The narrator recalls watching a documentary in Lucien's Paris apartment in which a prostitute, asked about men, says they all change once they get what they want; a title card reveals she killed herself with bleach the day after the interview.

The next night, the narrator is at the Hotel Meurice bar with Lucien, Serge, and Vito. She asks Vito whether the filmmaker bears responsibility for the woman's death. Vito answers that it was her own decision, but insists the filmmaker would never forget her. The narrator privately tracks Lucien's martinis, calculating that one more will leave him passed out so she can work or sleep undisturbed.

Claude Perdriel, an octogenarian magazine founder who made his fortune in bathroom fixtures, enters with his much younger wife and family, just back from the Maldives, and greets Lucien. The men joke about the parade of politicians, pundits, and powerful figures who frequent the bar. Lucien recounts meeting Pascal Balmy here, noting that judges and a minister—old friends of Pascal's father—came over to greet him warmly, underscoring that Pascal is inescapably connected to France's elite.

Surveying the suited men conducting quiet business in club chairs, the narrator reflects that any of them could be industrialists with land interests in the Guyenne, stakes that depend on whether the state's infrastructure project proceeds. She realizes these are exactly the kind of powerful figures who hire consultants and spies like her, and that her unknown true employer is almost certainly someone like the men around her in this bar.