All Fours

The narrator’s room at the Excelsior Motel in Monrovia, California symbolizes fantasy. The narrator pays Davey Boutrous’s wife, Claire, $20,000 to redecorate the drab and uninspiring rented room in the style of Le Bristol, a ritzy Parisian hotel where she once stayed. Claire outfits Room 321 with ornate wallpaper, gilt mirrors, “a marble-topped table,” “a pair of [antique] chairs,” a lush carpet, and “a beautiful bosom” of a bed (39). In addition, she buys specialty towels, soaps, artwork, and appliances for the room. The curtains she hangs filter “the daylight into an otherworldly rosy-gold” (59), giving the room an ethereal quality. These aspects of the design underscore its resonance for the narrator as a retreat from her life in Los Angeles. Since she has the room to herself, she’s beholden to no one when she’s there. Her solitude and freedom reify the narrator’s fantasies and dreams.

Furthermore, Room 321 grants the narrator liberty to explore and experiment throughout the novel. Even after she returns to Los Angeles, she continues to regularly visit the room. She hosts gatherings with friends, arranges sexual encounters, or holes up in the space to be alone with her thoughts.