"You got it, sir."

In five minutes they are in room 177 with a crib and a bed!

...and they are out of cash. 

"I'm sorry," he says, "I can get you some when I go to the ATM in the morning?"

"Okay. Name's Paul," says the bellhop, apparently quite unconcerned about whether they will in fact pay him in the morning.

Great!

Baby in crib and he is going to collapse in the bed with his extremely beautiful husband.

In the morning he wakes up, feeling slightly human. Meng Xuanyu is, blessedly, still asleep. 

He can. Uh. ...does this hotel room have a paper that might have Chief of Staff And Prominent Political Science Professor Mysteriously Disappeared somewhere in it? That's the kind of thing people cover in newspapers, right? They're both very good-looking.

The hotel has newspapers down in the continental breakfast zone. He can pick up a USA TODAY with headlines including sports, weather, the death of somebody Meng Yao has never heard of, and an item about a woman accusing another person Meng Yao has never heard of of raping her, which, according to the article, was swiftly followed by his confession and arrest.

Meng Yao should be that man's PR guy, he'd be so much better at it. 

He's going to... look for a landline and call his congressional office? Apparently they still have landlines in Missouri.

They do! He's welcome to use the hotel's.

The number reaches an Arby's in Virginia.

In order of increasing desperation: Su She, Xue Yang, and Lan Wangji. 

Busy signal, a deaf little old lady, and the number you have dialed is not in service.

He is going to do a murder. 

He fills up his plate with continental breakfast and... reads more of the newspaper? He guesses? Looks around for a TV to watch?

There's a TV! It's showing a talk show where an interviewer is asking a guy about his recent movie, a historical about ziggurats which Meng Yao has never heard of. It sounds incredibly boring.

It cuts to an ad.

"I'm an employee of Chase Bank. Our bank is basically like other banks in every way that polling shows matters to customers, but we try to make it really easy to switch to us, and about seventy percent of new Chase customers think it was pretty painless to get their account moved over. So if your bank has been bothering you lately, I'd like you to consider switching to Chase. It's a normal quality bank, and if it's not the one you're using right now, you can use us to punish your existing bank."

...

What the hell.

He looks for the bellhop. 

Paul is in the lobby, hauling somebody's luggage to their car for them.

"My husband is incredibly rich but our cards keep being declined for reasons I don't really understand," he says, "so you should tell the guy in charge to let us stay here without paying until we get that sorted out."

"Huh. I can tell him but he's kind of a dick," says Paul.

"So he's going to--"

Meng Yao stops. Opens his mouth. Closes his mouth. There were totally words for this concept yesterday he knew them where did they go. 

"The sky is purple."

"Wow, cool! Do you think it'll stay that way long enough for me to get a picture?"

"No, it's changed back."

"Aw, man."

He goes upstairs.

"--Xichen, try to say any of the words you normally associate with saying something that isn't."

...

...

...

"What."

"Something very very weird is going on. I told the guy downstairs that the sky is purple and he believed me-- and a famous person was accused of rape and then they just confessed-- the advertisement for Chase bank says that they're exactly as good as every other bank but make switching easier-- none of the phones are connected and I can't get Su She or my office or Lan Wangji or anyone--"

This distress has WOKEN MENG XUANYU UP and he is DISPLEASED ABOUT THIS STATE OF AFFAIRS.

Lan Xichen makes him a bottle. "Let's turn on the TV in here."