The novel opens in 1928. Clara Darden, an illustration instructor at the Grand Central School of Art, is anxious about the faculty exhibition opening that evening. It is her first New York show and thus her best chance of impressing magazine editors who have ignored her since her arrival from Arizona. Her class dissolves into an argument between students just as the school’s director, Irving Lorette, walks in. His mounting dissatisfaction makes it likely he will not renew her contract.

When Lorette questions her about her own sketches, Clara lies, claiming the drawings are teaching aids; they are actually a paid commission of undergarments for Wanamaker Department Store. The deflection shifts his attention to her longstanding request for a live model, which he refuses, calling it inappropriate for a mixed-gender class “run by a woman” (4).

After class, Clara eats at the terminal restaurant, where a student named Nadine Stevenson introduces her companion, Oliver Smith, a struggling poet defying his father’s wish that he pursue a career in banking. Clara relates, noting that her own father disowned her for moving to New York. She and Oliver share a brief, charged moment of connection.