Quentin and Alice are lying on a daybed in a “Lower East Side” (225) apartment in Manhattan. It’s late November and Brakebills feels “like a lifetime ago” (226) for Quentin, though it has only been a couple of months from when they graduated. When Quentin first arrived in Manhattan, he initially felt overwhelmed. To help him and Alice acclimatize, Eliot and the others would introduce them to various members of New York’s magical underground. It didn’t take long for Quentin to realize that he had to start getting on with his life. Over the next few weeks, he spent most of his nights in different drinking establishments or doing drugs.

On most of these nights Alice doesn’t join him, leaving Quentin, who has become intoxicated by New York’s nightlife, to either party on his own or with Eliot: “night after night Quentin would return home toward dawn, alone, deposited in front of his building […] the street awash with blue light—the delicate ultrasound radians of the embryonic day”(228). Often coming off a drug-induced high, the next day would usually leave Quentin feeling “like his life had gone terribly wrong” (228).

Alice and Quentin share an apartment together.