I Am Charlotte Simmons

23. Model on a Runway

I know they’ll be older than I am, I know they’ll be better dressed than I am, cooler cooler cooler oh so much cooler than I am, but please, God, don’t let them be blond and skinny, don’t let them be cute and bitchy, don’t—please, God!—don’t let them be the sort of boarding school Sarc 3 girls like Beverly or Hillary or Erica, who can cut you open before you even know the knife has gone in—

Oh, please, God!

By now, three-thirty p.m., the sun was already low in the sky, and the rays came slanting through the trees here on Ladding Walk, breaking everything—the old buildings, the antique lampposts, the cobblestones—into dancing flecks of shadow and flickers of light so bright they made Charlotte avert her eyes. She didn’t expect there to be many students on Ladding Walk on a Saturday afternoon, but the ones she saw were walking toward her, toward the bosom of the campus, which all knew by heart, sounding so carefree and happy, chattering away on their cell phones…as they, too, broke up into dappled dancing shadows and lights before her averted eyes. It struck her as…ominous. They were heading toward the bosom of Dupont. She was the only one heading away, toward the edge, destined for someplace shady—namely, the Saint Ray house. If Marsden Hall, the main classroom building on the Walk, weren’t in the way, she could see the house from here. It occurred to her that she had never seen it in daylight. The Saint Ray house had always been that dangerous, that tempting Devil’s nest of the night.

Beverly—Beverly, who knew about such things!—had warned her not to go off with Hoyt or any other Saint Ray to another city for a formal. But how could she pass up a chance at such eminence, a freshman invited to a formal all the way down in Washington, D.C., by a senior, the coolest guy in the coolest fraternity at Dupont? I am Charlotte Simmons! Besides, that was two weeks ago, when the formal wouldn’t be until “two Saturdays from now,” and two Saturdays was a long way off, wasn’t it? But this…is that Saturday. A frightening look at herself as if from above, in astral projection: nothing but a little girl, all alone, just recently come down from the mountains, clad in a red T-shirt, a pair of tight jeans, and an ugly, puffy khaki-colored synthetic-down-filled jacket from Robinson’s in Sparta, which made her look about seven when it was zipped up like this—a round, puffy bundled-up seven, carrying a canvas boat bag containing everything she was taking for the dinner and the dance in a fancy hotel. That was her luggage! A boat bag Bettina had lent her, which, she now realized, only made it worse! She could just imagine what Vance’s and Julian’s dates, whom she had never met or laid eyes on before, were going to think about a canvas boat bag, the warm and toasty little girl’s coat—

Oh dear God, don’t let them be blond and skinny!

Now she could see the Saint Ray house. It looked so much smaller…and shabbier…in daylight, more like just some old house, albeit with columns before the front door—not like the Devil’s nest, in any case. SUVs were parked out front—illegally—on the Walk itself. Guys were going back and forth from the SUVs to the house. Vance was in the front yard. He was making exaggerated gestures to someone on the porch and yelling something Charlotte couldn’t make out. Quite a show he was putting on. She was willing to bet anything it all had to do with a girl.

Charlotte hurriedly unzipped her puffy jacket and thrust it back until it was barely hanging on her shoulders. Godalmighty, this wind! But make sure she doesn’t look seven, make sure they all get an eyeful of her body. That was the main thing…

She wasn’t worried about Vance, Julian, and Hoyt. It was all…the dates. Julian was taking his regular frat-house girl, named Nicole, who had never been there when Charlotte was there. Vance was taking his regular girlfriend, whoever she was. Charlotte had never heard of her hanging around Saint Ray at all. She knew they would both be upperclassmen—and female upperclassmen, she kept being told, resented “fresh meat” in the first place.

Two girls stood next to each other on the porch. Surely, God—not those two! One was blond and the other almost blond, so light was her long brown hair—and both were skinny. The almost-blond one…Charlotte could have sworn she had seen her before. Where…she couldn’t imagine. Two other girls, one blond and the other dark-haired and skinny, were sitting down on the edge of the porch.

Vance was looking straight at the light-brown-haired one and barking, “Come on, Crissy, how about giving me a fucking hand? Where’d you put the thirty-rack? And what the hell’d you do with the handle?”

The girl cocked her hips in a mocking way and said airily, “That’s not my job, Vance. You’re the one who’s going to get sloshed the second we get there.” She turned to the blonde and, not lowering her voice in the slightest, said, “My boyfriend’s a fucking alcoholic, Nicole.”

With a cry that was half shriek and half laugh, the blonde, Nicole, poked her thumb into Crissy’s side—a big twitch and a Heyyy—and said in a merry coloratura, “Oh, you little hypocrite!”

Vance motioned toward an SUV, which turned out to be Hoyt’s Suburban, and said, “All right, then where’s the rest of your shit? Your shit’s your job, right? I don’t know if we have room for all this girl stuff. You think we’re going away for a week or something? Why’d you need a duffel bag?” Stern—and Vance wasn’t the stern type.

Charlotte began to get the picture. Vance was rolling out all the gruff stuff to show Julian, Boo-man, Heady, and the other guys just who wore the pants in this relationship. God help him if he indicated in some unguarded moment that he felt tenderly toward her.

Now Charlotte remembered where she had seen this Crissy before. She was the girl Vance had tried to bring into the bedroom that night at the Saint Ray party, prompting Hoyt to say, “This is our room.” She obviously had him whipped. And why not? She was merely perfect. Wide jaws, smooth jawline, model-girl face, big blue eyes, long good-as-blond brown hair, a suede jacket so soft it made you want to bury your head in it, a brown leather belt that matched it, a button-down shirt with the top four buttons undone, absolutely the right jeans, pointy-toed boots polished to a mellow glow, as opposed to a sharp shine, and a little bright brown leather bag that probably cost more than everything Charlotte had on put together. The blonde had the pointy boots, the jeans, the same little brown bag, and a tight T-shirt with bright yellow and light blue horizontal stripes that made her chest look bigger.

And here came Charlotte Simmons in her mousy outfit, half of it borrowed, a ratty red T-shirt—a pair of still not-quite-right jeans, and sneakers—sneakers!—no handbag at all, no garment bag, not even a duffel bag, but rather—a shapeless canvas boat bag.

Amid all this scurrying around the front yard, however, no one had even acknowledged her arrival. And why should they? Some droopy little freshman standing there in rags toting her miserable sack. Julian was busy trying to jam more “girl stuff” into the rear end of the Suburban. Vance was busy trying to stare down the good-as-blond Crissy, who stood on the porch with her hips cocked insolently and the rest of her body Cybex-machined, tread-milled, and de-carbohydrated to near perfection. Boo-man, Julian, and Heady had lowered their voices an octave in order to sound like manly rakes. They bantered, they bellowed, they ribbed one another with hawhawhawhaws. And Charlotte just stood there in social oblivion. Where was Hoyt? Should she start looking for him? But she couldn’t…too demeaning…too demeaning…

“Crissy!” the blonde, Nicole, was saying. “You are so bad! How can you say he’s an alcoholic? I mean, I wish I had a little video of you at the after-party last night. You don’t remember how you like…got down on all fours—”

“Hahhhhh!” Crissy soared into a trill of laughter, “Oh, puh-leeese! Give—me—a—break! Do you honestly think you could have like…aimed a camcorder? How many times did you go throw up?”

“Ohmygod,” said the blonde, rolling her eyes, “don’t even mention that ohmygod…that bathroom was so-o-o-o-o disgusting. Did you go in there? Eccccch. I woke up with such a hangover this morning. I’m not talking about a hangover, I’m talking about like a toxic hangover.”

“Tell me about it.”

“But I mean poisonous. I got up and I was walking like…what are those birds that have one leg shorter than the other?”

“The dodo bird?”

“I guess. Whatever. I could like hardly make it downstairs to the dining room. I stuck my head in the kitchen, and I said—”

While Charlotte stood there like an invisible waif, the two girls regaled each other with “hilarious” accounts of how each, unbeknownst to the other, had gone to the kitchen of their sorority house and implored the cook, Maude, evidently black, judging by the way they mimicked her accent—“Maude took one look at me…I didn’t even know I still had Vance’s sweater on…the fucking thing comes down to here…and my hair was all like…plastered down over my face…it stuck like fucking Velcro…and Maude, she’s like, ‘Lawd God in Heaven, Crissy, lookitchoo! Whatchoo girls be up to now!’”—how they implored her for “grease,” greasy omelets, greasy French toast, biscuits glopped with butter, which made Nicole feel like she had just swallowed a basketball afterward, but how the fuck else could you deal with a hangover except with grease?

“I need some grease right now,” said the blonde. “I need some serious grease. I mean, like french fries. You know the really nasty kind, like they have at the Sizzlin’ Skillet?”

Both laughed and laughed.

To Charlotte, this bit of repartee could scarcely have been more deflating. They had to make the Sizzlin’ Skillet the lowest and most disgusting of all cheap food…The two were upperclassmen, great pals, members of what was known as the hottest, most socially luminous sorority at Dupont—Delta Omicron Upsilon, or DOU, affectionately—even reverently—called the Douche—blessed with an aura of northeastern private schools, fair, straight hair, and sophistication. And they were such lovely little liars. Charlotte couldn’t imagine an ounce of grease going down the gullet of either one of those two perfect skinny bodies.

“Hey, babe! Put your stuff in the car?”

It was Hoyt! Coming out the front door of the Saint Ray house, beaming a big, hearty smile at her! Thank God! She felt saved from utter oblivion. He bounded down the steps toward her, as perfect in his frat-boy way as the two Douche girls were in their way. He had on a well-worn tan hunting jacket over a light blue shirt unbuttoned down the front to just above the sternum, the shirttails hanging out over a pair of chinos frayed at the bottom of the pant legs, and flip-flops.

“Put your stuff in the car?” he said again as he came closer, still smiling. Charlotte hung on to that smile for dear life. It was her validation. No matter what she looked like to them, she was under the aegis of the coolest of the cool, Hoyt Thorpe.

But she didn’t know how to answer him. She couldn’t just hold up the boat bag—

So she said, “Not yet.”

What a sad, weak not yet! She couldn’t get a word out with the careless ease, the perfectly at-home insouciance of the two girls standing near her on the porch.

“Well, we can’t keep dicking around or we’ll be late,” said Hoyt, pleasantly. “We got a band to make connections with, the hotel’s got waiters and shit lined up for us. I see Vance. Is everybody else here?” He turned that way and saw Julian. He turned this way and saw Vance’s date, Crissy, and the other one. “Djou meet Crissy and Nicole?”

Charlotte looked at the pair with a sinking heart. Crissy and Nicole. On top of everything else, they were both –ey girls. All the cool girls at Dupont, the ones who were with it, were –ey girls—Beverly, Courtney, Wheatley, Kingsley, Tinsley, Avery, and now Crissy. Of course, there was Nicole…and Erica…but thinking of Erica made her sink still farther—

She croaked out a miserable little “Hi”—just that, all the while realizing that her stricken, frightened face spoke volumes concerning her confidence, maturity, strength, social competence, bon vivance, charm, wit, knowledge of the ways of the world—volumes!

“And this is Charlotte,” said Hoyt, gesturing toward her.

Oh God, it was too much. The two –ey girls merely waved to her—no, not so much a wave as a half a wrist tick…and that dead smile…the same one Beverly’s chum Erica had given her…The lips widen and even turn up slightly at the corners, but the eyes die and the brow ages twenty bored years and the lights go out.

“Don’t anybody move,” said Hoyt. “I gotta get one more bag”—he motioned toward the house with his head—“and then we gotta get the fuck on the fucking road. Wait a minute”—now he was looking at Charlotte—“where is your bag?”

Charlotte stood there with her mouth half open and her face growing hot and crimson. But there was no way out. Timidly she lifted the canvas boat bag and mumbled—she couldn’t even make her voice work—“This is all I have.”

She didn’t dare look at the Douche sisters. She knew they would be cutting proto-sniggering glances at each other.

Hoyt held it up chest-high for a moment, as if weighing it, but, thank God, made no comment. Instead, he jogged the fifteen or twenty feet to the Suburban, tossed the canvas boat bag through the window and onto the backseat, wheeled about, yelled to Charlotte and the two Perfect girls, Crissy and Nicole, “Remember, nobody moves a muscle!” and jogged toward the house.

Charlotte was dying to move somewhere, anywhere. What was she to do? The two sorority girls were already brow to brow in whispery, giggly conversation. Was she to approach them and somehow wedge her way into their conversation—which was no doubt about her? Was she supposed to stand there like a homeless urchin and wait for them to deign to include her in proper cool Douche society—and have everybody in the yard look at her, this…this…this totally socially inept little urchin, this totally clueless little freshman who had no business even being among us?

So without a word—she knew very well she couldn’t even speak—she walked to the SUV and leaned back against the rear door and crossed her arms under her breasts and looked at her wristwatch every ten seconds or so to indicate that she was waiting for someone—which would be Hoyt, obviously, since she was attached to his car—and therefore was not out of place here…But how long could she keep this pose?

Sure enough, when they finally headed off, Hoyt was driving, Charlotte was in the bucket seat next to him, Vance and Crissy were in the second row, and Julian and Nicole were in the third, which meant the whole bunch of them, except for Hoyt, would be looking at the back of her head, whether they meant to or not, and therefore would be aware of her alien presence for the entire trip.

They were barely under way when they drove past the erupting fields of lightbulbs, the big long handle vibrating in shocking-pink neon outline, the gaudy name being written in script as if by an unseen hand: THE SIZZLIN’ SKILLET.

“Last chance for serious grease!” Crissy sang out to Nicole. Gales of laughter, as if there were nothing more low-rent than stopping for a bite at the Sizzlin’ Skillet.

Looking out the window at it was the last thing in the world Charlotte wanted to do at this particular moment. The last thing in the world she wanted to recall was that horrible hour, which seemed like twenty-four hours, in which the planets of Momma and Daddy, on the one hand, and the Amorys, on the other, collided…and this ride was going to be hours of it.

A voice behind her said, “Ohmygod…I don’t believe this…Charlene! Tell your friend his name is Hoyt, not Heeshawn!”

Charlene!

Charlotte turned away from the window. On Hoyt’s head was a…do-rag…just like the ones the black ghetto boys in Chester wore, a swath of black cloth wrapped around his head all the way down to his eyebrows and a flap of it hanging down the base of his neck. He swiveled his head as far as he could to the right, and he was grinning—not at her, however, but for the benefit of Crissy in the seat behind, she who had shrieked the mock shriek—

And called her Charlene!

Hoyt said, “Her name’s not Char leeeeeene…It’s Charlotte.”

Her.

He said it in a merry voice and seemed to sling the words out the corner of his mouth and back over his shoulder to make sure they reached their intended, Crissy. As he turned back in order to see the road, he gave Charlotte a split second’s worth of smile.

Charlene! Her! Hoyt’s her hurt almost as much as Charlene—

Crissy, from behind: “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m so bad with names—Vance! This I really don’t believe! Look, everybody, this is little Master Vance Phipps of the Phipps Phippses! My little Goldilocks.”

Charlotte looked back despite herself. Vance had on a black do-rag, too, exactly the same as Hoyt’s—and so did Julian. They were both grinning foolishly.

Nicole, from the third row: “Ohmygod, you guys—thank God you’re here, Crissy. Can’t we get a little fratty-er?”

Hoyt, eyes on the road, sang out merrily, “No prob, Nicole!”

Vance and Julian laughed.

Nicole said, “You think maybe we’ve got something on our little brain, Hoytsy?”

Crissy said, “I’d like to see you guys wear those things on campus. The AfrAm Solidarity—they gon’ lynch yo’ ass, motherfucker!”

Hoyt, Vance, Nicole, and Julian laughed.

Meanwhile, Charlene…Her…a sound like steam turning into fog filled her head. They all, Hoyt included, acted as if Charlotte Simmons didn’t exist.

After that, as the Suburban rolled down Interstate 95, Crissy and Nicole and Julian and Vance and Hoyt had a rare old gibefest, songfest, witfest, and what-the-fuck-

shit-asshole-motherfuckerfest for themselves, but not for Charlene Simmons. If one of them broke into song, all five of them always knew the words. At one point, one of the countless allusions to sexual perversion—perversion in Charlotte’s book, in any event—inspired Julian to break into song, a rap song that included the lines

Yo, you take my testi-culls,

Suck ’em like a popsi-cull.

The very same disgusting “lyrics” somebody down the hall had been playing on a stereo in the middle of the night when Beverly sexiled her! And all five of the frat and sorority girls knew the words. They couldn’t have sung along with Julian more lustily! The three guys, still sporting their black do-rags, rocked back and forth in their seats to the stupid beat, caroling away while their black neck flaps flopped this way and that. Crissy and Nicole were fairly wailing with delight, as if there was nothing more joyous in the world than the thought of sucking testicles. The highway was ten lanes wide at some points, and people in adjacent cars would look at the Suburban incredulously, trying to make some kind of sense out of the sight of three white boys wearing black do-rags and rocking their shoulders in an exaggerated fashion. The five brothers and sisters enjoyed the hooples’ bewilderment enormously.

They recalled hilarious moments of hilarious parties past. Halloween—that girl Candy, wearing a silver lamé thong bikini, underneath the strobe lights with a spiked leather collar around her neck and a heavy chain as a leash in the hands of that greasy Goth, all dressed in black, the one with the slimy black ponytail and hoop earrings and his two front teeth with gold caps, each inset with a little diamond or rhinestone or whatever the fuck they were. Gales, roars of laughter over that precious memory.

Crissy said, “You think she’s really into S and M?”

“I don’t think so,” said Nicole. “She just blows too many lines, is her problem.”

With that, Hoyt lifted his chin way up and slightly to the right, vaguely in his little seatmate’s direction, and cleared his throat in a loud manner. The car went quiet. Charlotte had the impression that he was telling Nicole and the rest of them not to get on that subject with his date sitting there, although just what the subject—“blows too many lines”—was, she hadn’t the faintest idea.

Hoyt leaned over, put his hand on her forearm, smiled charmingly, and said, “I wish you’d been there. Too much Halloween was that girl’s problem. What did you do for Halloween?”

A nervous jolt hit Charlotte’s solar plexus. She could literally feel it. She was obliged to…say something in this alien company gone suddenly silent.

With a hoarse croak: “I guess—I don’t remember.”

That was so weak and lame she couldn’t possibly leave it at that. She had to say something more. She began hyperventilating. “I guess—I don’t exactly hold with Halloween?” Ohmygod! She had blurted out an old mountain countryism, the “hold with.” Her face was on fire.

More silence. Then Crissy said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you, Charl-uuuuunh”—she quickly swallowed the second syllable because, obviously, she knew she had gotten it wrong the first time, or had chosen to get it wrong, but had already forgotten what it actually was…or had chosen, with Sarc 3 finesse, to forget what it was—“where are you from?”

Fury overwhelmed the nervousness of inferiority. I am Charlotte Simmons. Without turning her head, Charlotte sat rigidly, looking straight at the road ahead. Since it had worked once before, she snapped, “Sparta, North Carolina—Blue Ridge Mountains—population nine hundred—you’ve never heard of it—don’t feel bad—nobody has.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, she realized that this exhibition of peevishness and defensiveness had only made things worse. Hoyt began laughing in a vain attempt to turn it all into a little joke. Charlotte looked back at Crissy and forced a grin and a spastic laugh, as if it had been all in fun.

Crissy wasn’t sitting still for that. “I’m not worried at all. I certainly hope you aren’t.”

“Oh, no, Crissy. I was just kidding?”

Waves and waves of humiliation…Even her “Crissy” seemed to hang in the air like an impertinence. You?—presuming to be on a friendly basis with a Douche like Crissy?

She was aware of Hoyt looking at her out of the corner of his eye. A tremor of suppressed sniggers from both rows behind her. She began to feel it—the puncture wound at the base of her skull.

Hoyt said, “Remember that guy Lud Davis? They used to call him Lud the Stud? Played when I was a freshman. He was the only good white running back we’ve ever had, far as I know. He was from the Blue Ridge Mountains, too, someplace called Cumberland Gap. I don’t know why I remember that. Cumberland Gap.” He looked straight at Charlotte and in a voice stuffed full of intense interest, said, “Do you know Cumberland Gap?”

A subdued little voice: “No…I don’t think so…” She tried to think of some amiable way to expound upon the subject.

Silence.

“Well, he was a really cool guy,” said Hoyt. “He practically lived at the I.M.”

Oh, how encouraging. You could be from the mountains and still be cool…and how condescending.

“Then I’m sure you saw him a lot,” said Vance.

“No prob when you’re sobriety personified and you got maturity to burn.”

Julian said, “Well then, if I were you, I’d check the fucking gauge, because you sure burned up a lot of it Monday night.”

“Whattaya talking about, Monday night?”

“Over at that thing at Lapham, that reception. You were there, Crissy. It was eight fucking o’clock, and Hoyt’s so wrecked he’s asking the fucking master’s wife how many men she’s slept with in her life. She’s looking around like ‘Help! Somebody get this…thing off me!’ and Hoyt’s like, ‘Bottom line! Bottom line! How many!’”

Hoyt said, “I don’t know how you can sit back there and lie with a straight face.” He put his hand on Charlotte’s forearm again and said, “Don’t listen to him. What’s that story about the island where nobody tells the truth?”

“It’s not a story, Hoyto,” said Vance, “it’s some kind of math problem.”

“Bullshit,” Julian was already saying. “You must’ve yelled ‘Bottom line’ at that poor woman a hundred fucking times! Tell the truth, Big Dog.”

“Well…they do say she’s hot,” said Hoyt. “Guys at Lapham told me that. I doubt that old Wasserstein can get it up to her standards.”

The frat boys and the sorority girls broke up over that, and everything was back on course again. Nicole was saying, “I know for a fact that…” and she was off on a story about some other master’s wife.

Hoyt leaned over toward Charlotte again, and this time he grabbed her left hand as he bathed her in a smile of warm charm and said, “Wasserstein is the master of Lapham College. You know Lapham, the one with the gargoyles.”

“Oh, yes, I sure do!” said Charlotte with incredibly more joy in her voice than the topic could support. She added a merry little laugh, as if she sure had to admit it was amusing, bringing up those gargoyles. She began laughing at anything that seemed intended as funny—how-drunk-I-was stories, guy’s-such-a-loser stories, can-you-believe-what-a-slut-she-is stories, flaming-

queen stories, vulgarisms delivered with a burlesque Italian accent—“Uppa You Ess” (Julian).

She didn’t realize what a fool she was making of herself until Vance said that I.P. had a date for the formal and that she was very hot, believe it or not, a girl named Gloria.

“Holy shit!” said Julian. “Does that mean he’s cheating on his hand?”

That broke everybody up, Crissy and Nicole included. But when Charlotte, who hadn’t the faintest notion what I.P.’s “cheating on his hand” meant, joined in with her own wail of laughter—the others abruptly went silent. She turned about, and they were all casting significant glances at one another. Obviously, the “hilarious” phrase was some sort of inside joke. An outsider pretending to understand it was merely revealing how frantically, how fawningly, she wanted to be one of the gang.

It was all too shaming. By now all of them thought of her as a wretched little misfit. To make it worse, Hoyt felt like he had to lean over and pay attention to her periodically, to reassure her that she actually still existed in their Cool company, and then he’d rejoin the fun. So many idiotic stories…so much idiotic gossip…so much enthusiasm for such smutty humor and vulgar language…from rich girls who obviously spent hundreds of dollars on a jeans outfit, and rich boys, pampered boys, wearing black ghetto do-rags because the incongruity, the irony of it is so…smart and delicious—

—but how could she possibly quit! She had been so visibly proud of this “triumph”—being invited by a senior, an indisputably cool senior, to his fraternity formal. Mimi and Bettina had been impressed to a degree that was well beyond envy, because it was in a realm they couldn’t begin to qualify for. They could only wonder. And of course they had made her promise to tell them everything afterward…

The rest of the trip fell into a regular pattern. The frat boys and the sorority girls sang songs—all of them seemed to know all the words to everything—they shared gossip—the two bitches were superb at filleting people’s reputations while seeming to be merely adding little details—they turned whatever they could into sexual innuendo—they indulged their predilection for Shit Patois. Charlotte had been aware of Fuck Patois from the day she arrived at Dupont, but it was not until spending hour after hour after hour cooped up in this SUV that she realized how cool it apparently was to use shit in every way possible: to mean possessions (“Where’s your shit?”), lies or misleading explanations (“Are you shitting me?” “We need a shit detector”), drunk (“shit-faced”), trouble (“in deep shit”), ineptitude (“couldn’t play point guard for shit”), care about (“give a shit”), rude, thoughtless, disloyal (“really shitty thing to do”), not kidding (“no shit?”), obnoxiously unpleasant (“he’s a real shit”), mindless conversation (“talking shit,” “shooting the shit”), confusing story (“or some such shit”), drugs (“you bring the shit?”), to egest (“take a shit”), to fart in such a way that it becomes partly egestion (“shart”), a trivial matter (“a piece a shit”), unpleasantly surprised (“he about shit a brick”), ignorance (“he don’t know shit”), pompous man (“the big shit,” “that shitcake”), hopeless situation (“up Shit Creek”), disappointment (“oh, shit!”), startling (“holy shit!”), unacceptable, inedible (“shit on a shingle”), strategy (“oh, that shit again”), feces, literally (“shit”), slum (“some shithook neighborhood”), meaningless (“that don’t mean shit”), et cetera (“and massages and shit”), self-important (“he thinks he’s some shit”), predictably (“sure as shit”), very (“mean as shit”), verbal abuse (“gave me shit”), violence (“before the shit came down” or “hit the fan,” “don’t start no shit,” “won’t be no shit”). Still, they didn’t neglect Fuck Patois, and they talked some more about how many shots they had at the after-party after the party at the Deke House (Delta Kappa Epsilon), and they philosophized about how you shouldn’t party much past four a.m. because you risked getting the dread afternoon hangover. Hoyt was as absorbed in all this as the rest of them. He’d be looking straight ahead to keep his eyes on the road, but Charlotte could practically see his brain rotating 180 degrees so he could be in back with them. Periodically he would turn toward her and put his right hand on her left forearm and smile and look oh so deeply into her eyes, as if there were something…profound…going on between them. All of this took ten seconds at most. She tried to work it out in her mind that this was his way of saying that no matter whatever else might be claiming his attention, he was always thinking of her. Sometimes he would lean toward her and sing a line or two of a song in her ear, a song he and the other four were having such a merry time singing, which she obviously didn’t know. A couple of times he put his arm around her and leaned over so far that their heads touched, and a couple of times he placed his hand gently on the midpoint of her inner left thigh. Ordinarily she would have pushed it away, since Vance, Julian, and the two Douche girls might be able to see it, but Hoyt’s affection was the only thing that included her in the trip at all, any chance of social redemption for her Sparta rat-tat-tat at Crissy. That gaffe hung in the foul air of the Suburban like an odor. Hoyt’s attentions were like maintenance. He had to feed the pet periodically to keep it calm until they got to Washington.

She ransacked her brain for conversational gambits…and invariably wished she hadn’t tried. Vance happened to mention that it was no use trying to talk to the president of the Deke House unless you brought along your shit detector. So Charlotte piped up, “They actually have such a thing in neuroscience now. You attach—I think it’s about a dozen—electrodes to somebody’s scalp? And you start asking questions? And a certain part of the person’s brain lights up on this screen they have if they’re not telling the truth. It has nothing to do with emotions and nervousness and all that, the way an ordinary lie detector does. It’s called a PET reporter gene slash reporter probe—”

By the time she got that far, she could read the numb, torpid expression on everybody’s face, and her voice trailed off feebly: “I know that’s kind of a long name, PET…reporter…gene…” She tried to smile to indicate that she realized it all sounded kind of…nerdy…and that that was what made it funny…

Vance’s response to this conversational nugget was a single “Hmmmh,” whereupon he turned to Julian and said, “So yesterday I ask this big shitbird, I ask him—”

Once more Charlotte crashed and burned.

They came around a big bend…and there it was…the Potomac…and on the other side, Washington…The nation’s capital!—and she, Charlotte Simmons, from Alleghany County, North Carolina, was arriving as one of the hundred best high school students in the nation, a Presidential Scholar—to be honored, to meet the President, to have made public what she already knew inside: Charlotte Simmons, emerging from the hollows on the other side of the mountain, was destined for great things. The nation’s capital! She made Miss Pennington drive her around the circle past the Lincoln Memorial four, maybe five times so she could get a look at Daniel Chester French’s statue of Lincoln, which stirred her as he looked down from way up there in his majestic chair in a way that not all the photographs or films in the world could have prepared her for. And now she approached that same great city in a barren gray gloaming, with a frat boy named Hoyt Thorpe at the wheel and four sarcastic, foulmouthed strangers who had no interest whatsoever in her presence—in fact resented it and made fun of it—and what was it that stirred her now? At best, anxiety; at worst, dread.

Traffic on the bridge was heavy, and when they were about two hundred yards from the Lincoln Memorial, a galaxy of red taillights lit up in front of them, and traffic came to a dead halt. Charlotte felt an overwhelming urge to get out of the car—to just open the door without a word, get out, give them all a little wave good-bye, and disappear. She had—what?—thirty seconds? twenty seconds? before the traffic started moving again. But she had only twenty dollars. How could she possibly get back? Never mind that! There’s the Lincoln Memorial! You know that grand figure! It is wonder, ambition, honesty, purity of purpose made manifest in marble! Go! Literally sit at his feet! The rest will take care of itself! Yes…but how could she just come trooping back to Little Yard and announce that she had aborted her big triumph…

I am Charlotte Simmons, she who is willing to face risks…and take risks! For I am not like the others…

Too late. The traffic started moving again. The Vietnam Memorial—couldn’t see it from here; too dark out, in any case. The Washington Monument—a vague silhouette in the distance…not stirring…dim, dying, shaming…Did any of this mean any thing to anyone else in this car? They were on Connecticut Avenue, crossing Pennsylvania Avenue, meaning the White House was only a couple of hundred yards…that way. She had been there! She had shaken hands with the President of our nation! Charlotte Simmons! A Presidential Scholar! Miss Pennington, one of her inevitably all-wrong print dresses covering her stout form, honored as her mentor! All that—just seven months ago! What is tonight—

Now the lights of commerce on lower Connecticut Avenue were the firmament. They came to Dupont Circle—what grim irony…Dupont Circle—and took Massachusetts Avenue to the northwest—and Charlotte could see it in her mind’s eye—and there it was—the British embassy!—such a grand Georgian palace!—the Scholars had been given a special tour—the amazing breakfront with a palm motif from the palace at Brighton Beach—a world was opening up! The memory tempted her, but somehow she knew it would end up like the PET reporter gene/reporter probe, so she said nothing, and if anybody else knew that they were passing one of the great architectural gems of our nation’s capital—or even thought of this city as “our” anything other than the location of our hotel—they certainly contained their excitement successfully.

The hotel, called the Hyatt Ambassador, looked new. It was a tower with an absolutely sheer face, absolutely identical ribbons of anything-but-grand windows up above, and a spectacular parabolic arch of concrete serving as a porte cochere over the entrance.

As they drove up, Crissy startled Charlotte by saying in a loud voice, close to the puncture wound in the back of her head, “Charlunngh”—she completely vagued out the second syllable again—“please tell Heeshawn there to take that stupid thing off his head.” She looked at Vance. “You, too, Veeshawn. I wish you could like see how lame you look. Your little goldilocks creeping out from under that thing…”

Nicole, sitting next to Julian in the back row, said, “Right on, sister.” Then to Julian, “How about it, Jushawn?”

Hoyt turned around to look at Vance, and then all three boys looked at one another. Hoyt glanced out the window at the bellman…a young black guy, not big, but with the kind of sunken eyes and sunken cheeks that look…hotheaded…wearing a short-sleeved military tunic of tan and palm green, like a Caribbean colonel’s, pulling a tall baggage cart with a lot of shiny brass tubing. Hoyt did a little dismissive shrug and took his do-rag off, and Vance and Julian followed suit.

Then Hoyt, still looking back at the others, nodded toward the bellman and said, “Fuck him.”

The overt meaning was, “We don’t need to use this guy and give him a tip.” But Charlotte realized that the real meaning was “I didn’t remove my do-rag because I was intimidated by the presence of this mean-looking black kid”…although she bet anything he had…

Crissy and Nicole went inside, into the lobby, and Charlotte, not knowing what else to do, followed them while the boys, who had waved the bellman off, unpacked the car. Why didn’t they hurry up? Charlotte already felt awkward and incompetent and superfluous. Crissy and Nicole ignored her and fell into conversation about what they were going to wear to dinner.

Charlotte had a burning desire to be somewhere else, so she walked away from them and strolled across the lobby, as if to take an idle look around. Soon it became not so idle, this look-about. She had never seen such a lobby in her life. She walked perhaps forty feet—and the lobby had no more ceiling. Her eyes swept upward. The entire core of the building was a vast empty space, circular, bounded by rings of balconies and windows, reaching all the way to the top—she couldn’t even imagine how many stories high—where there was an enormous skylight dome. One level below the lobby, at the base of the enormous cylinder, was an enclosed interior courtyard. Charlotte could see its terra-cotta-colored tile floor between the foliage of tropical trees and shrubs—enormous trees and shrubs, considering the fact that they were planted in ceramic tubs. Somewhere down there…a piano, bass, and drums playing Latin music amplified to overcome the rushing sound of a waterfall and the pings and clatters of silverware and dishes. Now she could make out, beneath the trees, tables and walkways and little bridges and tiled stairs that led up to the lobby in leisurely, meandering segments, with big tiled landings where they turned.

She had never seen a building like this. She and Miss Pennington, like most of the scholars and their mentors, had stayed at a hotel on N Street called the Grosvenor, paid for by the government. They had shared a small room with twin beds, and Miss Pennington snored all night. All the same, it had been exciting. She had never spent a night in a hotel before. For breakfast they had waffles—she had never had waffles before, either, not with real maple syrup instead of artificially flavored Karo. But that was nothing…compared to this! She had an idea. Crissy and Nicole hadn’t seen what she had just discovered.

She hurried back to them. They were still talking away and didn’t notice her or didn’t care to notice her, whichever. She walked right up to Nicole, who seemed like a marginally easier nut than Crissy, and with a smile and bright, wide eyes said, “You have to come see this ho-tel! Right over there”—she pointed—“you look down on this courtyard, with trees and a water fall, and above it there’s this…space, this empty space, and it goes all the way up to the roof, but it’s all inside the building! Y’all oughta come see it!”

The blond Nicole broke off her conversation and gave Charlotte a patient look, bordering on annoyed. “You mean an atrium?”

“Oh,” said Charlotte, “I hadn’t thought a they-at. You mean like in one of those Roman houses? It’s sorta like they-at, but this one goes up—maybe like thirty stories? You oughta come see it!”

“I’ve seen about a dozen of them,” said Nicole, deadpan. “Every Hyatt has one.” Then she turned back to Crissy. “Well anyway, I figured the heels are too high, but like so what? Guys don’t know how to dance anyway, and by the time these guys reach the dance floor, they’ll be like so-oh-oh drunk…”

Charlotte was still staring at Nicole, her mouth slightly open. She felt as if she had just been kicked in the stomach. Her big architectural discovery—it had only revealed, if any further revelation was needed, what a clueless little hick she was. Nicole and Crissy were right in front of her in their perfect jeans, perfect shirts, perfect pointy-toed boots, perfect cocked hips, ignoring her corporeal existence with perfect efficiency.

Hoyt, Vance, and Julian, loaded down with luggage, were walking toward them. Thank God for that. She wouldn’t be left standing here, the lone wayfarer.

Hoyt said cheerily, “Okay, gang, we got the keys. So let’s go on up.” Then he looked at Charlotte. “And oh, hey, babe”—he swung his left side toward her…swung it because he must have had three bags under his left arm—“could you take yours? I feel like my fucking finger’s coming off.”

And there it was, her canvas boat bag, hanging off the crooked little finger of his left hand. She took it. She was too embarrassed to say a word.

“Thanks,” said Hoyt. And then he addressed Crissy and Nicole and laughed. “I thought my fucking finger was coming off!”

And there she was, standing in the lobby of this…this…palace of a hotel—in sneakers, jeans, T-shirt, and cheap, puffy polyurethane-chip-filled jacket that made her look like a tiny walking hand grenade, the complete urchin from the hills, lost in the midst of all this luxury, carrying her belongings in her sole piece of luggage, a little boat bag. In a small, defeated voice she said to Hoyt, “Did you get my key, too?”

“Your key?” He looked nonplussed. Then: “Oh, sure. We got everybody’s keys. Let’s go.”

Crissy looked at Charlotte and gave her the dead smile. Then she said to Nicole, “She’s smart. I don’t know why I brought so much like…stuff.”

Not “Charlotte’s” or even “Charlunnh’s,” but “She’s.”

Charlotte was still sifting all that for Sarc 3—and finding none, although she felt certain it must be there—when Nicole said to her, “What are you wearing tonight?”

Automatically wary, Charlotte didn’t know what to say. Somehow it would come out that she borrowed the dress from Mimi. She didn’t even want to show it to her, either, rolled up—balled up was more like it—in the bottom of her bag. She finally said, “Just a dress and some shoes.”

“A dress and some shoes…” said Nicole. She nodded several times in a ruminating fashion. Then she turned to Crissy and said, “That’s not a bad idea.”

Both sorority girls began nodding, with eyes downcast and serious expressions, as if ruminating upon a remarkable profundity. Charlotte felt devastated. She knew this was classic Sarc 3.

Then Crissy said, “I hope you don’t mind my asking…but what kind of dress?”

What did she care! Obviously she didn’t. She was only interested in more material to nod at Nicole with in mock sagacity. But it didn’t matter. Charlotte had no more fight left. She felt defeated and sad—sad about her own amateurishness, her shortcomings as…a girl. In that respect she had gotten absolutely nowhere since Alleghany High. Self-disappointment, self-pity, abject capitulation to a stronger foe, and that pathetic form of inverse aggression that goes along the lines of Now don’t you feel guilty for what you have reduced me to?—some of which she was quite conscious of—commandeered Charlotte Simmons—she who had been sent forth to do great things—not only to give herself up to an ignorant Lost Province but, with conscious inverse aggression, to exaggerate it: “What kind of dress?” Dreh—ess? “I don’t know what kind.” Kiii—und. “A dress, is all.” The self-abasement gave her what she wanted: a perverse thrill. Was the word masochism? She didn’t know. Up to now that had just been a concept she had picked up when Miss Pennington was telling her about what psychologists were saying way back in the early twentieth century—Freud, Adler, Krafft-Ebing, and all that.

Being on the elevator with Hoyt, who was joking about all the bags he had under both arms, lifted her spirits a bit. Her room turned out to be taken up mainly by two queen-size beds. The beds, plus two side tables, a low wooden bureau, a little commercial reproduction Louis writing table with two chairs, and a big freestanding wooden armoire—housing a gigantic television set—left very little space to walk. Hoyt came in behind her and dumped the luggage on a bed with a big sigh.

“This isn’t too bad,” he said.

“Where’s your room?” said Charlotte.

Blithely: “I’ll be in here, too.”

“But I thought—”

“Hey, we were lucky to get any room at all, Charlotte.”

He couldn’t—it couldn’t be that way—but on the other hand, he had called her by her actual name for the first time on the entire trip.

“Julian and Nicole are rooming with us,” Hoyt said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

A start of panic—but then she realized that it would be better that way. It would be sort of like an encampment. Certainly nothing funny would go on with everybody in the same room. Sort of like an encampment…she kept hanging on to this word encampment, with its overtones of a campfire and a good, tuckered-out sleep in a sleeping bag made from rubber ponchos and blankets.

Soon Julian and Nicole arrived, and Julian dumped his armful of bags on the other bed. Same sort of sigh. “That’s a shitload a luggage. Girl stuff,” he added, smiling at Nicole.

“Where are Vance and Crissy?” said Nicole.

“A couple of doors down the hall,” Hoyt said. Hoyt and Julian and Nicole started chatting, but Charlotte was busy checking out the room. She tried to figure out where the hotel could put the cots. The room was so crowded with stuff already.

“Ohmygod, it’s five-thirty,” said Nicole.

That was another thing, now that Nicole had raised the subject. Dinner was at six-thirty. Where were they all going to change? How were they going to take showers? Four people in a small space, boys and girls, changing clothes, taking showers, fixing their hair—making sure they looked right—

Charlotte sat down on the edge of the bed where Hoyt had dumped all that luggage and crooked her forefinger around her chin and pondered the situation.

“Then I say we better get started,” said Julian. “Hey, Nicole, hand me that handle. It’s in my red-and-black bag, the tennis bag.”

“You get it Julian,” said Nicole. “Those things are heavy.”

Julian sighed.

Hoyt said, “I’ll get it.” He reached inside the bag and withdrew a huge plastic bottle, more like a jug really, with a big plastic handle. It was so heavy you could see Hoyt’s forearm trembling as he handed it to Julian. A yellow label on it said ARISTOCRAT VODKA.

Then Hoyt delved into one of his bags and produced a bottle of orange juice and a stack of eight-ounce paper cups, and Julian arranged them on top of the low-slung bureau—setting up a bar, Charlotte deduced. She immediately went on alert. Five-thirty in the afternoon!

Julian set about removing the plastic seal around the mouth of the big jug of vodka, and Hoyt went to work removing the one on the bottle of orange juice. They were so intense about it, as if they couldn’t wait another second to get at their alcohol. Charlotte tried to work it out in her mind that this was an adventure. She could hear Laurie’s voice on the telephone: “College is the only time in your life when you can really experiment—and when you leave, everybody’s memory evaporates.” That didn’t make her feel a whole lot better, however.

As Charlotte sat on the bed, Julian’s back was to her, but she could hear a voluble, voluminous plummet plummet plummet sound as Julian poured the first ration of vodka out of the great brimming jug into a paper cup. Then he added some orange juice, although it couldn’t have been much, because all that plummeting must have meant a lot of vodka.

He handed the cup to Nicole, sitting on the other bed, who immediately tilted it back, then rocked forward, her eyes squinted and tears forming, and let out a demonstrative half moan, half sigh: “Shit, Julian, you think you like put enough vodka in it?”

“You can handle it.”

Nicole hurried to prove him right, knocking back another gulp and then rocking forward and smiling and lifting her eyebrows way up and opening her eyes wide in a look to convey the notion that it was a little strong but hit the spot.

Julian set about pouring two more cups practically full of vodka.

Hoyt sat on the bed beside Charlotte and began stroking her back. Part of her wished he wouldn’t, not in front of these two people she barely knew, but at least it included her. Nothing else did.

Meantime, Nicole had drunk another gulp and picked up the telephone between the two beds. By the chummy, confidential way she spoke, Charlotte could tell she had called Crissy in her room.

“Oh, we’re just, you know, pre-gaming.” She cupped her hand over her mouth and lowered her voice, but Charlotte was so close she could still hear what she said: “Where’s what?…Ah. You mean the tumor?” She laughed at something Crissy said. “I’ll give you three guesses, and the last two are not eligible for this competition…” She laughed again. “Right…right here, if you know what I mean.”

Charlotte knew what she meant. They were talking about her. She was a tumor, a sick condition that just wouldn’t go away.

By now Hoyt had advanced from stroking her back to rubbing her shoulder with a circular motion. That was even more embarrassing; but as long as Hoyt wanted her—Hoyt, the best-looking, coolest guy in the entire fraternity—whatever the likes of Nicole and Crissy thought of her was nullified, she figured.

“What do you want?” he asked her. “Hey, relax.”

Only then did she realize how stiffly rigid her whole body was as she sat there. “Want?” she said.

“To drink.”

“Oh, nothing, thanks. Maybe some orange juice.”

“Orange juice—come on now, want me to put a little vodka in there for you?”

“No, it’s really okay,” she said.

He started rubbing her shoulder again, rubbing harder yet with tender concern, and that started to feel good, and not only good but important, important for Nicole and Julian to notice. His hands were big…and relaxing…and nice to have on her body. Her shoulder started feeling warmer, and she couldn’t resist looking up at him. She loved the way he was looking down at her. The tenderness and warmth of his smile—and he was so handsome! The cleft in his chin, those flashing hazel eyes that were totally absorbed in her—he was asking of her something she would not be comfortable doing, but she didn’t want him to stop looking at her with that impish expression, that mysteriously lascivious yet loving mien…The look on his face was her inviolable protection against the smirks, the Sarc 3 glances, and the mock ruminations of Nicole and Crissy.

“Well, just a little,” she said finally.

Hoyt reached over and took the jug of vodka off the bureau, and as if he, like Julian, couldn’t control the flow, he practically filled a cup with it and added a splash of orange juice.

“Not a little orange juice—I meant a little vodka!” She added a laugh so they would think she really was entering into the spirit of things…and was not sitting stiffly and anxiously on the edge of the bed.

No way could she keep that laugh from sounding nervous, however. They were all watching to see what she would do with the drink. She was holding it like an as-yet-undetonated explosive. She forced herself to put it to her lips. She swallowed and made a face. Julian and Hoyt laughed, but in a way that said this was all good fun. It tasted terrible. It went down sour and burning and hit bottom, whereupon a sickly sweet aftertaste bloomed. But she could see Nicole already polishing off the rest of her cup and apparently passing it back to Julian for more. It became terribly important that Nicole not seem cooler than she was, more fun, more grown up, on a different planet when it came to sophistication. She took another sip. It didn’t taste any better, but this time she didn’t make a face.

Instead, she looked up at Hoyt again and said, “Actually, it’s not that bad!” and added a smile in hopes he’d think she meant it.

Maybe if she could just finish it, she really would feel better. After all, alcohol was supposed to relax you. In any case, maybe tonight she wouldn’t feel so much like she was on the outside looking in. Maybe she would stop feeling like the little freshman misfit from the sticks sitting down there at dinner tonight…the bump on a log…at a big table full of older, livelier, cooler, perfectly blond boarding school girls who belonged to the best sororities. Why should she let herself be reduced to what Nicole and Crissy thought she was? After all—I am Charlotte Simmons!…and things were not so bad, were they…She was still a freshman so attractive that the hottest guy in Saint Ray, the hottest guy in any fraternity maybe, had asked her to his formal…

The hottest guy was now massaging the back of her neck, and it made her feel secure…inoculated against the others…and each time she looked up at him, he was still looking down at her with a wonderful smile that changed from tender to mischievous and back to tender before she knew it, and she drank some more…How bad could it all be? And it wasn’t just Hoyt…Look at Julian…Look at Nicole…Julian was a very good-looking guy, too, and if she could look objectively at Nicole for a moment, she was a gorgeous blonde. Charlotte took another swallow of vodka and then another. And you had to say the same thing about Crissy, if you were objective…and about Charlotte Simmons, unless she was way off the mark about the face in the mirror…If other people could look on…they’d say Charlotte Simmons was part of the most glamorous crowd at Dupont…and the coolest guy at Dupont was shining his face down at her as if she was what he wanted close to him more than anything else on earth…She took another swallow…The thing about drinking was, it wasn’t really about the taste. It wasn’t the way the vodka went down, it was the way it hit bottom and then bounced up in…a bloom…that left like your whole torso abloom with a warmth that really did make you feel more relaxed. Once you knew you were drinking not a drink but a feeling, it stopped tasting so awful…

When she passed her cup back to Julian for another, nobody took notice of it. Nobody did any mock cheering, no attagirls or that’s-more-like-its. That was a good sign. It meant she looked more relaxed. The fact was, she really felt more relaxed.

She realized that she had just consumed more alcohol in these past few minutes than she had ever consumed in her entire life, even counting the beers she had nursed along at the Saint Ray house. And the effect? It wasn’t at all what she was afraid it would be. She felt less frightened by the situation…but otherwise she was completely herself. As long as Hoyt was nearby, she really had nothing to worry about. In fact, once she got going on the second drink, everybody, even Nicole, seemed to accept her as a valid part of the “pre-gaming,” to use Nicole’s word, which no doubt came from tailgating.

By and by Nicole picked up her garment bag and a bunch of things and disappeared into the bathroom to get dressed for dinner. And she stayed in there and stayed in there.

To Charlotte’s astonishment, Julian and Hoyt began taking off their pants.

“Don’t mind us,” said Julian with a cheery smile. “We try not to be too formal at these formals. Right, Hoyt?”

“We’re just getting changed,” said Hoyt. He shrugged in the general direction of the bathroom, indicating that they didn’t have much choice.

Before she knew it, both boys had taken off their shirts, too, and were just standing around in front of the bureau in their plaid boxer shorts and T-shirts. Charlotte’s eyes must have been the size of plates, because Julian cocked his head at her in a mock-serious way and said, “Or I think that’s all we’re doing…Whatta you think, Hoyto?” He smiled in a mock-lascivious way.

—or was it merely mock? But she wasn’t alarmed the way she would have been ordinarily. She merely felt that something bizarre was going on and she was watching attentively to find out what it was.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Hoyt, looking at her in such a way that she would realize he was only kidding. “Seems to me the ball’s in Charlotte’s court now.”

“Wanna try for a threesome?” said Julian. The question ended in a scream of a laugh. His two big belts of vodka were kicking in.

“You’re such a fag, Julian,” said Hoyt. “Two guys and one girl isn’t what they mean by ménage à trois!”

Charlotte felt bold enough to attempt a witticism. “It means housework for three?” she said.

“What’s housework for three?” said Julian.

“Ménage means housework in French,” said Charlotte.

“Housework?” said Julian. “Whattaya talking about, Charlotte?”

The witticism lay there, dying.

On the other hand, Julian, after being in her company for the last four or five hours, had finally addressed her by name.

“Housework…” said Hoyt, seeking to rescue the moment. “That’s actually pretty funny. If you weren’t such an animal, Julian, I’d try to e-lu-ci-date you.”

“Elucidate. Who’s a fag now?” Julian said to Charlotte, “Me, I’ve got something for you.” He began lifting his eyebrows up and down, acting clownishly suggestive. He had speedily reached the level of…drunk.

He broke into a hip-hop dance, jerking his hips and shoulders this way and that, all the while looking deep into Charlotte’s eyes…and she knew he meant some of it. She began to feel sexy in her own skin.

He was still dancing for Charlotte’s benefit when Nicole finally emerged from the bathroom. Charlotte noticed her, but Julian’s back was to the bathroom. Nicole’s face was perfectly made up, perhaps a little too made up, and she wore a knee-length black tube dress and black stiletto-heeled shoes. Charlotte’s entire conception of the world at that moment narrowed down to a single question: how would she compare with the worldly blond Nicole. Thank God! The suede jacket Nicole had been wearing masked a rather straight torso, a boy’s torso, one Charlotte knew she could outdo. All that Charlotte’s brain calculated in an instant. In the next instant, Nicole’s perfect face fell. There was her date, Julian, dancing around in his underwear for the benefit of somebody else’s—Hoyt’s—date.

Hoyt, who happened to be facing her, said, “Hel-lo, Nicole. You look hot!”

Julian stopped in his tracks.

“Please don’t distract him,” said Nicole. “I’ve never seen Ju folk dance in his underwear before.”

Julian spun about, lifted his palms up in a gesture of helplessness, and said, “We were just waiting for you to finish in there.”

This was not the Cool Julian of the Saint Ray house. No, it was the standard man caught with his pants down.

Charlotte found this deeply satisfying. The guilty response told her that Julian had been more than kidding around. On the other hand, she had a sudden desire not to be in the room for whatever happened next. So she stood up, picked up her canvas boat bag, and headed straight for the bathroom.

As she approached Nicole, she said, “You’re through in there?”

Nicole looked past her, as if she weren’t even there.

The bathroom was a cramped space done in sad pale tones of—what?—stale cheese. The bathtub and the toilet were the color of stale mozzarella. The shower curtain looked like rubbery stale mozzarella. The counter where the basin was ran the width of the wide plate-glass mirror. That counter was a thick piece of plastic with fake bluish veins in it. It was supposed to look like marble. Instead, it looked like Roquefort—and then the cheese conceit began to make her bilious, so she abandoned it.

She slipped off her jeans and T-shirt and stood before the mirror appraising herself…in a bra and panties…A young face white as snow stared back.

Time was going by! Hurriedly she took the mascara, the eyeliner, the eye shadow, the brush, and the lip gloss, which Bettina had given her, out of the bag—but she couldn’t make her hands apply the makeup. Momma’s condemnation of painted women had sunk in far, far too early. She settled for a little bit of clear lip gloss. But then she saw the mascara…A little wouldn’t hurt. So she put on a little…Not bad!

She slipped Mimi’s red dress on over her head and stepped into Mimi’s meretricious stiletto-heeled shoes. Wow! She seemed to rise up a foot higher in the mirror. “You’ve got to be kidding!” she said to the snow-white face, which smiled at her mischievously. She got a good look at the tops of Charlotte Simmons’s thighs now, because—ohmygod look at that!—the red dress hung barely four inches below her underwear line. It was a lot shorter than she remembered from when Mimi showed it to her! Hoisted way up on the high heels like this, the girl in the mirror looked like an ice-skater. She swirled left and right, dancing with Charlotte Simmons. Every time Charlotte Simmons swished her dress, she, on this side of the mirror, caught a flash of her panties and a bit of the taut, upward curve of her taut, perfectly curved bottom. Ordinarily, if Charlotte Simmons looked like this, it would scandalize her and make her shrivel at the thought of what people would think. But tonight she was giving Charlotte a pass. The girl had been through enough today, constantly worrying about what others were thinking. “Who cares what other people think?” the Charlotte Simmons in the mirror said out loud.

When she left the bathroom, she felt like a model on a runway, although she didn’t do anything foolish like trying to walk the way the models did. Sure enough, Hoyt and Julian looked stunned. They looked like they wanted to eat her up in one bite. They didn’t dare say anything, however, because of Nicole.

Nicole was getting an eyeful, too. Creases formed in her forehead. But she put on a cheery, friendly voice when she said, “Well, that’s awfully short! How are you going to sit down, Charlotte?”

Good sign! Now Nicole, too, had felt compelled to call her by her name!

“Oh, I’ll be fine,” said Charlotte.

She felt slightly bare—but also slightly careless, insouciant, as the French said. No, the word was not insouciant. The word was sexy. Not even when she wore her little white shorts and sandals, showing her legs from all the way up here to the tips of her toes, did she feel this sexy.

Hoyt became so attentive it was almost embarrassing. Anywhere she sat, he sat next to her, rubbing her shoulder, her back, her leg—just the outer flank, which didn’t seem so awful, since she had so much leg showing in the first place—stroking her cheek, stroking her hair where it cascaded down the back of her head and neck—

Nicole was not very talkative. For one thing, every now and then Julian, who was getting good and drunk, would direct his frat-boy one-liners to Charlotte instead of her. With Hoyt, there was no contest. He was rapt. Funny how rapidly things could turn around…and the last shall be first.

Finally the four of them went downstairs to dinner.