Chapter 62: I've Only Seen This Kind of Plot in Novels
The Bar
After settling the bet with Monica, Adam lingered just long enough to avoid seeming rude, then decisively made his exit.
You can't rush these things.
In movies and TV shows, scenes between characters rarely happen back to back — there are gaps of days, weeks, sometimes months between meaningful interactions. Adam understood this instinctively. Showing up too eager, too frequently, too obviously invested would only create the wrong impression.
Columbia wasn't far. He had time.
Columbia University — Room 110
Ted and Matthew were side by side on the couch, controllers in hand, fully absorbed in whatever was happening on screen.
Matthew leaned back with the satisfied expression of a man reviewing his options. "There's a dark-haired girl on the floor. Very promising."
"Nice," Ted said, without looking over.
"Very nice," Matthew confirmed.
Ted glanced toward the wall connecting their room to Adam's. "Still not as impressive as whatever Adam had going at the welcome party. He didn't come back until the next morning." He shook his head slowly. "I genuinely want to learn something from that man."
Matthew thought about this. The dark-haired girl immediately seemed slightly less exciting.
"You've already got the dark-haired girl," Ted pointed out.
"It's not serious," Matthew said, with the breezy confidence of someone who had not yet encountered consequences for this attitude. "I'm not marrying her. This is college."
"Obviously."
Matthew headed out a while later, freshly changed, high-fiving Ted on his way through the door.
Ted played alone for another hour, but the welcome party's aftereffects hadn't fully cleared his system. Drowsiness settled over him like a heavy blanket. He turned off the console, climbed to the top bunk, and dropped off almost immediately.
He woke at midnight.
It took exactly two seconds to register what was happening in the room below him.
He stared at the ceiling with the blank expression of a man processing something he hadn't signed up for.
Matthew's head appeared over the edge of the bunk. "Sorry — did I wake you?" He fumbled around and produced a Walkman. "Here, take this."
Ted accepted it without a word, put the headphones on, cranked the volume to maximum, and returned to staring at the ceiling.
He had caught a glimpse of the girl Matthew brought back.
He recognized her.
She was the same girl from the welcome party two nights ago.
He said something quietly and with feeling that he would not have said in front of his mother.
Of all the people. Of all the rooms.
The Next Morning
Adam came back to grab his textbooks and found Ted stationed in the hallway outside room 110 with red eyes and an extremely urgent expression.
"Can I sleep in your room tonight?"
"What happened?"
Ted explained. He kept his voice low, checked the hallway twice, and then leaned in. "And the girl Matthew brought back — it was her. The same one from the welcome party. The one I was with. Do not tell Matthew."
Adam looked at him steadily. "Are you absolutely sure?"
"Yes."
"Because I'm pretty sure the girl from the welcome party was three hundred pounds."
"Stop," Ted said, with genuine desperation. "I'm being serious right now."
"So am I," Adam said, keeping his face completely neutral. "Think about it clearly. You were in an altered state that night. Human memory under those conditions is unreliable — it patches over gaps with whatever material is most recently available. You have a clear image of the girl from last night. Your brain may have retroactively applied that face to the blurry memory from the party. These two women might be completely different people."
Ted stared at him.
He thought about it.
The longer he thought about it, the less certain he became.
"...That's actually possible," he admitted, and clearly hated admitting it.
"Which brings me back to my original point," Adam said pleasantly. "Stop eating sandwiches at parties. Because one day you will be one hundred percent certain about something, and you will be completely, catastrophically wrong, and the thing you're wrong about will be standing in the same room as someone whose opinion of you matters."
Ted's gaze drifted toward the wall between their rooms. Matthew's cheerful humming could be faintly heard from the other side.
"Can I still sleep in your room tonight?"
Adam sighed. "Fine. Bring your pillow."
That Afternoon — Random House Publishing
Adam took the revised contract back uptown.
The original version Jack Cerf had called "standard" had been standard in the way that all industry contracts were standard — which was to say, technically accurate on the surface and strategically inconvenient underneath. Adam's lawyer had identified three specific clauses worth revising. The legal fees had stung, but he paid without complaint.
This is the cost of doing things correctly, he reminded himself. Pay the lawyer once, or pay the consequences indefinitely.
Cerf reviewed the revised version without visible reaction, his expression the polished neutral of a man who had done this a thousand times. He instructed his assistant to reprint both copies. Two fresh contracts appeared on the desk.
Adam read through every page carefully, confirmed each correction was in place, and signed.
Cerf extended his hand with a professional smile that reached precisely as far as it needed to. "Pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Duncan."
Adam shook it with an equally professional smile. "Likewise, Mr. Cerf."
Two men, each performing warmth they didn't particularly feel, each satisfied with the outcome on their own terms.
Adam picked up his copy, tucked it under his arm, and took the elevator down to the street.
Outside, the city moved around him at its usual indifferent pace. The first volume of Lord of the Hidden was signed, contracted, and heading to print.
He turned toward the subway and started mentally outlining volume two.
4,000 words a day, he thought. Starting tomorrow.
He already knew he wouldn't stick to that.
End of Chapter 62
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