Part 2, Chapters 23-29 Summary

H.H. begins a long and expensive tracking of Lolita and Trapp. He stays in 342 motels, and only picks up twenty clues. He believes Trapp is playing with him. Trapp comes close to slipping up, but never does, and H.H. admires his skill. It is obvious that Lolita is in on the game by some of the clues that are left.

Three empty years follow. H.H. seldom dreams of Lolita, but she haunts his sleep disguised as Valeria and/or Charlotte, a complex ghost at vivisecting parties. H.H. destroys Lolita's insipid teen magazines, but other things are harder to relinquish. During his "retreat," H.H. composes a melancholy poem to his 5,300-day old starlet in hiding. Psychoanalyzing the poem, he pronounces it a "maniac's masterpiece"; stark, and lurid. He writes others but never forgets about revenge...