Adam kept his arm around Honey as they reached the basement stacks. These were stacks of the venerable sort, cliffs of metal shelves supporting rack after rack of books. The cliffs were so numerous and crunched so close together, floor to ceiling, the sensation that they were about to fall over on you would have been overwhelming if the ceiling hadn’t been so low, no more than seven and a half feet. Floor to ceiling, with no more than thirty inches between cliffs, in a windowless space so vast and so miserably lit—by trays of fever-blue fluorescent tubes hung from the ceiling—that on the far side the cliffs seemed to recede into a terminal gloom choked with the dust of tens of thousands of dead books. In fact this soaring tower of academe had been retrofitted with the latest twenty-first-century HVC (heating, ventilation, and cooling) systems in an age of particulate matter phobia. Adam maintained his one-armed savior’s embrace, which forced them to squeeze together as they made their way through the narrow spaces between the cliffs.

They walked until they had traveled deep, deep into the vast space. Far from the world, they sat down in a corner where two cliffs of books met.

Charlotte had managed to contain her tears, and Adam said, “So what is it?”

“Nothing really, just a stupid thing I did. You don’t want to know…or do you already know?”

“Already know? Know what?”

“I guess not.”

“What happened, Charlotte?”

“Well, have you ever done anything that, I don’t know, was totally out of character or totally against your morals and everything you believed in and then really regretted it afterward?”

“Well…whoa…okay, yeah, I’m sure—go on…”

“Even more than that, like…done something so awful that turned into—it just shames you whenever you think about it, and you just keep thinking about it over and over?”

“Charlotte—stop beating around the bush. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Well, I had an interesting weekend just before Christmas break.” She did not say it with a smile.

“What did you do?”

She turned her head so that she was looking straight into his eyes. “Adam?” she said softly. “Don’t hate me.”

“Why would I? What are you talking about?”

Whereupon, sitting there on the floor, she poured out the whole story. She told him everything.

Afterward, Adam said nothing. He put his arm around her. She rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. He put his other arm around her, too, and held her for a long time without saying a word. She felt good in his arms, bony though they were. She trusted him totally. He wasn’t going to try to turn this into an opening to slide a hand here…and there…and there…He wasn’t going to stroke her leg in the guise of comforting her. There was no guile to him. He was calming her and protecting her. He began rocking her, ever so gently—just that, rocking her like a baby. Had she not been aware that she was, in fact, on the floor deep within the stacks of a nine-million-book library, she could have nodded off into a peaceful sleep.

Finally, still holding her, Adam said, “Oh, wow…” Long pause. “That’s pretty intense, Charlotte. But that guy’s a dick! You’re so much better than he is! Frat guys are losers, Charlotte. They’re misogynists. They are the most sexist—they’re animals. They haven’t evolved. They’re afraid to climb out on this new branch of the tree of life marked hominid. A bunch of filthy shitheads—what happened was not your fault. I hope you can see that. It’s that sort of—that whole mentality the frat guys have. I’ve been around them. It’s a group mentality, and it’s dangerous because as long as you’re in their midst, they try to create an atmosphere of…of…of, you know, our way is the only cool way, and you’re a total loser if you won’t laugh at the moronic rubbish we laugh at. I can’t see you even hanging out with them. It makes no sense. They’re such wastes of time, wastes of mental capacity, wastes of everything!—and that includes the space they occupy and the air they breathe.” He made a contemptuous sound deep in his throat. “You have to dumb yourself down just being in the same room with them. Their idea of witty repartee is like…grunting out insults. They are so below you, Charlotte! You can do anything you want, be anyone you want. Look at you. You’re gorgeous, you’re smart, and most of all, you’re curious about life! You need adventure!—and I’m talking about real adventure, not fraternity formals.”

Adam’s voice rose and rose, and he became more and more fervent in his exhortations, to the point where he began gesturing for emphasis, and his glasses fell off and he tried to put them back on properly, but that interrupted the flow, the beat, of his apostrophe, so he held them in his hand. “You’re different from them. You’re a different species. I take that back—you’re not a part of any species! You’re unique! There’s nobody like you! How could you possibly lower yourself to the level of the herd? You’re—you’re Charlotte Simmons!”

I am Charlotte Simmons. Without knowing Miss Pennington, not even her name, Adam had arrived at the very same declaration, the very same argument. That didn’t encourage her in the slightest. There was nothing in her worth encouraging and never had been. The two of them, Miss Pennington and Adam, had merely managed to hit upon the same sickly sweet gob of verbiage. Charlotte was far beyond the reach of genuine praise, never mind witless flattery. The worthlessness of the depressed girl is complete and across the board. I am Charlotte Simmons—what a pathetic, what a feeble piece of self-delusion…and so forth and so on…Only the bony nest of his embrace brought any solace at all.

After You are Charlotte Simmons, she heard nothing but the light and abstract ramble of his voice, even though he talked on and on. She curled up until she was all but cradled on his lap. Her head and upper torso lay on his chest. She had found an interlude—no, not a mere interlude—but a state of being, a steady state at a blessed remove from the world, below ground, in a tubercular blue light, neither day nor night, two creatures safely hidden deep within an endless, endless metal forest of dead books no one would ever touch again.

They remained that way for what seemed like a blessed, timeless eternity, she in his arms and he bathing her nerve endings in the warm flow of his words…about…what did it matter.

Adam said, “Look”—Charlotte braced herself for “Honey,” but it didn’t come—“this is Dupont, and it’s the same Dupont you dreamed of, but you haven’t let yourself find it. There is a whole other life here. There are people here—you once used the phrase ‘life of the mind,’ and you’ve already been face to face with it. Let me tell you something. Edgar Tuttle is going to be a great figure in the not too distant future. His mind is—he has such a conceptual power—do you remember the afternoon he suddenly gave us the social history of…thecheer leader? Right in the middle of a casual conversation? I can’t remember a moment when he wasn’t worth listening to. And Roger—he makes such bad jokes—and he’s so brilliant at the same time. And Camille—don’t be fooled by her dirty mouth. She claims she’s some sort of flame-throwing lesbian. But I think she’s like Camille Paglia. She establishes some ultraradical position way out to the left of everything else, and from out there she can cut down anybody on the left or the right. Okay, she loves to go for the throat, but with her you can be sure that nobody—nobody—is going to be able to get away with the usual arrant bullshit. Charlotte, these are the sort of people who will do a country’s thinking for it.”

Edgar Tuttle…conceptual power…Camille…ultraradical…Adam’s words became a nice warm bath. Charlotte relaxed and curled up into his embrace once more…She wanted nothing more than to float and bob in perpetuity in this lukewarm current.