Throughout this recitation, Mr. Quat kept his lips compressed in a thoughtful manner but allowed a friendly smile to play about the corners. He also kept nodding toward Adam with obvious approval and encouragement to continue. During Adam’s peroration concerning his dream of reaching the high ground where he could devote his life to progressive causes, Mr. Quat nodded more enthusiastically and continually than ever, even closing his eyes from time to time in the midst of a full bobbing nod, as if to concentrate to the utmost upon what he was hearing.

When Adam’s lips stopped moving, Mr. Quat nodded some more and said, “Well—I hope you get your Rhodes. It sounds like you’ve worked hard and done well, and I commend you.” A pause. “So I guess that brings us up to Mr. Johanssen and his paper.” Once more he cocked his head and waited.

Adam took a deep breath. This was it. He was at the border. He either crossed over into unknown territory or stayed here. Which was riskier? If he stayed here, Buster Roth was his strategist. But Buster Roth was not his friend. What was to keep Buster Roth from making him a sacrificial lamb to save Jojo? Nothing. He didn’t even know Roth, and technically he had been working for him for two years. They were two totally different types of people. Whereas Quat—he had been with the man now for maybe thirty minutes, and he already felt as if he was with a landsman, a compatriot. He felt it…he knew it…there was no way Mr. Quat would now turn on him…Where would this leave Jojo? That, he hadn’t thought through…but it stood to reason that if Mr. Quat dropped the case against one of them, he’d have to drop the case against both…This limbo…this not knowing…this having a sword over his neck constantly…it was unbearable…and the window of opportunity was now open…while the demonstration was still live in Mr. Quat’s memory…Now!—and suddenly he was across the border.

“Mr. Quat,” he said…pause…“what I have to tell you…well, let me put it this way. In order to tell you, I’m going to have to throw myself upon your mercy. Otherwise, I don’t see how—I don’t know how it can be done.” He gave Mr. Quat a look that asked for immunity ahead of time. Mr. Quat nodded yes, as before, but without the little smile playing about the corners of the lips. “When the Athletic Department hired me,” Adam continued, “they gave me a…not really a pamphlet, more of a leaflet, I guess you’d call it, with these guidelines for being a tutor and the limits of what a tutor could do for an athlete and so forth. I’m sure it was all very correct. It was like…there it was, in print. But gradually you got the message that you should forget that and do whatever the athletes wanted you to do, because the whole program depended on their getting by academically. They were always talking about the ‘program.’”

Mr. Quat continued to nod yes, and Adam gradually descended from the overview…down to Crowninshield House and the unofficial basketball wing on the fifth floor…and being summoned by Jojo at 11:55 p.m. that particular night…

“Mr. Quat—I’m not going to hold anything back,” said Adam. “I’m going to tell you exactly what happened. I’m—I’m entrusting my own fate to your hands.” He could feel his heart banging away even harder. He didn’t know whether what he had just said sounded dramatic and morally compelling or dramatic and pompous. However it sounded, Mr. Quat gave him the broad, reassuring smile of a father and nodded yes some more.

Reassured, Adam plunged in.

He told it all, leaving out only the fact that Jojo and his roommate sat in their suite playing Stunt Biker on PlayStation 3 while he worked all night in the library writing about a complex subject against a terrible deadline. He told himself he was making it better for Jojo that way.

He told of the all-night race in the library of Time…versus Intellect…He told of how even in the very midst of the struggle he couldn’t help but admire the subtlety, the complexity, the implicit insight of the assignment itself and regret that he didn’t have time to savor the reading that should have gone into the preparation of such a paper. He told of the great ironic satisfaction of coming up with a psychological concept—oh, he knew he hadn’t worked it out well—to account for the resonance that the unique psychological makeup of George III—fascinating figure—would have on world affairs—all this, even while knowing full well that this was a—well, an essentially…proscribed life preserver he was throwing to a sinking “student”-athlete. Mr. Quat was still nodding yes in a pasha-paternal fashion when Adam reached the coda, the account of how he slipped the paper under Jojo’s door at 8:30 a.m. and returned to his apartment in the City of God and crashed for twelve hours.

He stopped and gave Mr. Quat a look of supplication that all but bled for mercy.

Mr. Quat, still reared back in his swivel chair, continued to nod yes in his thoughtful manner. He wrapped a forefinger around his chin and over his goatee and put his thumb beneath his chin, as if he were holding a pipe. He studied Adam’s countenance for what seemed like an eternity. The silence turned into a sound inside Adam’s skull, a sound like steam escaping from one of those glass vessels for boiling water before it starts whistling. Without a word, Mr. Quat stood up from his desk and slowly walked his pendulous bulk to the other side of the little office, head down. He was still holding his chin like a pipe. Then he walked back the same way, not once looking at Adam. Adam’s eyes, on the other hand, never left Mr. Quat’s face or, for that moment when he reached the other side of the room, the ruff of hair on the back of his bald head.

Mr. Quat stopped by the side of the desk. He looked down at Adam. Adam was no longer aware of his heart or any of the rest of his torso and limbs—only of the steam. He looked up into the face of judge and jury. The very words, “judge and jury,” bubbled up his brain stem.

Mr. Quat spoke. “Mr. Gellin, I take plagiarism very seriously. Offhand, I can’t think of a worse crime against scholarship and learning and the entire mission of a university. There may be those weary cynics on the faculty here who think the university can no longer claim to have a mission, but I’m not one of them. At the same time, I resonate completely with what you have achieved here and what you’ve tried to achieve and your long-range goals, which are also mine. I also think I comprehend the pressures the Athletic Department must have put upon you. In light of that, I can’t very well do what I would honestly prefer to do.” He gave Adam a trace of a smile, albeit weary. “I think what we have to do—both of us—is make an example of this case—”

An example?—

“—because it encompasses so many crucial issues that must be settled now…the power of an athletic program that has gone out of control, the corruption of the scholarly ideal, the corruption of a mind as bright and promising…as yours…”

What?—

“…and it’s true that in the short run both of us, me as well as you, will have every cause to regret what will probably happen. But in the long run you will be a better, stronger person, and this institution will learn a lesson that has been a long time in coming.”

“Sir! No! You don’t mean—”

“I’m afraid I do. I’m afraid I must. There’s something here bigger than your short-term outlook and my short-term outlook. And when this is all over, you will have every reason to be grateful, along with many others, for the role you’ve played, however fortuitously.”

“Sir! You can’t! I came to you in good faith! I placed myself in your hands! You’re destroying me!”

“Hardly,” said Mr. Quat, with his biggest paternal smile yet. “You’re young. That’s a tremendous asset none of us comprehends until much, much later. You’ll be fine. You’ve got what it takes.”

“No! I’m begging you! I’m begging you! You can’t! I’m begging you!”