“Of course.” His imagination was feverish and yet not big enough to comprehend what on earth he was hearing. Ever fearful of disappointment, he decided to assume a cavalier air. “Whatever your”—then he caught himself. It wasn’t his métier, cavalier. He would just be himself: “Whatever you want.”

Her eyes narrowed so far, the lights went out. She turned her head so far, the hood popped up in front of him like a wall. He would never understand her. But then she turned the mouth of the hood back toward him and the eyes were lit once more.

“Just anyplace to lie down, Adam. A couch, the floor, anyplace. I can’t be alone. I can’t explain it. You’re my only friend—” She began sobbing. Her voice came out in little tremulous cries: “My…on-ly…fri-end!”

She buried her face, hood and all, into the breast of his North Face jacket, racked with sobs, and he wrapped both arms about her. “Of course you can stay at my place.” She abruptly stopped crying. How brave she was. “I won’t let you be alone. You can stay there as long as you like. I have a futon. I’ll always be there for you. You can have the bed, and I’ll take the futon.”

“No—no—” She began sobbing again. “Just put me”—sobs—“where I’ll be the least trouble. I don’t”—sob—“deserve—” whereupon the “erve” in “deserve” broke up into racking sobs: “erve-erve-erve-erve.” Adam, essentially a literary intellectual, didn’t realize he was listening to the typical depressed girl who has made the appalling discovery that she is worthless.

She put her arm around his waist and her head against his shoulder, and he put his arm around both her shoulders and hugged her upper body tightly against his own. It was a bit awkward, since his stride covered more ground than hers, but they walked that way out of the Great Yard for seven blocks until they reached the old town house in the City of God where Adam lived.

They spoke very little. Most of the way Charlotte continued sobbing softly, while Adam interjected his There theres , It’s all rights , and Don’t worry, I’m not going to leave you, honeys. The not going to leave you, honeys did more to quiet her than anything else. Otherwise they barely spoke at all, but Adam’s brain and central nervous system were making the circuit at a furious rate.

One moment—euphoria! His fondest dream had come true just like that! Charlotte was moving in with him—and it was her idea! She wouldn’t take three steps without clinging to his body—holding his arm, putting her head on his shoulder! She beseeched him not to leave her. She did everything but say “Take me! I’m yours!” He was giddy, delirious, here in the dark from the radiant happiness soon to be his. Dupont, society, the world, the cosmos, all of existence was now compressed into two people, himself and Charlotte Simmons. It was that blissful suspension of disbelief called love.

The next moment—the Doubts. It was all too good to be true. He happens to bump into her, literally, in the library, and—bango!—all at once she’s his?—but specifically because she’s disgusted and chagrined by sex?—and suffered a trauma in losing her virginity? Where did that leave him—and his burning desire to lose his virginity to this girl, because she was as innocent as he was and wouldn’t look down on him for his lack of experience?

The next moment—she’ll be with me in my apartment all through the night, in the same room, because there is only one room, and it’s a small room and her body will be there and there’s only one real bed, and one thing leads to another in life, doesn’t it?

The next moment—but how do you get a girl into bed with you when she has come to you in flight from a frat-boy sexual predator? The next moment—

—and on it went and off it went on/off/on/off/on/off and the binary circuit burned and burned.

As they drew near Adam’s building, he began to tremble, aroused by the thought of what might possibly, miraculously, now be his…and anxious about how the dump might look to his beloved. What would she think? Place reeks from dirty, moldy clothes and shit lying around…The house itself was in a moldering old district full of brick houses with wood trim built way back in the early twentieth century as one-family residences on tiny lots. Each house was barely seven feet from the next, creating dank alleyways that never saw daylight and always felt damp. The bricks had long since turned five shades darker from grime and coal soot. The wood trim in the cornices, corbels, overhanging eaves, shutters, window frames, architraves, front doorways, and small front porches—everything was dry-rotting, warping, flaking from poor paint jobs or else too few. Generations of black wires slopped with white paint ran from top to bottom next to the gutter pipes, which had their own problems. Most of the houses, like the one Adam lived in, had long since been cut up into small apartments.

But tonight Charlotte was no sightseer. She whimpered and held on to him for dear life. The staircase up to his apartment was a steep, narrow, dingy shaft painted brown. It clattered from the aged metal strips on the leading edges of the steps. It was too cramped for them to ascend side by side; so as he led the way, Adam extended one hand behind him for Charlotte. She desperately insisted on holding on to him. The four-story climb was disorienting enough even when you did it every day. And this time Adam was dizzy with love. His hands trembled as he unlocked the three dead-bolt locks on his door. He opened it, clicked on the light—and his spirits plummeted—

—for he now saw his apartment through his loved one’s eyes. This was no “apartment”! This was a slot!—one of four created by cutting an ordinary front bedroom and rear bedroom in two. Three graduate students rented the other slots. Adam’s was ten feet wide and felt even smaller because it was beneath an eave whose slope eliminated half the ceiling and nearly all of one wall and threatened to pound your head down into your thoracic box from the moment you entered. The “kitchen” consisted of the smallest “stove,” “sink,” and “refrigerator” ever made squeezed into what had been a closet in a former, better life. The quotation marks spread like dermatitis in Adam’s brain as he thought of what must be going through the mind of the girl of his dreams. The “bed” was a mattress on a cheap, unfinished flush door from a lumber-yard, supported at the corners by cinder blocks. And the blankets, sheets, and pillow on that “bed”? A rat’s nest! And from that rat’s nest and the dust-ball-filthy floor—both strewn with dirty socks, sneakers, underwear, handkerchiefs, sweatpants, sweatshirts, sodden towels—there arose such an odor that it overwhelmed even him, he who breathed this foul air day in and day out. And the answer to his prayers couldn’t even see the worst of it yet: the bathroom…was in the hall…and the wretches in all four slots had to use it!

He glanced fearfully at her. She was looking at him with a pained expression.

He said, “I know it’s not what you—”

“Oh, Adam!” she exclaimed. “Thank…ank…ank…ank…ank”—the “thank” broke up into sobs—“…ank you…” Whereupon she threw her arms around him and pressed her head against his chest. She began talking weirdly, her voice muffled by his North Face jacket. “I’m so tired, Adam. I feel so terrible. Please stay with me. There’s no way you can know how I feel. I can’t be alone tonight. I’ll—I can’t, Adam, I can’t…I just canh—anh-anh-anh-anh-anh’t.” She tightened her embrace of his rib cage.

A hail of thoughts blipped through the Wernicke’s area of his brain, one of which was that she no longer said caint for can’t.

“Don’t worry, honey,” he said, “I’m right here with you, and I’m going to stay right here with you.”

She stopped crying, released her embrace, and stood up straight. “Adam, Adam, Adam,” she said, shaking her head in an expression of starry-eyed wonderment. “There’s just no way I can thank you—”