- Charlie goes to the Ritz, thinking he might find Duncan and Lorraine there (on whom he could vent his anger). But they're not there, so he sits to have a drink.
- Paul, the barman that Charlie knows from years ago, greets him. "I heard you lost a lot in the crash," he says (5.4).
- "I did," responds Charlie, "but I lost everything I wanted in the boom" (5.5).
- Charlie is consumed with memories of his hard-partying days. He remembers the night he locked his wife out in the snow, "because the snow of twenty-nine wasn't real snow. If you didn't want it to be snow, you just paid some money" (5.9).
- Charlie calls up Lincoln to ask how Marion is doing. Lincoln says that she's far too upset to allow Charlie to take his daughter. "We'll have to let it slide for six months," he says (5.12).
- Charlie goes back to his table, where his empty whiskey glass sits. Paul goes to get him another one, but Charlie says no. He asks the waiter what he owes.
- Then he wonders how long they're going to make him pay for his past sins. He wants his child, and now that he's no longer young he doesn't have a lot of nice thoughts and dreams to enjoy by himself.
- And he is sure that Helen wouldn't want him to be so alone.