Cult Classic

Lola, an editor living in Manhattan, opens her story with a prologue addressed to Clive Glenn, her former mentor and the now-dead editor in chief of Modern Psychology magazine, where Lola served as deputy editor. She recalls a story Clive's mother used to tell about a lottery among the dead, in which ghosts win the chance to walk among the living for three minutes. Clive once shared this story at a work lunch as genuine belief, marking the first sign that something was shifting in him. The magazine eventually folded, and Clive reinvented himself as a celebrity psychology guru. Speaking to Clive beyond the grave, Lola tells him his scheming did not change the world, but it changed her permanently.

The story begins at a reunion dinner in Chinatown with former colleagues Vadis, Zach, and Clive. Lola, who runs the arts and culture section of a website called Radio New York, steps out to buy cigarettes and encounters Amos Adler, an ex-boyfriend and successful novelist. Over drinks, Amos notices her engagement ring and challenges whether she truly loves her fiancé, a calm glassblower she calls Boots, a nickname from a conversation about silly baby names. Lola and Boots agreed early on never to discuss their exes. Amos argues the relationship lacks passionate intensity. Lola defends her choice but cannot suppress her private doubts.

The following night, a college friend visiting from out of town suggests dinner at the same Chinatown restaurant. There, Lola spots Willis Klee, a former Olympic gold medalist long jumper she dated years ago. Willis, now married with twin girls and living in Iowa, is delighted by her ring. Lola had an abortion during their relationship, and she apologizes for the way she treated him, but Willis dismisses the past cheerfully. Lola realizes she has been carrying the weight of their history alone.

The strangeness of two consecutive encounters deepens when Vadis leads Lola to an old synagogue on the Lower East Side. Inside, past locked doors and a keypad, the building gives way to a marble atrium with chandeliers, a garden, and a glass-and-brass elevator. Errol, the impeccably dressed man who manages the operation, greets Lola warmly. In a conference room, Clive stands before a reproduction of René Magritte's painting Golconda, depicting men in bowler hats suspended in a blue sky. He explains that he has founded a secret society called the Golconda, inspired by the theories of Soren Jørgensen, a Danish elevator repairman who believed human thought operates like traction elevators, beholden to external forces. Using subliminal social media manipulation, targeted advertising, private investigators, and the concentrated meditation of its members, the Golconda has been engineering Lola's encounters with her ex-boyfriends near the building. Lola is the first case study, code-named "the Classic," chosen because her extensive romantic history provides ideal data. Clive shows her a menu of packages the Golconda plans to sell to wealthy clients and frames the experiment as helping Lola achieve closure before marriage.

Before Boots leaves for a two-week glass contract in San Francisco, he and Lola attend the wedding of his close friends on a Long Island goat farm. There they meet Georgette, the groom's ex-girlfriend, who declares that marriage means agreeing to live inside someone else's narrative. Boots is unsettled, and Lola, already shaken, wonders whether Clive sent Georgette.

Once Boots departs, Lola participates fully. Each evening she wanders Chinatown, encounters another ex, then reports to the Golconda, where Jin, a former tech CEO, monitors her biofeedback while Vadis asks questions. She sees Jonathan, a college boyfriend; Fernando, who once ghosted her on moving day; and Cooper, a closeted man who pecks her cheek and keeps walking. She encounters Aaron, with whom she had her first sexual experience, now pushing a stroller with his wife. She spots Knox, a librettist who was only emotionally engaged when Lola was upset, triggering her most shameful memory: She fabricated stories of sexual trauma to sustain Knox's attention, inventing a fictional rapist she later "killed off" in a skiing accident. The encounters erode Lola. She stops grooming, becomes dissociated, and struggles to sound normal on the phone with Boots.

Clive brings his girlfriend Chantal to the Golconda, passing it off as a wellness center. Lola and Chantal find a hidden door to the meditation room, which has been off-limits throughout the experiment, but Clive slams it shut. That evening, Lola realizes her engagement ring slipped down the drain of the Golconda's communal sink. The pipes are too old to retrieve it, and she recognizes the symbolic resonance of the loss.

Clive tells Lola the Golconda can afford only one more encounter. She confides in Zach, who researches the building and brings her the original floor plan of Congregation Beth Shalom, the synagogue housing the Golconda. The plan reveals a hidden staircase near the meditation room. Lola also finds one of the Golconda's business cards buried in her box of old love letters, suggesting one of her exes may have known about the organization.

On her final night, Lola encounters Pierre, a Frenchman she kissed on a balcony at a party the same night she met Boots. After they talk and she kisses him goodbye, Lola realizes she never told anyone about Pierre. There are no texts, diary entries, or digital traces. His presence means the Golconda's meditation works independently of the technological manipulation.

Lola lies to Vadis, claiming no one appeared. She decides to end her engagement and writes a list of reasons. But she also resolves to see the meditation room. After watching everyone leave, she climbs onto the fire escape from the adjacent alley, enters through an attic window, and descends through the hidden staircase. She pushes open the door.

The lights come on. Boots, whose real name is Max, has been inside the Golconda every night, sleeping beside his glass sculptures. He reveals that months earlier he found Lola's box of love letters and read them all. Already sensing her pulling away, he was disturbed. Clive lured Max to a meeting using a fake buyer for his glassware, but Max reveals he hired Clive, not the other way around. His package is called "the Grand Sweep": the chance to have one's partner confront and release their romantic ghosts. Lola's box of mementos provided the list of exes. Max also reveals he saw Lola kiss Pierre the night they met and has been trying to prove himself worthy ever since.

Max asks if Lola wants to end the relationship. Confronted with the depth of his commitment, Lola breaks down and tells him she loves him genuinely. Max says all he ever wanted was for her to love him "more than you're sorry" and to talk to him instead of about him. They reconcile. Max notices the missing ring but agrees to discuss it later.

While they embrace, the lights go out and a crash echoes through the building. The Golconda's elevator, poorly maintained by an unqualified volunteer, has plummeted to the ground. Clive is inside; the fall knocked him unconscious, and the debris smothered him. Errol arrives before paramedics, and together they remove all incriminating materials before police come. The Golconda's existence never becomes public.

At the funeral, Vadis delivers the eulogy, and Zach puts his arm around her, marking their first date. Lola speaks privately to Clive's coffin, telling him the Golconda worked, but not as he intended: It brought her and Max back together by forcing her to choose the future over the past. Every one of Lola's exes contacts her afterward, reporting they had been thinking of her. She thanks them and wishes them a good summer. The novel closes with Lola recalling a late-night phone call from years earlier, when Clive closed his notepad and offered his own conclusion: "sometimes people just need to be told what they want."