- Don explains that he didn't drink that night—didn't drink for weeks afterward. So what happened since then?
- Well, guess what? It's flashback time.
- As their relationship gets more serious, Helen tells her parents about Don. They've arranged to meet him in their hotel lobby at one o'clock in the afternoon.
- We see Don sitting in the hotel lobby, holding a gift. He hears two people with Midwestern accents chatting behind him and realizes that they're his potential in-laws.
- They're talking about him. He went to Cornell, but never graduated. He doesn't have a job. He's not a well-known writer. Daddy St. James is clearly skeptical.
- Ominous music rises and so does Don, just in time to see Helen enter the lobby. He ducks into a nearby phone booth.
- He calls the hotel lobby (that he's in) and tells them to page Helen. When she answers, he explains (from twenty feet away) that he's going to be late for lunch.
- We cut to Don lying down in a pitch-black apartment, glass of whiskey on his stomach. Wick enters and chastises his brother for slipping up.
- Before they can make a plan of action, however, the door buzzes—it's Helen. Wick hides Don in the bedroom and shoves the bottle of whiskey under the couch.
- Wick claims that Don isn't there. He then goes a step further, claiming that Don is in Philly interviewing for a job with the Philadelphia Enquirer.
- Pleased, Helen plops herself down on the couch, accidentally freeing the bottle from its hiding spot. Wick tries to slip it back under, but it's too late—Helen has already seen it.
- Wick says that the bottle is his, even though Helen recognizes the brand from the night that she and Don met. Wick claims that that one was his too.
- That's too much for Don, however—he bursts out of the bedroom and comes clean about everything. He expects Helen to leave him now that she knows that he's a drunk.
- To his surprise, Helen is beyond supportive, saying that they will find a "cure" for his illness. Don responds by saying that there's no cure for being a failed author.
- See, Don was already published in major magazines like The Atlantic by the time he was nineteen, which is why he quit college early.
- When he moved to the big city and his writing started slowing, however, his focus on work quickly shifted to an addiction to alcohol.
- He personifies his addiction and claims that it has a voice. He even waxes about the battle between "Don the Drunk" and "Don the Writer."
- What's more, he claims that he'd contemplated suicide on his thirtieth birthday, but had gotten too drunk to go through with it. He shows her the gun to prove it.
- Basically, Don feels worthless. He feels even worse because he's dragging Helen and Wick down into his muck.
- But Helen, unflinchingly optimistic, tells him that she's going to "fight and fight and fight." She tells him to bend down and kisses him as we swirl back to the present day.
- The only problem with this story (remember: Don is framing this as the beginning of his novel, The Bottle) is that Don doesn't know how it ends.
- Nat has a suggestion: the drunken protagonist is going to kill himself. Shade.
- Don defiantly tells Nat that he's going to write the novel tonight, even claiming that it's why he didn't leave town with Wick. With that, he rushes out of the bar to get to work.