How It All Goes Down
Agloe
- They drive around looking for anywhere Margo Roth Spiegelman might be hiding.
- It's easy to find her, though, since her car is parked in front of the Agloe General Store.
- They go inside and call out her name.
- She's in the corner of the store, writing at a desk. She sees them, and stares at them. She's all dirty, lip-chappy, and dead-eyed.
- "Give me like five minutes" (3.22.22), she says, and goes back to her writing.
- After five minutes, she comes over to them and gives everyone a quick hug.
- Then: "What the hell are you doing here?" (3.22.27).
- They tell her they were worried about her, and Margo Roth Spiegelman makes fun of Lacey for being with Ben. Um, remind us why they were looking for her again?
- Ben, Lacey, and Radar stomp off, leaving Quentin with Miss Congeniality.
- They argue, too. Margo is mad that Quentin just showed up to save her, and he counters with the fact that she ran off without thinking for a second about the people who cared about her.
- Margo swears that she didn't want to be found. She needed to leave in order to live the life she wants to live, and she plans on going to New York City.
- Quentin wants to know why she left all those stupid clues if she didn't want to be found.
- She tells this story about a detective novel she wrote when she was ten, starring herself (of course), Quentin, and her dog working together to solve crimes.
- She says she always thought of Quentin as a "paper boy" (3.22.93), but he showed her how real "and fun and magical" (3.22.93) he was on their little night of terror, so she just wanted to encourage him to keep not being a scaredy cat.
- She continues, saying that she was tired of being a paper girl herself, so she needed to leave and find herself.
- Quentin tells Margo to come back home with him, but she says she can never go back.
- Quentin's friends interrupt, calling to say they're in a nearby hotel. Then Margo calls her mother to tell her not to worry (not that she was) and to tell her sister that she'll try to keep in touch with her.
- They lie down in the grass, talk about Walt Whitman, and fall asleep.
- When he wakes up, the sun is setting, and Margo Roth Spiegelman is digging a grave.
- Not for herself, but for the young versions of herself and Little Quentin.
- They talk about a bunch of mixed metaphors—strings, grass, cracked vessels—and Quentin kisses Margo Roth Spiegelman.
- She says he can come to New York with her, but he declines.
- She drops her notebook in the grave, and they walk back to the Agloe General Store, where they carry all of Margo's stuff to her car.
- Margo Roth Spiegelman drives Quentin to the hotel where his friends are staying, and she promises to keep in touch with him, too.
- But she hesitates before getting in the car.
- She's all teary-eyed, so Quentin embraces her and kisses her, with their eyes open.
- Their foreheads touch, and Quentin "can see her almost perfectly in this cracked darkness" (3.22.178).
- The end, and good night. Now go home.