The Drowning Woman

Lee finds a pawnshop to sell the netsuke. The proprietor offers her $200 but tells her that she could likely get more from a collector. She leaves and sees Hazel exiting an oyster bar with two other women. Hazel speaks to Lee with pity, as if she’s a stranger, and gives her $50 for lunch.

Offended by Hazel’s behavior in front of her friends, Lee doesn’t return to the beach for several days. Jesse comes into the diner again, and she suggests a movie at his place. They discuss her falling-out with Hazel, and he suggests that it may have been a defense mechanism. They have sex.

The next night, Lee returns to the beach. Hazel knocks on her window in the morning and apologizes for her behavior. Lee tells her that she understands that pressure makes people do terrible things, and she also tells Hazel about her sister. Hazel is sympathetic and offers to book Lee a spa day as an apology for how she acted in front of her friends.

Lee feels happier than she has in a long time given her friendship with Hazel and having Jesse as a new lover. He meets her outside the diner after a shift, and they have sex against her car before he leaves, saying that his sister and her children are staying with him. Lee feels disappointed at the contrast between this encounter and his usual tenderness.

Lee goes to the spa for the appointment that Hazel offered. Since Benjamin gets her credit card bills, Hazel decided to forgo her own appointments and give them to Lee instead. Lee enjoys her treatments but is then asked to pay more than $500. She insists that they should have been prepaid, but the receptionist says they haven’t. Lee panics, calling Hazel repeatedly. When Hazel finally arrives, her face is severely bruised, and she says that she needs to leave Benjamin “before he kills [her]” (89).

Lee and Hazel sit in the car and talk. Lee comments that after her new haircut, she looks a bit like Hazel. Hazel says that she needs only an hour or two’s head start to the airport to escape. She suggests that she and Lee trade clothes at the gym, after which Hazel can go to the airport and Lee can drive to Hazel’s home to appear on the security cameras and appease Benjamin. Hazel offers Lee $50,000 as a reward for doing so. Lee agrees.

At Jesse’s apartment, Lee tells him about the plan. He expresses concern but tells Lee that she’s a good friend. She can’t find her keys, and Jesse goes to look for them. He finds them in the grass and comments on the lack of an apartment key.

The next day, Lee drives to the gym to meet Hazel. They switch clothes in the locker room and review the plan. Lee will go to Hazel’s house, where the envelope with her new ID and money will be in a kitchen drawer. She should make a salad and then drive to Trader Joe’s, where Hazel will have left Lee’s Toyota. They say goodbye and part ways.

Lee drives Hazel’s car to the mansion on the beach. She finds the envelope and makes a salad. Unable to eat, she goes to the bathroom; Hazel has told her that there are no cameras in the bathrooms or in Benjamin’s study. Curious, she looks inside the study and is terrified to see a man in the chair. As she gets closer, she sees that he has been murdered. When she goes around the chair to see his face, she realizes that the man is Jesse. He has been stabbed to death.