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Chapter 12: The Counterlife
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Glass Hotel, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Complicity and Interconnectedness
Guilt and Responsibility
Fraud and Constructed Identity
Greed, Delusion, and Self Interest
Alienation and Self-Knowledge
Regret and Disillusionment
Summary
Analysis
It’s December 2018, and Leon Prevant has been working a menial job in receiving at a Marriott in a small town in Colorado. Leon has been in Colorado for half a year when Miranda calls him. Leon is sitting in the RV after work, alone, as Marie just got a night job at Walmart.
Though the Prevants were formerly wealthy enough to afford a trip to the Hotel Caiette, the collapse of the Ponzi scheme forces them to take whatever work they can get.
Themes
The call surprises Leon, who hasn’t heard from Miranda in the 10 years that have passed since he left the corporate world. Miranda admits that she’s not calling for a happy reason before asking Leon if he’d like to return for a short, temporary consulting job. Leon enthusiastically accepts before Miranda can fill him in on the grim details of the job: there’s been an accident (or maybe not an accident) on a Neptune-Avramidis ship, the Neptune Cumberland, in which a female cook disappeared while at sea. Miranda is putting together a committee to evaluate crew safety more generally, and Vincent Smith’s death, specifically.
It’s rather apparent that the “Vincent Smith” who disappeared aboard the Neptune Cumberland is the Vincent who formerly lived with Alkaitis, which would complicate Leon’s role in the investigation, as his past associations with Jonathan Alkaitis would create a conflict of interest for him. That Leon is called in to assist in the investigation of Vincent, the former wife of someone he met halfway across the country over a decade ago and who later defrauded him of his life savings, is only possible by an almost supernatural set of coincidences. It’s yet another instance in which the novel pulls together formerly disparate narratives to make a larger point about the interconnectedness of people within a society.
Themes
Hearing of a woman named Vincent jogs Leon’s memory, and he tells Miranda he once knew—or “knew of”—a woman named Vincent, but Miranda mostly ignores Leon’s comment. Speaking bluntly, she tells Leon that this investigation will be all Vincent gets, though she wishes she had the budget to undergo an external investigation, as “companies have a way of exonerating themselves.” Hiring Leon is a way of splitting the difference: an internal investigation, but done by someone she “trust[s].” Miranda and Leon talk about travel logistics for a while and then end the phone call.
Leon suspects that he once knew, or “knew of” the woman whose disappearance Miranda is hiring him to help investigate as an external (and therefore unbiased) source, yet he makes minimal efforts to alert Miranda of this potential conflict of interest, even though doing so would be the morally right thing to do. Leon’s hesitancy to disclose his ties to Vincent shows that a person’s morals can be compromised if an incentive is present. In this case, Leon is short on funds and doesn’t want to disqualify himself from being brought in as a consultant on Vincent’s disappearance.
Themes
The narrative flashes back to the immediate aftermath of Alkaitis’s arrest. Leon and Marie’s life changes drastically after the collapse of the Ponzi scheme and the loss of their savings, and they’re struggling to keep up with their mortgage. In the months that follow Alkaitis’s arrest, Leon tries to get more consulting work, though it’s difficult, since his company put a freeze on hiring consultants. The RV the couple bought right before everything fell apart seems to mock them in the driveway.
This passage gives the reader additional insight into the Ponzi scheme’s impact on the Prevants. The Prevants are in a similar financial situation as Olivia Collins: both the Prevants and Olivia had some financial security when they invested with Alkaitis, but they weren’t as immensely rich as some of his biggest investors. As a result, they incurred the most harm when the scheme collapsed.
Themes
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One night that summer, though, Marie mentions a conversation she had with her old friend Clarissa, who recently lost her house and is living out of a van. Marie talks of all the jobs a person can get on the road, like ticketing at fairs or working in warehouses around the holiday season, and suggests they abandon their house and live in the RV. At first the idea seems ludicrous, but the couple soon realizes that if they do it, they can leave a lot of their financial woes behind. As the couple drives along the highway the morning they abandon their old lives, their decision “fe[els] unexpectedly like triumph.” Still, as Leon glances lovingly at Marie, he can’t help but feel scared at being so “adrift.”
Being “adrift” frightens Leon because it deprives him of the social safety nets he and Marie previously relied on to give their lives meaning and direction. Without the comforts of friends, work, and financial stability, the Prevants have only themselves to give their lives meaning and shape the contours of their identities.
Themes
The couple spends much of that summer in a campground on the central coast of California. Leon loves walking along the stretches of abandoned beach between Oceano and Pismo Beach. When Leon sees freighters pass through the waters, he tries to imagine their routes. The couple agrees that their retirement years are very different than the ones they imagined they’d have, and though there are true moments of joy in their transient lifestyle, they are now “citizens of a shadow country […] a country located at the edge of an abyss,” and populated by the drifting and the downtrodden. It’s a life that doesn’t allow for “any kind of error or misfortune,” and this terrifies Leon.
The “shadow country” to which Leon refers describes a world of transient people who have also fallen outside society’s reach. Everyone who lives in the shadow country has only themselves to rely on: there are no helping hands and no forces to reassure them. Though there’s something liberating in being so detached from society’s constraints, the shadow country is also a dangerous place, where “any kind of error or misfortune” can result in grave, permanent consequences. When a person is part of society, they can rely on their social connections to repair and turn around their life. When a person lives an unanchored existence in the shadow country, there are no connections available to help them, and the smallest mistake can become a matter of life and death.
Themes
The narrative returns to the present (2018), and Leon has journeyed back east to tackle the consulting job. Miranda asks Leon how his retirement is going, seemingly unaware of his tragic involvement in the Alkaitis fraud. Miranda passes Leon a file labeled VINCENT SMITH, inviting him to take his time going over the materials. She explains that a man named Michael Saparelli, a former NYPD police officer, will conduct the interviews in the investigation, and that Leon will serve as a witness to the interviews, to protect against an internal coverup. So, if it appears that whatever happened to Vincent was the fault of the company, Miranda explains, she wants to know about it. The plan is for Leon to head to Germany tomorrow.
Miranda’s failure to discover Leon’s connections to Jonathan Alkaitis and his former wife Vincent make his involvement in the investigation unethical, but Leon chooses to go along with it anyway. His desire for financial stability outweighs his obligation to disclose the conflict of interest to Miranda.
Themes
Leon reads through the files that evening. Vincent Smith was 37 at the time of her disappearance, and she worked as the assistant cook on the Neptune Cumberland, a container ship. She would be at sea for nine months at a time, and then off for three months. She had no permanent address, though that wasn’t unusual for seafarers. She continued in this pattern until the night she vanished off the coast of Mauritania. The primary suspect in her disappearance was Geoffrey Bell, who was dating Vincent when she died.
Vincent’s file reveals a nomadic lifestyle and emphasizes how completely she transformed her life after Alkaitis’s arrest. If she had regrets during her life with Alkaitis of becoming so dependent on another person, she certainly turned things around after the dissolution of their relationship, becoming so independent and isolated that she didn’t even possess a permanent address. It’s surprising that Geoffrey Bell is considered a suspect in her disappearance; the novel hasn’t shown much of their relationship, but what it has presented hasn’t given any indicators that Bell was violent or harbored any bad feelings toward Vincent.
Themes
Apparently, two people overheard Bell and Vincent arguing in her cabin the night she disappeared and, after this, security footage showed her leaving her room and moving to C deck, even though they were in the midst of a heavy storm and the crew had been instructed to stay inside. Because there was a corner of C deck where no cameras could reach, Vincent was hidden from view. Less than an hour later, Bell was seen following Vincent and stepping into the same blind spot. He remained hidden for five minutes, at which point he reappeared, but Vincent was never seen again. Bell insisted he had gone to look for her and was unsuccessful, but the captain didn’t believe his story, and Bell left the ship at its next stop in Rotterdam.
The ship’s security footage parallels the fragments presented in the novel’s opening chapter, “Vincent in the Water.” Even though the security camera didn’t capture what happened to Vincent, the reader can assume that Vincent fell overboard, since this is what’s insinuated to have happened in the earlier chapter. Still, it’s not clear how Vincent got there, and Bell’s decision to flee the ship does seem suspicious. Vincent’s decision to ignore the instructions to stay inside during the storm emphasizes how determined she is to be independent and in control of her own life.
Themes
Leon meets Saparelli when he boards the plane to Germany, where the investigation will take place. Saparelli clarifies how their partnership will work: Saparelli will ask the questions, and Leon will stay silent. He fills Leon in on some of the investigating he’s done so far: apparently, Geoffrey Bell had a recent history of barfights back home. Leon and Saparelli spend much of the rest of the flight in silence. Leon investigates Vincent’s security badge more closely: it’s plausible she could be Jonathan Alkaitis’s beautiful ex-wife, but the middle-aged woman in this photo is plain and unsmiling—so much the opposite of the Vincent he’d known.
Saparelli’s instructions show that Leon’s involvement in the investigation will be minimal. He’s really just there to create the illusion that the shipping company is conducting an unbiased investigation into Vincent’s disappearance. The unrecognizability of Vincent on her security badge speaks to the lengths she’d gone to earlier in life to disguise and mold herself into the person Jonathan wanted her to be. After she left Jonathan, she looked like—and effectively was—a totally different person.
Themes
Leon and Saparelli arrive in Germany and are transported to the shipping terminal. They head toward the Neptune Cumberland, and Leon feels as though he’s “haunting a previous version of his life.” Saparelli asks the crew some questions about Geoffrey Bell. An Australian crew member explains that though he never gave them any trouble, he was rather “antisocial.” One officer recalls seeing Vincent and Bell holding hands, though the chief engineer contends that “they were rather discreet” as a couple. The steward, Mendoza, who was Vincent’s boss, calls her “competent” and good to work with. He also recalls that she “liked to shoot videos of nothing.” For example, she’d stand on the deck and film the ocean, which they found strange but respectable—the way she’d keep up with it.
Leon’s observation that he’s “haunting a previous version of his life” is almost identical to the thought Vincent has when she’s surrounded by expensive purchases after a day of shopping with Mirella, back when she was living as Alkaitis’s wife. Both Leon’s and Vincent’s observations express a disillusionment with the way their lives have unfolded. Here, Leon remarks on the strangeness of exiting and returning to the world of shipping under such bizarre and unexpected circumstances: he’d initially lost his job in the company merger; then he lost all his savings; then, many years later, he’s called back to work for his old company to investigate the disappearance of the ex-wife of the man who caused him to lose all his money.
Themes
Saparelli asks if Vincent ever seemed depressed, but Mendoza says she seemed happy: she’d travel all around the world while she wasn’t at sea, to Iceland, or Thailand, or Italy. Leon and Saparelli investigate Vincent’s cabin, which is exactly as she’d left it. Barely any of her things are there: just some clothes, a few books. Before they leave, they pack up her things to take with them.
That Vincent seemed happy with her transient lifestyle reflects the peace she found in removing herself from the people and social and economic systems that oppressed her during her time on land.
Themes
It’s late afternoon by the time the investigation wraps up. As Leon and Saparelli are about to leave the ship, Mendoza reappears and offers to walk them out. Saparelli initially declines, but Leon can sense something in Mendoza’s expression, so he nods for him to come along. Quietly, Mendoza reveals that he heard Bell hit a woman with whom he had a relationship a few years ago, when they were on rotation on another ship, though he didn’t witness it directly. He also heard Bell threaten to throw the woman overboard.
Mendoza’s account complicates the formerly straightforward investigation, turning it from an accidental death to a possible murder. As a witness to the investigation and as a moral person, Leon has a responsibility to include these findings in his report.
Themes
Saparelli looks ill. Leon imagines what would happen if these allegations came to light. Leon and Saparelli leave the ship and don’t talk to each other in the car. They both scribble in their notebooks; Leon tries to transcribe Mendoza’s transcription word for word and assumes that Saparelli is doing the same.
Leon takes his moral and professional responsibilities seriously. Perhaps he wants to compensate for his earlier failure to report his conflict of interest to Miranda.
Themes
In the car on the way to the airport the next morning, Saparelli asks to see Leon’s notebook. Leon hands it to him, and Saparelli removes and pockets the pages on which Leon transcribed Mendoza’s confession. Saparelli then confronts Leon, informing him that he knows all about his transient lifestyle and his victimization in the Ponzi scheme. He tells Leon that if he ever wants more opportunities at consulting work, he’ll choose to forget everything Mendoza told him and spare the company the huge mess that revealing the confession would create.
Saparelli gives Leon an ultimatum: he can either go public with Mendoza’s testimony and create a scandal for the shipping company, all but ensuring that he’ll never be invited back for another consulting gig, or he can keep quiet and open up the possibility of receiving future work. Saparelli’s ultimatum forces Leon to choose between what is morally correct (not withholding information from the investigation report) and what will benefit him (withholding information and possibly improving his precarious financial situation).
Themes
Saparelli contends that while Mendoza might have told them “an unsettling anecdote,” it changes nothing about the investigation or the facts of the case; no matter what Saparelli includes or fails to include in his report, Vincent will still be dead. He also reveals that he knows about Leon’s connection to Vincent. Leon is stunned. Saparelli suggests that Leon’s involvement in the investigation is itself a conflict of interest and asks if Miranda is aware of Leon’s connection to Vincent. Leon stutters, insisting that Miranda could have looked up something on Google if she’d really wanted to know. Saparelli is silent. After a long pause, Saparelli informs Leon that he’ll recommend him to Miranda for future consulting jobs.
Saparelli’s conclusion that the outcome of Vincent’s investigation won’t change the fact that she’s dead depicts a cynical worldview in which individual humans are powerless to enact real, positive change: that tragedies and miscarriages of justice will always exist, and that any attempts to rectify these misfortunes are futile and misguided in the grand scheme of things. As Leon attempts to justify his failure to inform Miranda about his connections to Vincent, he realizes he doesn’t have a choice but to go along with Saparelli’s orders. If Leon tries to include Mendoza’s testimony in his report, Saparelli will tell Miranda about Leon’s conflict of interest in the case, which will invalidate Leon’s findings and prevent him from being called back for future consulting work. Ultimately, Leon’s desire for future work wins out over his moral obligation to include Mendoza’s testimony in his report.
Themes
After the investigation in Germany, Leon ruminates about how people spend life “moving between countries.” He recalls an essay he once read by a man with a terminal illness who was helped by EMTs “into the country of the sick.” Leon relates this idea to his own life. Just as the EMTs transported the essayist to the country of the sick, Alkaitis transported him to “the country of the cheated.” Certain comforts, such as retirement, a permanent home, or trust, are now impossible for Leon because of this journey. Likewise, certain things, such as “any certainty in his morality,” are impossible for him after his trip to Germany.
Leon’s dire financial situation limits his ability to author his identity and control the narrative of his life. He can no longer make any assertions about what kind of person he is or the unethical behaviors he’s capable of since both of these things change according to Leon’s need to fulfill his basic needs for survival. Though he might have been able to call himself honest and morally uncompromised in the past, his decision to withhold Mendoza’s testimony from his report in exchange for a paycheck complicates this. Desperation and the drive for self-preservation force Leon to do things he never thought he’d do.
Themes
The week after the investigation, Saparelli sends Leon a video retrieved off Vincent’s laptop, which seems to suggest that Vincent regularly shot video in bad, hazardous weather and, therefore, supports the theory that her death was “accidental.” Leon recognizes Saparelli’s email as a kind attempt to soothe Leon’s conscience.
Saparelli’s email vaguely absolves Leon of his guilt; if it’s true that Vincent’s death was an accident, then Leon hasn’t failed in his moral responsibility to investigate her death as a murder, and it’s only in principle that his mishandling of Mendoza’s testimony was unethical.
Themes
It’s now been a year since Leon’s return from Germany. He and Marie are camped outside Santa Fe after spending a grueling holiday season working in a warehouse in Arizona. Marie comments on the surrounding beauty, and Leon agrees. Leon feels chilly, though, and he knows he can’t blame it on the weather. He reflects on his and Marie’s earlier decision not to have children. At the time it seemed like the right thing to do—a way to avoid stress and “heartbreak,” and it had certainly made their lives easier. Now, though, he recognizes their childlessness as the root of their not having an “anchor,” and wants nothing more than to be “more anchored to this earth.” Marie and Leon watch the sun set before heading to bed. Marie falls asleep as Leon stays awake.
This scene parallels an earlier scene in the novel, when Leon lies next to a sleeping Marie, kept awake by his personal anxieties. Leon’s story ends tragically: though he and Marie find moments of peace and contentment in their transient lifestyle, their lives are made scary and uncertain by their inability to rely on friends, family, and social and economic systems for comfort. They have nothing to distract themselves from the terror and alienation that are inevitable components of the human experience.
Themes
