Palm Springs

Palm Springs is the destination Poppy Wright chooses for an R+R assignment and the setting of her renewed time with Alex Nilsen. Its importance lies in the double purpose it serves: the trip can be presented as work, but Poppy selects the place because she wants to be there with Alex. The desert setting becomes the backdrop for a vacation imagined around wandering and shared habits rather than a tightly planned itinerary.

An editorial choice with a private purpose

Poppy announces Palm Springs to Swapna Bakshi-Highsmith the morning after a late night of texting Alex. Swapna, reviewing proofs for the fall issue, first considers the destination as a potential magazine feature. She calls it evergreen and sees it as a restful place in the continental United States, though she notes that the summer is its low season and that the idea would suit the winter issue better. For the purposes of R+R, the choice has an intelligible professional rationale.

Poppy’s own reason is more personal. Alex already has a three-day trip planned for the destination wedding of his younger brother, David Nilsen, who is marrying the love of his life in Palm Springs the following week. Poppy has been disappointed to learn that their reunion coincides with this commitment, but after further texting she proposes that Alex extend the trip by several days for an R+R-funded vacation with her. He agrees and invites her to stay for the wedding as well. What begins as an editorial pitch therefore gives Poppy a way to join a trip already anchored by Alex’s family plans.

The professional explanation does not entirely conceal the personal one from Poppy herself. She initially offers Palm Springs as if it had been selected for the magazine’s appeal, while recognizing that the decisive reason is David’s wedding. When Swapna points out the seasonal mismatch, Poppy considers the alternative of sending Garrett to Santorini instead. The choice between the two destinations clarifies what she wants: not merely a conventionally beautiful holiday, but time in the desert with Alex.

The vacation Poppy wants

Poppy imagines Palm Springs through the particular things she hopes to do there. Her ideal days are unstructured: entering places before checking them on Tripadvisor, staying out late, and giving up hours of sunshine to a dusty bookstore Alex cannot pass by. A vintage shop offers a different kind of shared scene: Poppy tries on hats that belonged to dead people while Alex waits rigidly but patiently near the door, uneasy amid the clutter and germs. These are imagined particulars, not a formal itinerary; their appeal is precisely that they leave room for the habits and differences the two already know about each other.

The desert is central to that picture. Poppy wants Alex in the heat of high summer, rather than in the sparkling-sea version of a holiday represented by Santorini. Palm Springs is thus more than a useful location for combining work with a wedding. It lets her envision a trip whose pleasures depend on ordinary discoveries, long stretches of time, and Alex’s presence. The destination’s value for Poppy is relational: the same bookstore or vintage shop matters because it can become part of their day together.

The Desert Rose setting

The Desert Rose Apartment Complex gives the Palm Springs stay a distinct physical character. It is a stucco building painted bubblegum pink, with its name in curling midcentury letters. Scrubby cacti and large succulents fill the garden; behind a white picket fence, a teal pool is ringed with palm trees and chaise lounges. When Alex turns off the car, he says it looks nice, sounding relieved. Poppy steps onto asphalt hot even through her sandals, making the summer desert immediately present as a bodily condition as well as a destination on a map.

Their accommodation is a studio: one open room, with no doors apart from the bathroom. The layout makes privacy awkward for two people who are already behaving awkwardly around each other. When Poppy suggests going to the pool, Alex pauses to arrange that he will change in the bathroom and she can call out when she is finished. The small practical negotiation gives the setting a role beyond scenic description. The open room and the proposed pool outing place the pair in close quarters while making their self-consciousness visible.

A destination beside the idea of home

Palm Springs belongs to the novel’s wider contrast between travel and settled life, but the contrast does not make the trip insignificant. Later, Poppy and Alex share a full-time life in New York City. They leave a tour to sit at Cafe Lalo, where they want to take the seats associated with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks in You’ve Got Mail; outside, spring blossoms move through the streets as they drink cappuccinos. Poppy recognizes that ordinary life can feel like a vacation one does not have to leave, even as work, grading, lesson planning, laundry, dishes, taxes, appointments, and lost MetroCards make that life unlike a holiday.

Their future plans also turn toward Linfield: after four days in Norway and four in Sweden, they intend to return there for the remainder of Alex’s summer break, stay in Betty’s house while he repairs it, and test how their hometown fits them. Poppy already knows that wherever Alex is will be her favorite place. Against these later forms of shared life, Palm Springs marks an earlier, deliberately temporary setting where she tries to secure more time with him by joining his journey. Its significance is not that it replaces home, but that the place becomes meaningful through the time Poppy hopes to spend there with Alex.