to see him meeting with a beautiful young woman, though she quickly realizes, to her relief, that they aren’t on a date. In the present, she recklessly, and perhaps suicidally, rides her bike out of the building and is almost killed by a car. The Concierge rushes out of the building to her aid, and Mimi is surprised to see the old woman react so strongly to the incident.
Sophie
Sophie thinks about a day in the recent past when she received the third blackmail letter. Despite her nerves, she goes out to lunch in order to maintain the appearance of normalcy, and at the restaurant she sees Ben, who is there to write a newspaper review of the establishment. They have a brief conversation and Ben pushes her to talk about Jacques. She doesn’t say much, and he leaves. After finishing a whole bottle of wine at the restaurant, she returns to the building and knocks on Ben’s door. She accuses him of writing the blackmail letters, but when he denies writing them, she kisses him, and the two begin an affair.
Nick
After a restless night, Nick looks at a photograph of himself and Ben in Amsterdam and reflects upon their relationship. At first, he was excited when Ben emailed him and then agreed to move into the building, but after the family dinner party, Nick became increasingly uncomfortable with Ben’s attempts to ingratiate himself with Jacques. Years earlier, in Amsterdam, Nick confided in Ben about his 16th birthday and Jacques’ attempt to pressure Nick to sleep with a prostitute. When Ben promises to keep this confession a secret, Nick is relieved, and shortly after, he kisses Ben and then performs oral sex on him. Later, he fears that Jacques will react violently if he finds out that Nick is attracted to men. After requesting that Ben keep their tryst a secret, the two drift apart until, ten years later, Ben emails him out of the blue and Nick invites him to move into the building.
Jess
The day after the party, Jess wakes up midday and realizes that Victor must have helped her get back to Ben’s apartment. Someone else, she concludes, must have put the drugs in her drink. She receives a text from Theo concerning the mysterious metal card that she found in Ben’s wallet. He tells her to meet him at a location in the city in an hour and she gets ready to leave.
Mimi
In her narrative, Mimi admits that she put the drugs in Jess’ drink, hoping to get her to leave the party. She chats with Camille, who alludes to a recent trip they took to a lingerie shop. There, Mimi surprised both herself and Camille by purchasing a lacy black set of lingerie, hoping to seduce Ben. Camille also bought some lingerie and cryptically hinted that she has found a new romantic interest.
Nick
Antoine knocks on Nick’s door, and Nick recalls a similar incident a few weeks back, when Antoine came to his apartment to accuse Ben of having an affair with his wife, Dominique. In the present, Antoine mocks his younger brother, insinuating that Nick was attracted to Ben and blaming him for the disruption that Ben brought to their lives. Though Antoine wants to force Jess to leave the apartment, Nick notes that it would be more strategic for them to keep her close so that they can keep an eye on her.
72 Hours Earlier
Three days earlier, the Concierge watched through her window as a body was carried out of the building. She resolved never to speak about what occurred on that evening, as she felt that everyone in the apartment was partially to blame. She saw a pale face looking out of one of the fourth-floor windows and thought to herself that perhaps there was one innocent person there after all.
Analysis
Though Jacques, the Meunier family patriarch, has not appeared directly in the story, he weighs heavily on the minds of other characters. These chapters reveal that Jacques is a cruel man who plays a primarily negative role in the lives of his wife and children. Mimi, for example, feels that she is a disappointment to her father and an “outsider” within her own family. From her perspective, her father treats her as if she is an imposter who doesn’t belong in the family at all, contributing to her turmoil. He exerts a good deal of control over her, keeping her away from men, and when she attempts to assert her individuality by dressing in a more provocative fashion, he cruelly insults her and insists that she gets changed. Antoine, who works as Jacque’s right-hand-man in the family wine business, faces an overwhelming amount of pressure from his father. When Nick first left to move to the United States, Antoine was a happy newlywed, but by the time he returns, Antoine has been transformed into an irritable alcoholic, which Nick believes is the result of his interactions with Jacques.
Nick’s own relationship to his father is a major focus of these chapters. He is deeply traumatized by the events of his 16th birthday, when his father pressured him to have sex with a prostitute and made homophobic comments when Nick refused. In his narration, Nick suggests that he is a closeted gay man who dates women out of a sense of duty but has little romantic or sexual interest in them. He looks upon his brief tryst with Ben as the happiest moment of his life, though he is unable to enjoy this happiness for long. Moments after performing oral sex on Ben, Nick realized that his father would react violently if he were to find out about his son’s attraction to men, concluding that he might even attempt to murder him. Nick believed that, for Jacques, a dead son would be preferable to a gay one. At the very least, he reasoned, he would likely be disinherited. Unwilling to face financial independence, he begged Nick to keep his sexuality a secret. Jacques’ homophobia hinders Nick’s ability to form intimate relationships, and with the exception of a few brief and secretive flings, Nick has never been in a serious relationship with another person.
Jacques’ cruel behavior does not only negatively impact his children, but also his wife. Despite her seemingly glamorous lifestyle, Sophie is neglected by her husband and slowly realizes that she is deeply unhappy. She has little control over her life but must act the part of the perfect housewife, attending to their luxurious penthouse, hosting parties, and carefully maintaining her figure to hide signs of age. Though she insists that she knew what she was getting into when she married Jacques, she now realizes that she is entirely under his control, as she must continue to please him to maintain her lifestyle. Her deep unhappiness pushes her into the arms of Ben, who offers her an alternative to her passionless marriage and dull routines. Sophie is so bored by life in her gilded cage that she comes to think of the risks involved in her affair as a source of excitement.
