Henry once more attempts to phone Rosalind, and her secretary assures him that she will call him back. While driving to the fishmonger to pick up supplies for the dinner he will be preparing, he passes a couple outside the Chinese embassy, and begins to think of how the Chinese Communist Party has tortured and killed individuals for practicing Falun Gong, a religious practice combining qigong, meditation, and philosophy. He then sees three figures in black burkas and recoils, thinking, “How dismal, that anyone should be obliged to walk around so entirely obliterated” (124). He wonders why his thoughts are having a negative spin, and realizes that he is getting closer to an event he dreads: visiting his mother who has dementia. There is only one errand to run before he will visit her out of a deep sense of responsibility. He listens to the news in the car, with reports on the large crowd amassed for the anti-war march and speculation about the ethnicities of the pilots involved in the plane crash that morning.

While at the fishmonger, Henry sees a display of lobsters and thinks of the moral complexities in boiling a living creature alive.