The chapter opens with the narrator lamenting the fact that he has not been able to make up with his ex-wife, who has been holding him back from happiness ever since the divorce. He asks her to join him in a "drinking party" , but she refuses, saying that the party is just a "waterworks" party. The narrator tells her that she is a "bad liar" and that her husband has run off with her. The two of them go to the waterworks together, and the narrator promises that he will not make any more advances at her the next day.