The Graduate by Charles Webb

He showed them the article in the morning newspaper announcing the concert. Then he climbed into his car and drove to the Hotel Taft.
    The Hotel Taft was on a hill in one of the better sections of town. A wide street curved up past large expensive homes until it neared the top of the hill, then there was an archway over the street with a sign on the archway reading Taft Hotel and as it passed under the archway the street turned into the entranceway of the hotel. Benjamin drove slowly under the archway, then up the long driveway until he came to the building itself. He had to slow his car and wait in a line while other cars, most of them driven by chauffeurs, stopped by the entrance of The Graduate
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    the building for a doorman to open the door for their passengers.
    When Benjamin was beside the entrance an attendant appeared at his car and pulled open the door.
    “Thank you,” Benjamin said as he climbed out.
    Others the same age as Benjamin were walking across a broad pavilion leading to the doors of the hotel. A few of the boys were wearing suits but most were wearing summer tuxedos with black pants and white coats. A girl who had on a shiny white dress and a white orchid on one of her wrists walked arm-in-arm with her escort up to the door and in. Benjamin followed. Just inside the door a man smiled at Benjamin and pointed across the lobby of the hotel.
    “Main ballroom,” he said.
    “What?”
    “Are you with the Singleman party?”
    “No,” Benjamin said.
    “I beg your pardon.”
    He nodded at the man, then walked into the large lobby, looking around him at the main desk and at the telephone booths against one wall and at the several elevators standing open with their operators in front of them. He walked slowly across the thick white carpet of the lobby to the door where the others had gone and for a long time stood looking into the ballroom. There were tables around the sides of the room covered with white tablecloths and in the center of each table was a small sign with a number on it. Some of the couples were wandering around the room looking for their tables and others were already seated talking together or leaning over the backs of their chairs to talk to someone at the next table. Just inside the door of the ballroom two women and a man were standing in a line. Each time a girl and her escort walked through the door the two women and theman smiled and shook their hands. Then the man reached into his pocket for a sheet of paper and told them where to sit.
    “I’m, Mrs. Singleman,” the woman closest to the door said to Benjamin after he had stood to watch several couples go in.
    “Oh,” Benjamin said. “Well I’m not—” She was holding out her hand to him. He looked at it a moment, then shook it. “I’m pleased to meet you,” he said, “but I’m—”
    “What is your name,” she said.

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    “My name’s Benjamin Braddock. But I’m—”
    “Benjamin?” she said. “I’d like you to know my sister, Miss DeWitte.”
    Miss DeWitte, wearing a large purple corsage on one of her breasts, stepped forward smiling and extended her hand.
    “Well I’m glad to meet you,” Benjamin said, shaking it, “but I’m afraid—”
    “And that’s Mr. Singleman,” Mrs. Singleman said, nodding at her husband.
    “How are you, Ben,” Mr. Singleman said, shaking his hand. “Let’s see if we can’t find you a table here.”
    “Well that’s very kind of you,” Benjamin said. “But I’m not with the party.”
    “What?”
    “I’m—I’m here to meet a friend.” He nodded and walked back past them and into the lobby.
    Across from the ballroom was a bar with a sign over its door reading The Verandah Room. Benjamin walked across the lobby and under the sign and into the bar. He found an empty table in one of the corners of the room beside a large window that stretched across the entire length of the wall and overlooked the grounds of the hotel.
    Although he seldom smoked Benjamin