[...] It seemed that, as usual, there was no one in the stacks on the third floor. Jack quickly found where the book belonged, but – above the moldy bindings, in the next aisle – a pair of disembodied eyes regarded him. "Michele Maher isn't the girl for you," the voice that went with the eyes said. "You're already good-looking. What do you need a good-looking girl for? You need something else, something real."
Another dishwasher? Jack wondered. But he recognized the voice and the diluted, washed out blue of the eyes. It was Molly whatever-her-name-was. Ed McCarthy's ex-girlfriend. (Penis McCarthy, as Herman Castro less-than-lovingly called him.)
"Hi, Molly," Jack said; he came around into her aisle and stood next to her.
"I should be your girlfriend," Molly told him. "I know you love your sister, and she's ugly. Well, I'm ugly, too."
"You're not ugly, Molly."
"Yes, I am," she said. She was demented, clearly. She also had a cold; the rims of her nostrils were red and her nose was running. Molly whatever-her-name-was leaned back against the stacks and closed her eyes.
"Take me," she whispered.
Jack didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He did neither. On an impulse largely meant to do her minimal harm, he fell to his knees and lifted her skirt. He pushed his face into her panties; with both his hands on her buttocks, he pulled the waistband of her panties down.
Jack Burns actually licked a tenth-grade girl, a sixteen-year-old, in the stacks on the third floor of the Exeter library! From Mrs. Machado and Mrs. Stackpole, he knew exactly how to do it; the difference was, this time he initiated it. He could feel Molly's fingers in his hair; she was pulling his head into her. He could feel her slumping against the stacks as she came on his face – not one's usual library experience. And the worst of it was that he didn't know her last name; he couldn't even write her a letter of explanation.
Jack left her standing in the stacks, or barely standing. Unlike Michele Maher, Molly was short enough that he could kiss her on her forehead – as if she were a little girl. When he left her, with nothing to say for himself except that he had to cram for a history final, it seemed to him that her knees were buckling.
Jack found a drinking fountain, in which he washed his face. When he returned to his carrel on the second floor, he was aware he'd been away for what may have struck Madame Delacorte as a long time – not to mention that he'd suffered a major distraction. Maybe he was a little wild-eyed, or there was something in the aftermath of impromptu cunnilingus that caught Madame Delacorte's eye.
"My word, Jack Burns," she said. "What on earth have you been reading? Not Roman law, clearly."
The lilt in her voice was more mischievous than scientific. Was Madame Delacorte flirting with him? He finnaly got the nerve to look at her, but Madame Delacorte was as unreadable as Jack's future. He knew only that the rest of his life had begun, and that he would begin it without Michele Maher – his first, maybe his last, true love.
[John Irving, Until I Find You, Random House, págs. 311/312]
