Olena is a young librarian at a university in the Midwest. She grew up in Vermont, after her parents moved there from Transylvania when she was a kid. They gave her an American name but only they used it, and she left it behind when they both died in a car crash. After dropping out of an English PhD program, Olena became a librarian. At the library, she meets Nick, who is working on a county board-seat campaign. He asks her out. They get coffee and she learns he has spent twelve years in prison for bombing a military warehouse and severely injuring a man who had been working late. Nick moves in with Olena, who has never lived with a significant other. Olena misses her mother. Nick urges her to come to one of the fundraisers for his candidate, Teetlebaum. Olena does not think much of Teetlebaum and finds the entire crowd of people Nick is in with off-putting and shallowly self-important in their idea that they're doing good. At the fundraiser, Nick is talking the whole time to a woman. When Olena later asks, he says she's the head of the Bayre Corners Neighborhood Association and they need her endorsement. Then he sleeps with her. He confesses to Olena unapologetically, saying it's just "a sixties thing" to become politically involved and then sexually involved. Nick tries to make it up to Olena, doing all the chores and bringing her gifts as she becomes extremely depressed. She starts to wear his clothes and look at women through his eyes. She imagines herself a rapist in the desire, jealousy, and anger she feels toward these women. Olena makes a doctor's appointment. A bat gets into the house and Nick kills it. Olena feels somehow responsible for its death. Nick says he got lunch with Erin, the woman he slept with, because they still need her endorsement. They have a verbal fight. He calls her at the library and says he cares about their relationship, he just wants her to give a little of herself to the community. At the hospital, the doctor asks her to let a class of seven students observe and learn from the examination. He asks her to "contribute to the education" of the students. Olena doesn't feel comfortable agreeing, but she agrees. They do a pelvic examination, and the doctor has each of the students reach into Olena's vagina, without her consent. Olena is partially blacking out. She misses her parents. She remembers her father catching her masturbating the night before her parents' death. One of the students, she says "doesn't do it correctly." It is unclear if it's a mistake or malicious. The doctor says Olena is normal and tells her to take Vitamin B and listen quietly to music in the evenings. The rest of the day, Olena feels "separate from her body, [feels] herself dragging it up the stairs as if it were a big handbag, its leathery hollowness something you could cut up and give away, stick things in." She thinks, "One should live closer to where one's parents were buried." Nick doesn't come home that night. She imagines her parents in the stars, searching for her. She feels burnt out from having given so much to the world.