I Am Charlotte Simmons

24. To…Us!

The party was in a section of the vast interior court that could be reserved for such affairs. Charlotte and Hoyt walked hand in hand down one of the country-tiled stairways that meandered lazily from landing to landing, down through a forest of trees in tubs. Mimi’s high heels were not made for walking downstairs. Charlotte had never even had a pair on before. Each step caused an ultra-contraction of the calf muscle…and yet there was something sexy about that, too. Up on their floor, before they descended, she had sneaked a look at her legs in the full-length mirror by the elevators. Propped way up as they were on a pair of heels as high as…as…as high as her feet were long, practically, and revealed as they were by a red hemline that barely cleared her hip sockets, those were a pair of…legs she had. She couldn’t help wondering what the view looked like to men, if any, coming down the stairs behind them.

Through the leaves of all the trees she could see a dusk lit up ever so romantically by candles on regular regatta tables with white tablecloths. Had she been told that the dusk was created by a maintenance man turning rheostat dials in a bank of light switches, it would not have diminished her awe. In this lush, romantic setting, she was meandering down a picturesque terra-cotta stairway hand in hand with the coolest guy in all of Dupont—who caressed her hand now and again with light squeezes. She couldn’t help but wonder who was looking—and she hoped that Crissy was one of them, although she no longer nursed a resentment against her. After all, even Crissy was a part of this, this magic moment.

The section of the court Saint Ray had booked was walled off by shrubs planted in the inevitable tubs and trimmed so that they looked like seven- or eight-foot-high privet hedges. At the entryway to the section, white stanchions had been embedded in the hedge tubs, and they reached a good fifteen feet above the floor. From one hung the mauve-and-gold flag of the university, with the famous coat of arms featuring a stylized cougar rampant. The cougar was mostly lost in the folds, thanks to the dead, still air of the atrium, but there was something grand about it all the same. Dupont! From the other stanchion hung the flag of the Saint Raymond fraternity, consisting of the Raymundus Vox Christi cross of royal purple and scarlet—against a field of deepest aubergine, embroidered with small corn-yellow stars. As every Saint Ray was told at the time of initiation—and forgot within a week—the scarlet represented the blood of Christ and the martyred Saint Raymond. The royal purple represented the martyred saint’s special place in the kingdom of Christ the King. The bent ring was a symbol of the loop of iron driven through Raymond’s lips to silence the evangelical voice with which he had begun to convert his Roman captors themselves to Christianity. At the moment, all that was lost in folds, too, but no one could help but be drawn to the brilliant swaths of scarlet against the royal purple and the deepest aubergine.

So gaudily rich were these two flagpole tapestries that the entryway between the hotel’s hedges in tubs came close to being a grand entrance—at least close enough for a group of Dupont men and their dates, who already felt swell about themselves. As Charlotte and Hoyt, still holding hands, made their entrance, a hundred, a thousand, pairs of eyes seemed to turn toward them. The place was packed with Saint Rays and their dates, and obviously most had done their share of pre-gaming. The usual rumble of party conversation was already shot through with cackles and hoots. Somebody deep in the pack cried out in a voice that strove to be deep and manly, “You can’t get any tonight, you might as well tie it in a fucking knot!”

Charlotte barely even noticed the Fuck Patois any longer. What riveted her were all the faces turning toward Charlotte Simmons and her date of all dates, the cool and handsome Hoyt Thorpe. There was Harrison the lacrosse player and there were Boo-man and Heady and—yes! Vance and Crissy—Crissy in a very low cut black dress, looking dumbfounded, eyes fixed on Charlotte Simmons of the lissome legs exalted upon four-inch-stiletto-heeled red satin pumps with toe cleavage—Charlotte Simmons of the waist so tiny, her upper torso rose up in a V, making the cleavage of her bosom look more formidable than it really was.

Harrison came toward them, beaming, eyes lit up with alcohol, lit up so brightly the scars on the side of his face from the brawl didn’t look sad at all, looking not bad in his rented tuxedo with his big neck swelling up out of a too-small winged collar, no doubt also rented, singing out to Hoyt, “Yo! Dawg!” He began running his eyes up and down Charlotte. “Where you been keeping our Charlotte?”

It was the first time he had ever called her by name, too!

“Away from you fucking predators, is where, if you really wanna know,” said Hoyt.

“Well, well…” said Harrison, still giving Charlotte the once-over. “Welcome to the feast of Saint Raymond. What can I get you to drink? Wait a minute, I don’t remember—you don’t drink or something like that?”

“Tonight Charlotte’s breaking training,” said Hoyt. “Just this one night. In honor of Saint Raymond.”

“Awesome,” said Harrison. “What’ll you have?”

Charlotte hesitated. She knew her head had what they were always calling a buzz, but it was only that—a buzz. It didn’t change anything, except that it seemed to make everybody else more comfortable.

“An orange juice with vodka?”

“Okay, one orange juice with vodka.” Harrison beamed again and started to turn away.

“Hey, tiger,” said Hoyt, “what about me?”

“I’m here to take care of the ladies, Dawwwg,” said Harrison with a hyped-up attitude and smile.

“How about a little fucking show of gratitude?” said Hoyt. “Who was it that brought”—he gestured toward Charlotte—“to this event?”

“Ahhhhh,” said Harrison. “In that case, whattaya fucking want?”

“Same as Charlotte. With vodka. You know with vodka?”

Charlotte began reflecting, giddy with triumph, upon what had just taken place. Sure, she knew she couldn’t take at face value the two of them going on about how pretty she was and how smart she was and all that…but…they were attentive! They were really attentive! And on the way down, the whole carload couldn’t have ignored her more completely. Hoyt had paid some attention, but he did it as if he were feeding quarters to a parking meter. But now—it wasn’t just the flattery either…There was no mistaking the looks that not just Harrison but also Boo-man and Heady and Vance and their—

Vance and Crissy! Had to talk to Hoyt and Harrison or laugh or do something to show Crissy what a great time she was having with them. Well—she’d laugh, that’s what she’d do, but she put so much energy into it, she actually crowed out a sharp yawp. Hoyt and Harrison looked at her.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, maintaining a smile. “I just thought of something.”

Hoyt shook his head and said, “Uhh…riggghhht…thought of what?”

Charlotte laughed again and pushed off of his shoulder with her fingertips as if he were ribbing her in the most hilarious way imaginable. In her mind’s eye Crissy was standing there drinking it all in and saying to herself, “Wow! And I thought she was just some hopeless little thing from the sticks—but now these two cool guys—”

Pretty soon Harrison returned with two orange juices with vodka—or vodka with barely enough orange juice to discolor it, as it turned out once more. Practically straight vodka like this was awful. It tasted like some chemical, but it wouldn’t hurt anything, and it certainly did help her bond with everybody.

Standing here in the court of a soaring atrium amid trees in tubs and little candle glows in a rheostated dusk in a private section attended by waiters dressed like Caribbean army colonels behind walls of hedgerows in tubs was so-oh-oh cool. Saint Rays were all around her, unformed Prometheuses, self-wrestled into tuxedos, all ululating and doing red yodels of unbound vulgarity, but Prometheus was not vulgar—so they’re not Prometheuses but…Bacchuses…a photograph in—what book?—Michelangelo’s Bacchus, the lower belly swollen with wine…she felt dizzy, all right, but it wasn’t affecting her mind at all. How else could she have thought of…of…whatever it was…

Hoyt was no more than a foot away from her, talking to Vance, and Crissy was behind them. Charlotte laughed out loud. Crissy was tête à tête with Nicole, and they were both stealing glances at her—Nicole in her tube dress, Crissy revealing as much breast as she dared. Charlotte had nothing against these girls any longer—but what were they and their looks? Harrison wasn’t looking at them the way he had looked at her. He had looked her up and down! He had always sort of given her the eye, hadn’t he, but…tonight!

Hoyt turned, and ohmygod, the smile he gave her was like a warm current flowing over every nerve in her body that was beneath the epidermis—

“Your glass?” One of the Caribbean army colonels was right there, pointing toward the empty glass in her hand.

“Oh—thank you!”

As he put the glass on the tray, he said, “You like an other?” Oh-therr. It was funny the way he broke another in two and pronounced other “other” with a long o and such a vocal r at the end.

“Uh…”

“Yes, she does.” Hoyt, putting his big hand on her waist and drawing her close to him.

“What you like?” the waiter asked Charlotte.

Charlotte looked at Hoyt, whose face was now close to hers—ohmygod, the magical, melting look he was giving her! Hoyt turned back to the waiter and said, “With…vodka.”

Charlotte had to laugh at that. “You and your with…vodka.”

Hoyt squeezed her close to him again, and she laughed some more. She wanted to make sure that Crissy and Nicole saw what a wonderful time she was having, saw her mesmerizing guys with her looks and, now that she felt more confident, her personality. In a short time she had woven herself into the very fabric of the formal.

Charlotte roamed the party slyly with her eyes. Julian certainly wasn’t anywhere near Nicole. There he was…way over there…completely out of sight of Nicole—hitting on that girl as hard as he could! That girl’s hair was dark, and it came only down to her shoulders, but it was very full, and her mouth was too wide, but her lips were sooooo sexy, and her smile and the way she squinted her narrowed eyes within the brushed, dark debauchery of her eye sockets was sooooo suggestive, and Julian was leaning over her, his face not a foot away from hers, with his smoooooth smile on his face, just pouring himself into her straight through her optic chiasmas. She had on just a slip of a black dress that plunged in front, and any moment Charlotte expected Julian to put one hand on the small of her back and draw her close and kiss her, ravish her the way that guy does in the ad for—she couldn’t remember what the ad was for. For an instant she wished Nicole would go over there and stumble upon that scene—but in the next instant she didn’t want any such thing to happen. It was mortifying to think how much a girl could be hurt, even Nicole—

—whereas Crissy, who had behaved much worse toward her than Nicole—Crissy had Vance whipped. Whipped. Vance was so handsome, too. She had loved his shock of tousled blond hair from the first moment she had seen it. Vance looked like a young British aristocrat, insofar as she had any idea what such a person looked like. And Crissy didn’t let him out of her sight. She was right behind him.

The waiter, the little Caribbean army colonel, was at her shoulder again with her drink. She tasted it. It was awful!—so awful it made her laugh.

“Hoyt!” Her eyes were tearing, but she was laughing and holding the drink up before him. “What did you tell that man? This is sooooo strong! I don’t think this drink like…like ever knew an orange from…like…an orangutan!”

She found that a very funny remark—then realized she was shrieking, her words laced with laughter in a way that had seemed like so…overdoing it when other girls did it. But it probably didn’t matter, because it was so noisy here.

The conversation was roaring, and the boys were bawling out drunken cries. Charlotte looked up at Hoyt—who still had his arm around her waist—to get his reaction, but he didn’t seem to notice. He just kept beaming down at her in such a loving way. She beamed up at him. She did let her eyes dart past his right ear just once. She wanted to see Crissy and Nicole watching the two of them. Barely six feet away, Heady, in his solemn tuxedo, threw his head back, thrust his arms to the heavens as if supplicating God’s mercy, and cried out, “Oh, yessss! Woohoooooo!”—which Charlotte realized was the cry of a television animated cartoon character, Homer Simpson, when he opened a can of beer, tilted his head back, and took his first gulp. Only then did she notice the can of beer Heady held in one of his heavenward hands. Hoyt poured his…his…Dared she even let the word “love” into her mind as Hoyt looked at her that way? But the two Douche sisters were talking to Boo-man and his date and laughing…as if they were having a wonderful time.

Now Julian was coming toward them, and the cute brunette he had hit on was right by his side. Wait a minute…if Charlotte’s eyes weren’t deceiving her…Julian had his left hand down against his left thigh, and the brunette had her right hand down against her right thigh, and the two thighs were pressed practically flat against one another, and sandwiched in between the thighs, where they no doubt thought no one could see it, they had their fingers intertwined and—and what on earth were they doing? And they thought no one could see them doing it! It was so-o-o-o funny! She looked up at Hoyt to tell him—he would get such a laugh out of it—but he had been distracted by Vance. Uh-oh…Julian had spotted Nicole, who was no more than ten or twelve feet away, and his face became long, solemn, and guilty, and he disengaged fingers with the brunette and moved about a foot away from her, as if he were the most innocent boy in the world and on top of that a shade sad, and Charlotte had never seen anything so funny, and what was it Julian had kept saying to Hoyt—“You dawg, you”? Julian was now heading straight for Hoyt, with the girl tagging along a discreet half step behind, also with a who me? deadpan look on her face.

Now they were barely three steps away, and Charlotte, on impulse, rushed toward Julian, grinning—she couldn’t help it—and heard herself saying, “Why, Julian, you old playa , you, where have you been?” Bee-ehn—but she was laughing so hard she didn’t worry about a little hickism sneaking in, and she gave him a little touch on the posterior of his upper right arm, and two things happened. He gave her an astonished “Who me? What are you talking about?” expression, and simultaneously something swelled up under the hand she had on the back of his arm. She was mystified for a couple of heartbeats, and then she figured out what it was: his triceps muscle. Charlotte laughed and laughed. She removed her hand from his arm and held up a forefinger and wagged it and said, “Julian, you’re so vaaaiin!”

Julian looked at her as if he couldn’t understand what had come over her, and she laughed some more. For an instant she entertained the thought that maybe he really was mystified by this new “front-busting.” That was one of Julian’s favorite words, front-busting. It flew through her mind herky-jerky as a dove, and that only made her laugh some more. So-o-o-o vaaaaiiin! She began laughing so hard she had to lean over and put her hands on her knees and ride it out.

Hoyt came over and said, “Hey, wuz up, babe?”

“Wellll,” said Charlotte with a big sigh before catching her breath, “Julian’s so-o-oh vaaaain!” The very word vain threw her into another doubled-over paroxysm of laughter.

Hoyt said, “If you say so, babe,” and put his arm around her and pulled her tight against his side.

Charlotte decided that the new Charlotte Simmons was a big hit.

Presently, after much imploring by the little Caribbean army colonels, the roaring crowd headed for the part of their section that was beneath the lobby floor. There dinner awaited.

There were six round tables with about ten chairs at each one. One table was in the center, and the other five were clustered about it in more or less a circle, but you would have thought there were twice that many if you judged by the noise. As long as they were out in the open court, some of the racket dissipated in the thirty stories of empty air above it. In here, however, there was a ceiling, and even though it must have been twelve feet high, the Saint Rays were by now so drunk—and excited—they had reached that stage at which everything sounded funnier if shouted or cried out or yodeled with a manly, sex-obsessed red laugh, and the shouts, cries, and yodels hit the ceiling and bounced back until all was uproar. They sure looked better, the guys did, in their tuxedos and clean white shirts and all—even I.P., who had a date. She had beautiful dark hair. Charlotte couldn’t see her face from here. The black tux made his hips look not so gigantic. He made many jesting gestures for his date’s benefit, one of them being a funny snakelike thing he could make his huge, grown-together eyebrows do. Charlotte suddenly felt sentimental about I.P. He took such abuse from his fraternity brothers, it was nice to see him really happy, with a pretty girl at his side. Charlotte was happy herself and had enough goodwill to go around.

Once the boys took their seats and went to work on the lobster or some appetizer, the noise level dropped ever so slightly, just enough for Hoyt, sitting next to her, to shout across the table and introduce her to everyone. Out of the corner of her eye she saw I.P. come to a chair a few seats beyond Hoyt. She was disappointed to realize that aside from Hoyt, she didn’t know a soul—because she was feeling social, more so than at any time in her life. She recognized a couple of the guys, whom she always saw playing quarters or Beirut in the entry gallery outside the library at the Saint Ray house. One was sitting right next to her, a lanky guy with thatchy hair, like a thatched roof, good-looking in a bit of a gawky way, and she could even hear in her mind’s ear the peculiar way he groaned over disappointments at those stupid beer games and his ironic cheers and the clapping he did when someone on his team “scored” by arcing a Ping-Pong ball into a cup of beer, but she didn’t know him and didn’t even catch his name.

The last person Hoyt introduced her to was I.P.’s date, who was sitting on Hoyt’s other side. “Charlotte?—this is Gloria.”

This Gloria turned her head toward Charlotte, and—ohmygod, it was her, the girl she had caught Julian holding hands with. She didn’t seem to recognize Charlotte, but Charlotte sure recognized her. She stared at her as if saying hello, but actually trying to find some fatal flaw. She tried and tried and finally had to face facts. Yeah, her mouth was a little wide—but her upper lip had a curve like a bow, as in a bow and arrow, and her bottom lip was full. Her face had the sort of dark-lady cast that promises forbidden love. Her eyes were so over–made up they looked like a pair of black craters with big gleaming white orbs at the bottom, but Charlotte had to face facts: it was a look guys probably went crazy over. Her hair was a lush, silky, shimmering black, and the little black dress—“little” didn’t begin to describe it. It plunged so low in the front that when the girl was leaning over the way she was at this moment…

The eyeballs of the two Beirut players seemed to be popping out of their heads in multiples, the way they did in animated cartoons.

Just then an odd chiming sound began at the center table. The guys and a couple of the girls were tapping silverware against their big balloon-shaped wineglasses, so far empty. Then it spread to every table until all the guys, even Hoyt, and of course I.P., were banging away for all they were worth, and laughter erupted and mock cheers and whistles and more laughter, until the entire room was filled to bursting with the sheer animal exuberance of young manhood, accompanied by a confused storm of rhythmless pings from what sounded like half the wineglasses in the world being used by a demented mob as a glockenspiel.

Then there arose a cry from out of these young male gullets, indecipherable at first but then in unison:

“Sexy—prexy!”

“Sexy—prexy!”

“Sexy—prexy!”

“Sexy—prexy!”

And then a tall, slender figure rose up at the center table, looking perfect—perfect—in a tuxedo and a crisp, high-wing-collared, stiff-bosomed white shirt that looked like they had been made for him (in fact, both had). A tumultuous applause broke out, clapping such as Charlotte had heard only once before—for Charlotte Simmons at graduation last spring—and cheering laughter, whistles of the sort in which the boys put two fingers in their mouths and shot amazing piping rockets of sound into the already bursting air.

It was Vance, looking absolutely patrician…tall, straight as a column. His blond hair, instead of flopping all over the place, was combed back. It was parted in the middle, but his hair was so full, the part was like a tiny roadway down in the bottom of a canyon. He looked like a picture of F. Scott Fitzgerald that Charlotte had seen on the cover of a paperback of This Side of Paradise.

She had never dreamed he could look so handsome, the very image of dignity, yet glamorous at the same time. Ahhh…so he was the sexy prexy, the president of Saint Ray.

With only a slight smile on his face, a calm smile, a confident smile, Vance raised his glass of champagne to the level of his chin, and in a voice stronger than any she had ever heard him speak, he said, “Gentlemen!” He paused. He raised his chin slightly. There wasn’t a sound in the room, aside from some sort of steam jet back in the kitchen. He was practically looking down his nose as he ran his eyes over every Saint Ray at every table. Somehow his presence made the whole bunch of them seem like golden youth, frisky young men in formal dress black tuxedos, white dress shirts, and black bow ties, with golden sunburst medals of Saint Raymond’s cross pinned to their breast pockets and tiny ribbons in their lapels—frisky young men on the very brink of a bacchanal, but at this moment cognizant of the roles Destiny would call upon them to play someday.

Then he raised his glass from the level of his chin to the level of his lips and, tilting his chin up even slightly higher, said, “To the ladies!”

Hoyt, I.P., the two Beirut players, Oliver the oboist—every Saint Ray in the room—rose up. They lifted their glasses to their lips and as if with a single voice boomed back, “THE LADIES!” and in a single choreographed motion tilted the champagne glasses way up and drained them down their gullets.

Then they all sat down laughing and cheering, half of them also lavishing physical attention upon “the ladies.” Charlotte spotted Julian slipping his hand beneath Nicole’s hair at the base of her neck and lifting her head toward him as if he intended to devour her face. He did kiss her briefly on the lips. Heady, who must have been pretty far gone, made a foolish grinning face and then plunged his head into his date’s lap. The girl didn’t know whether to be amused or annoyed. She settled for looking at everybody at the table and arching her eyebrows and shrugging as if to say, “What do you do with a guy like this?”

I.P., on the other hand, was the soul of propriety and tenderness. As he sat down, he gave Gloria the most sentimental of admiring looks and brought his glass to his lips in a silent toast especially for her. And once he had taken his seat, she gave him a lovely smile and reached over with her right hand and took his left hand and lifted it slightly and gave it a squeeze. So perhaps she didn’t have eyes for anyone but I.P. He smiled and smiled. He was so proud of his lovely little Gloria, and Charlotte yielded to a moment of sentimentality herself and felt very happy for him. At that sweet moment she felt Hoyt’s big hand rubbing her back with the circular motion as before, and then he leaned toward her, and giving her as loving a look as a girl could possibly ever dream of, he put his lips near her right ear and said, “To a lady…”

Then he leaned still farther and gently kissed the nape of her neck.

The feeling…ohmygod! Shivers and fire all at once! Hoyt pulled back just far enough to give her a look that washed like a gentle wave over every nerve ending in her body…Ohmygod…and then he leaned forward and kissed the nape of her neck again…Ohmygod!…She placed the fingertips of her left hand on his neck—since his head was practically behind her back—just the fingertips, ever so tentatively, but then she withdrew them because it would be just too crude to make Hoyt think she wanted some deep kiss or something right there at the table. Frankly, Julian and Nicole looked sort of gross to her. If they wanted to play tonsil hockey…fine…hooray for them…and as if resonating to the same thought, she and Hoyt sat up straight at exactly the same moment. Without touching her at all, he turned his head and gave her that same…look…his loving look…and that look was worth more than all the kisses in the world.

More bangaway chiming of the wineglasses at the center table. Vance was still on his feet, standing with his courtliest posture. He intoned, with a noble gravity, “Ladies, we salute you, we pay you homage, we open our enlarged Saint Ray hearts to you, because you’re who we got all these rooms for.” He pointed upstairs.

Much appreciative laughter and a few drunken whistles and catcalls over Vance’s show of grandiloquence.

“And because we feel so honored by your presence,” Vance was orotunding, glass of champagne aloft once more, “your every wish is our desire. If you want something, you need but ask, and if you want something something you don’t even have to ask—Ladies!—We give you…ourselves!” Whereupon he knocked back the rest of the champagne in his glass.

All was pandemonium. The Saint Rays sprang to their feet, glasses aloft, laughing, cheering, and chanting, “Sumpin’ sumpin’! Sumpin’ sumpin’! Sumpin’ sumpin’! Sumpin’ sumpin’!”

This time, as they took their seats, they commenced pawing their dates with a drunken ardor. Even I.P., who had been so proper with his gorgeous Gloria, now leaned over and flopped an arm around her shoulders and started tugging. She ducked her head, winced, then put on a calm smile and pushed him away.

“Ivy…down boy,” she said gently.

Then the Caribbean colonels arrived with the main course, some sort of slices of meat covered with gravy. Charlotte didn’t even bother to find out. She was too excited to worry about food. Red wine had materialized in the big balloon glasses…just like that. She hadn’t been aware of anybody pouring it. Wine was something of a relief. It went down so much easier than vodka, and of course nobody ever actually got drunk on wine.

Hoyt had turned to talk to Gloria on his right. The tall Beirut player was talking to his date, on his left. Spotting Charlotte sitting there with no one to talk to, the other Beiruter shouted a couple of questions to her. Nice of him, but the questions were where was she from and what year was she in. Great—you strike me as some child from the sticks. She zapped him with the Sparta rat-tat-tat, not out of anger—she was in too good a mood for that—but to show him she was too cool to just sit there answering duh-duh questions. The guy pulled in his head like a turtle.

So she was right back in the same state of social isolation. Well, what did she care? She was Charlotte Simmons…She tried to make her expression suitably insouciant, chin tilted up. She let the music flow through her head like a breeze. The D.J. was playing an odd piece of music called “The Politics of Dancing,” judging by the lyrics. Very odd, this number…It built up layer by layer like a symphony. It kept doubling back on itself to gather up all momentum that had been left behind, building up strength, more and more strength, like Beethoven—well, maybe not exactly like Beethoven—but maybe it was the equal of the classical symphonies, the symphonic sound of today. She had the makings of a theory—

But how much satisfaction could you derive from analyzing “The Politics of Dancing”? The fact was, Hoyt was paying an awful lot of attention to Gloria, whose breasts were spilling out of the gap plunging down the front of her dress. What if he started hitting on her, the way Julian had? What if he—

Thank God this formal actually had something formal about it. The fraternity brothers dressed up in actual tuxedos and brought dates—they actually used that word, “dates”—with them, special dates, because inviting a date to a formal meant there truly existed something between the two of you. It wasn’t the sort of context in which the guys would be playas and fool around…

Charlotte rose from her chair the poli-tics of dan-cing unhh-unh her red dress from Mimi felt shorter than ever of dan-cing unh-unh she took two steps the poli-tics not really sure of herself way up on these high heels of Mimi’s unhh-unh but try it anyway unhh-unh kept her legs straight and bent over at the waist the poli-tics of unhh-unh reached way down and pretended to flick something off the right toe of Mimi’s toe-cleavage dan-cing dan-cing ohmygod the dress felt like the hem was only an inch or two above where the buttocks meet the legs –tics of dan-cing her legs her bare legs anybody any guy Hoyt wrapped up in Gloria unhh-unh could see the erotic dip where her calf muscle inserted into the back of her knee the poli-tics of dan-cing she straightened up ohmygod the hem of the dress seemed to remain way up there unhh-unh she walked slowly out of the room in a circuitous route to make sure Hoyt got the full rear view of dan—

The ladies’ room was the most elaborate thing…a lounge with chairs and side tables and vases of flowers…from there into the toilet area, in which everything looked brand-new, even the floor, where tan diamond-shaped tiles were inset at all four corners of the white tiles. Charlotte headed straight for the big plate-glass mirror over the basins, and there she was, Charlotte Simmons. Since there was nobody else in there, unless somebody was in one of the stalls behind one of the brushed aluminum doors, she was alone, and so she pulled some faces—haughty, angry, bored, come-hither—and put her hands on her hips, which she rocked and cocked to this side…and then rocked and cocked to the other side and pulled faces and—ohmygod!—the clatter of a latch, and someone was coming out of a stall! Could the girl have possibly seen her carrying on in front of the mirror? Charlotte quickly turned on the water at a basin and pulled down the lower lid of one eye as if looking for some irritating speck.

Soon she was prancing back from the ladies’ room—and right there…Hoyt. No more Gloria in his eyes. He was looking straight at her and smiling, and it wasn’t a snarky smile or a smile of amusement or a polite smile, but a smile just for her, the same loving smile he had given her ever since they arrived in Washington. She was tempted to look back and see if Miss Chrissy Snob Sarc’s eyes were still fixed on her—riveted by the look the coolest guy in Saint Ray was giving her. Hoyt with his wide jaws and the cleft in his chin…he was so-o-o-o handsome.

Hoyt talked to her continually now and left Gloria to I.P. He called her Babe and stroked her shoulders and her arms a lot. The room was very noisy now…squalls of laughter, a roaring surf of conversation, the yells of young men drunk on the rising sap of youth, like Bacchus…like Bacchus—hah!—Hoyt poured her some more wine—it wasn’t that you couldn’t actually tell—but after vodka…whew…what was wine? And once you understood that guys like the Saint Rays were the Bacchuses of modern times—but Bacchus Bacchus Bacchus sack us crackers—this whole working it out in terms of Bacchus was making her dizzy. What did she really know about Bacchus—other than that—had the D.J. turned up the volume or was it her? The music seemed so loud now…a song by James Matthews playing his guitar.

“I’ve been alone before,

So it’s all right…

I’ve learned to know the score,

So it’s all right…”

It made her laugh out loud.

“Wuz funny, babe?” said Hoyt.

“The—” Charlotte stopped and started laughing again. The truth was, she couldn’t remember whuh wuz funny, dude.

Her spirits slipped for an instant, but she couldn’t think of that now—

The Caribbean colonels were bringing dessert in big bowls glazed in swirls of many colors with big, big silver spoons, and you took however much you wanted. It was a frozen chocolate mousse with frozen strawberries on top. She meant to take just a little bit, but the spoons were so big and so long—the handle was like a lever, and the shovel part got stuck in the frozen mousse and—oops—she catapulted a glob of it up in the air, and the instant seemed stretched out forever as the glob descended, descended, descended and fell into her lap, on her dress, right in the middle, up close to the top of her thighs, since the dress didn’t fall much below there anyway. She was appalled. A frozen brown chocolate glob right there, right near her crotch—it was horrible!

“Here, use this!” It was Gloria, who was leaning toward her in front of Hoyt. She held up a glass tumbler, which seemed to be full of soda water, and lowered a wad of her napkin into it.

“Let me get it off with this!” Hoyt had a spoon and was heading right down there—

“No, Hoyt!” Charlotte said, giggling, and pushed his hand back.

“Then you do it,” he said, handing her the spoon.

Mortifying. She was spooning a messy glob right out of her…crotch…

More chiming of the glasses at the center table, quickly picked up by Saint Rays at every table and even some of the dates until there was a mad crystal uproar—accompanied by banging on the table—thank God! She could complete this shameful business of swabbing the stain on her dress while they were all absorbed in banging their glasses in paroxysms of drunken laughter and—smash!—somebody at that table over there had rapped his wineglass so hard it shattered and—smash!—another one, over there—and smash! smash! smash! smash! glasses were shattering all around—smash!—I.P. was laughing convulsively, and then he held the blade end of his dinner knife and swung the heavy handle like a club at a big balloon-shaped wineglass—smash!—he hit it so hard that Gloria and everybody else in the vicinity, including Charlotte, ducked from the flying shards, and he said, “Oh shit—I didn’t mean to—yo! You wanna see something fucking incredible?”

With his forefinger and thumb he lifted up the base and the stem of the glass, which remained intact.

“Didn’t—fucking—move!” His eyes panned around the entire table to show everyone this physical marvel…and the fact that he was such a high-spirited rake.

The little Caribbean colonels were suddenly everywhere—also a fortyish man with a paunch, shirt and tie, and no jacket—and Vance was on his feet, standing tallest and waving his upstretched arms back and forth over his head like a football referee signaling “no good” or “out of bounds,” and finally the uproar subsided to ripples of drunken laughter here and there.

Vance assumed his official presidential pose. “I’ve just had a conversation with a distinguished gentleman from the Hyatt Ambassador Hotel whom I reminded of the words of Saint Raymond himself, which, translated from the Latin, mean, ‘Fucking put it on the bill.’”

Laughter, applause, whistles. Julian started yelling, “Saint Ray! Saint Ray! Saint Ray!” hoping to get a chant going. A couple of guys joined in, but it fizzled.

Vance remained standing. “Gentlemen…let me recall our all-too-eloquent toast to the ladies, which I would gladly repeat…if modesty and the impatience of Saint Ray’s resident crystacidal maniac, I.P., did not prevent me.”

Gales of laughter, clapping, whistling, unintelligible shouts. By this stage of the evening, the brothers were drunk enough to believe that Vance’s verbose buffoonery actually gave the brotherhood an aura of elegance. I.P. was in Seventh Heaven. He kept beaming at Gloria and then around the room and back at Gloria, honestly believing that Vance was paying him a great compliment as a rake among rakes of coolness and social wattage.

“But now,” Vance continued, “it is time for me to propose a toast to you.” He paused. The ensuing silence, in a roomful of drunks in an advanced stage of wreckage, was a tribute to the periphrastic performance he was putting on. Charlotte wondered if anybody in the room other than herself knew the adjective “periphrastic.” She doubted it. A smile of superiority stole over her face. And the coolest guy in all of Dupont, who has fallen in love with me, is massaging my back, and everyone in this room can see that.

“Ladies,” Vance was saying, “you happen to be in a roomful of men who this year have turned Saint Ray into a brotherhood as awesome and…and…and tight”—“tight” came off a bit lamely, since “awesome” meant the same thing, but everybody was still with him—“as Cy’s Lamborghini.” He smiled approvingly at Cyrus Brooks, whose daddy had given him the most expensive sports roadster in the world, a Lamborghini Leopardo, then added, “Or at least after Tully’s has repaired it for the we’re-not-fucking-countingth time, and before Cy takes it out again and eats the transmission because he’s still wondering what the fuck this manual shift shit is.”

Laughter, catcalls at Cy’s expense. Vance continued smiling at the young Lamborghini owner. “No, I mean it, you guys have been fucking amazing. This is my fourth year as a Saint Ray, and this frat gets more solid by the year. The house of the Lip-locked Saint”—burst of laughter—the guys found that extremely funny-elegant—“has never been so completely one for all and all for one before. It’s been the biggest honor of my life, being president of Saint Ray, and I want to thank you, and I want you to know I love you guys—hey, wait a minute, ‘All for one and all on one’…that’s the fucking Hell’s Angels’ motto!”

Vance had just barely pulled himself out of the pool of bathos as he was going under for the third time.

“Come to think of it, we’ve got a Hell’s Angel. We’ve got a guy who makes national political big shots piss in their pants.” He was looking at Hoyt. Charlotte had to twist her neck and look up to see Hoyt’s expression. He had a small and rather cold smile on his face. He stopped massaging her back.

Vance lifted a champagne glass halfway up and declaimed, “Gentlemen, to you, the brothers of Saint Ray.” He raised the glass up high, then extended it toward his brethren and panned about to all six tables. “You’ve made me proud, you’ve made yourselves and every single one of us proud, you’ve…uh…you’ve”—uh-oh, he was running into tricolon trouble again—“you’re…the shit! To…us!”—whereupon he tilted his head back and propelled the whole glassful down his gullet.

More pandemonium. The Saint Rays rose to their feet again. On top of the shouts, cries, and clapping came ooo-ahs and ferocious foot-stomping, which would have rocked the floor had they been in a building fifty years older. The floor here in the atrium court was a synthetic country tile set in concrete.

The guys had totally forgotten their “revered ladies,” so enchanted were they by the notion they were the best there ever was. The ladies, for their part—Charlotte could see Crissy and Nicole and, right here, Gloria slumped back in their chairs, gloriously bored and casting knowing glances at one another, trapped, as they were, in this hot tub of sentimentality. But Hoyt, still on his feet, clapping, looked down at Charlotte and gave her a big wink—and the loving smile! She felt like leaping up and giving him a kiss on the mouth right in the middle of this supreme moment of male bonding.

They began to take their seats again, all but I.P. He stood by his chair, lurching slightly as if from a psychomotor malfunction, the glass of red wine in his hand sloshing about so perilously it was hard to keep your eyes off it. He was eagerly trying to get Vance’s attention. Somebody else at another table was tapping his glass, primed to make a toast. I.P. began lurching and shouting, “Vance! Yo! Hey, Vance!”

Vance ignored him at first, but then gave in, saying, “Okay, I.P. Mr. I.P. has the floor.”

I.P. hoisted his sloshing glass up almost to lip level and said in a bellowing voice, “I just want to say—I just want to say…”

He appeared to blank out. He was still holding the glass aloft, but his eyes seemed to be fixed on…nothing…somewhere in the middle distance.

Julian began applauding. “Well said, Ipper! Next!”

I.P. wasn’t having it. Still louder he shouted, “I just wanna say…I just wanna say…”

“Then just fucking say it!” yelled Julian. “You—” He didn’t complete his characterization.

Laughter and whistles.

“I JUST WANNA SAY…this place is the fucking greatest place, the fucking best house on campus, and I just wanna thank all you guys for such a fuckin’ amazing time this year, and that fuckin’ goes for you, too, Vance—you’re the fuckin’ greatest…uh…” I.P. blanked out again. He couldn’t seem to remember Vance’s title at Saint Ray.

“Bullshitter?” suggested Boo-man.

Laughter, applause, catcalls.

I.P. had his mouth open, ready to say more, but an unbelievably loud whistle came from a table beyond Vance’s.

“Yo! Hey, yo!” It was Harrison, who was on his feet, pumping his fist straight up and down. He was so drunk and was punching the air so hard that he seemed about to dislocate his shoulder.

Laughter…which Harrison interpreted as encouragement. He beamed a smile and declaimed, “I just wanna say one thing, but like…that’s the most important thing, and I just wanna say, this frat gets the hottest fucking chicks on campus!”

Convulsive laughter, sarcastic whoops and howls. “Good job, Harrison!”…“Real smooth, baby!”…“It’s Don Juan!”…“From now on you gotta play with a helmet, dawg!”—insinuating that Harrison suffered too many head injuries playing lacrosse—and the guys began looking around at the girls to see how they took that one. Crissy, sitting next to Vance, was doubled over and laughing so hard she finally held her own head, her palms over her temple.

Harrison, taking it all at face value, assuming they were laughing with him, grinned foolishly and tried to lean on the shoulder of his date—who was seated—to steady himself, but he overshot his target and fell into the edge of the table. When he righted himself, he continued to smile foolishly and aimlessly at everyone, then sat down on his chair with a thud.

More toasts…each more incoherently reaching for superlatives than the one before. The event was rapidly falling to pieces. Charlotte drank some more wine.

Dinner was over, and the D.J. got the music going in the dance section out in the atrium itself. The guys stood around the edges telling each other outrageously funny but mainly loud things. It was that time of the evening…

Three girls ventured out onto the middle of the floor and began to dance, facing inward toward one another, as if they were in a circle, shaking their fannies and letting the boys get an eyeful. It struck Charlotte as oddly like the school dance she went to at Alleghany High. A group of girls on the dance floor by themselves, waiting for the boys to work up their nerve…two of them Nicole and Gloria! Nicole was the perfect blonde, and Gloria was the perfect brunette, exotic, provocative…dark…the dark lady…with lips that curved like a bow and promised…God knew what. Then Julian went out to join them…and then I.P. came floundering out, screaming, “I need some—” and clamping his hand over his mouth as if to prevent himself from announcing what he wanted…or said he wanted. Somehow Charlotte just couldn’t match up I.P. and Gloria. But she could see Julian and Gloria, and obviously Julian could, too, because he kept flashing looks at her as they jerked and hopped onto the middle of the dance floor, three girls and two guys making a clumsy effort to dance hip-hop style. Now lots of couples were out on the floor—and the guys all paired off with their dates and began—it looked like…grinding—even I.P., with his wide hips and his perfect brunette date.

The next thing Charlotte knew, Hoyt was pressing his palm into the middle of her back and steering her toward the dance floor and saying, “Let’s dance, babe.” He said the “babe” with a smile that ended with his lips slightly pursed in the way that indicates, “What I just said is merely a cue for something much more profound.” Charlotte felt as if the music were filling the atrium of the hotel with a fine, drizzling haze that crackled with electricity, and Hoyt was firmly pushing her onto the dance floor with a look that just…melted her. She glanced up for a moment—the world! The world was up there on the lobby floor, where there was a railing, and people—old people, people forty years old at least—were leaning against the railing and looking down at all of them, as if from a balcony. How sad they must feel, cut off from youth, from beauty—from a love like Hoyt’s—and how fascinated they must be, and how envious—and Hoyt pulled her close to him until her torso was flat against his—she had never been so physically close to a man’s body before—and Hoyt began moving—

—and she could feel the bone of her mons pubis pressed against his and she realized they were grinding, which she wouldn’t do at the Saint Ray party that time, but she didn’t even know Hoyt then. There was Julian with Nicole, and he didn’t just press his mons pubis against hers, he kept thrusting it thrusting it thrusting it thrusting it, which was gross—but he wanted her, and just think what it must mean to have someone as handsome and cool as Julian wanting you that much!

Hoyt had both of his hands on her back, and she had her hands on his shoulders, and he slid his hands lower on her back, and now he was really pulling her pelvic saddle up against his, because below his mons pubis there was definitely…definitely…but it didn’t really mean what it really meant—it just showed that he wanted her, madly, just the way Julian wanted Nicole—so that he was now totally in her thrall—so much so that he moved one hand still lower until it was right on top of her buttocks—

—and now he was moving her buttocks back and forth with that hand, holding her still closer, until she could also feel her crotch rolling back and forth over…over…

She didn’t so much think about it as give way to it without calling it anything. She glanced about. Every Saint Ray, everyone was doing it. They were sweating. She could see creeks of sweat running down Julian’s face as he undertook the task of keeping Nicole’s crotch locked to his. All over the floor—black tuxedos—grinding groins—black-and-white Holstein bulls doing it…It made Charlotte smile, because now she was on the inside. She knew they weren’t bulls at all, but vulnerable males. Poor I.P.! Poor Vance! He had seemed so sure of himself, standing up in a martial pose and declaiming stentoriously—and all the while he lived whipped by a woman, by Crissy. Some of the Saint Rays were thrusting their montes pubis—who in this room would know the plural of mons pubis…other than…Charlotte Simmons?—thrusting them so hard into their dates, the girls were practically lifted off the floor. Boo-man was grunting inside of his coat of fat—Ungh! Ungh! Ungh! Ungh!

Charlotte started laughing.

“What’s…fuh-ney?” Hoyt was working so hard, holding her body flat against him with one hand and manipulating her buttocks with the other, his very words came out like grunts.

That made her laugh even harder.

“Whunh? Whunh?” said Hoyt.

“You don’t see it? Black-tie Holstein bulls—” She realized she wasn’t making any sense—but it was so funny. “Black-tie black-and-white Holstein bulls”—which threw her into a regular convulsion of mirth.

Hoyt’s response was to remove his hand from hers, up in the conventional ballroom-dancing position, and place it on her buttocks, so that he now had both hands on her buttocks. He began pulling her buttocks and her entire pelvic saddle in toward his groin with all his strength, until his breathing became stertorous and he was exhaling little grunts himself. He was getting so carried away, intoxicated by her, Charlotte Simmons!—she tilted her head back and took a look at his face. He had his eyes closed. His entire being—the coolest being of all the cool beings at Dupont—was now consumed by his desire for her—Charlotte Simmons! Then he slid one hand up to the small of her back and, keeping her body up against his, brought the other hand up and slipped it under her long hair at the back of her neck, cocked his head—and went in for the kiss, the tonsil-hockey kiss, not just pressing his lips upon hers but devouring them—and he thrust his tongue inside her mouth. It practically choked her but at the same time gave her the delicious feeling that he had overpowered her, and her entire self now consisted of his tongue inside her mouth and the oscillating groin joint—although now she began to feel the presence of his belt buckle—why such a big metal belt buckle?—felt like the lump of metal had torn straight through her thin dress—she was overwhelmed. This kiss seemed to last forever. He took his hand away from the back of her head and began sliding it up and down her body, first along the side, down to her ilial crest, and up to her armpit and then more toward her abdomen down to the gully that ran from her ilial crest to her crotch and then up to her breast, which he cupped from the side, outside her dress, drawing it closer to him. When he withdrew his hard-munching lips and his behemoth tongue, she felt dizzy, and the scene broke up into slices and flakes—the black-tie Holstein bulls rutting rutting rutting rutting—a flash of I.P. rutting rutting not with but against Gloria, whose face was as calm as a statue’s, whose eyes were directed forty-five degrees from I.P.’s panting mouth—a slice of Vance rutting rutting rutting with his lips an inch away from Crissy’s ear, no longer maestro of the Saint Ray’s, now Crissy’s whipped whipped whipped whipped whipped boy—while Hoyt’s adventurous hand slid from the channel and onto the delta of Venus, as Anaïs Nin called it—and she wanted Hoyt’s hands there, wanted him holding her up against him, wanted him to choke her with that big rolled salami of a tongue, wanted them to see it, the Crissys, Hillarys, all the –ey snobs—just get an eyeful of a cool guy—the coolest—falling in love—she wanted to keep moving like this eternally, dancing, loving—in this deliriously dizzy spin in the dark as light reflected white off the faces of the old people up on the balcony consumed by envy and regrets.

Every—what?—half hour?—saline-depleted, sweating, she and Hoyt would sit down at one of the tables on the edge of the dance floor and have some more drinks. One thing she had come to realize about wine: it tasted so good. Wasn’t like vodka at all, and even if you were dizzy, as she was, with the roar of the bottom of a waterfall inside your head, it didn’t make you any dizzier, the waterfall didn’t roar any louder, it just kept you so alive to your body and unashamed of your love, proud of it, in fact, and she had overcome all the shyness of a little girl from 2,500 feet up a mountain.

Vance and Crissy sat down at the table and ordered tequilas from a little colonel. Vance was sweating so much, his collar was wet and wrinkled. Even the perfect Crissy’s face was flushed, and she didn’t look so disdainful. And the first thing Vance said was not to Hoyt but to her—by name!

“Charlotte, you ever had a date with a shit-faced Hell’s Angel before?” He nodded toward Hoyt.

She didn’t feel mousy and at a loss for words at all! “He’s not a Hell’s Angel, he’s a black-tie Holstein!”

Vance and Crissy looked blank at first. But then they turned toward one another and arched their eyebrows and pulled funny oh-I-get-it faces.

Vance said to Hoyt, “Hoyto, and that—whatever the fuck it is—is—fucking—that.”

The three of them—Vance, Crissy, and Hoyt—laughed, but without looking at her. Charlotte couldn’t help but smile. Beam, in fact. They got it! She had a wit that snuck up on people and—gotcha! All the while, Hoyt never took his hand off her. Every now and then, while he and Vance were talking, Hoyt would reach way over and wrap his hand around her shoulder and pull her toward him—practically pull her whole chair over!—and lean way over toward her and, from out of nowhere, apropos of nothing, say to Vance and Crissy, “Is this girl cute or what?” He always said the same thing, so she took to pulling her head away and looking at him crossly in a fake way, as if to say, “Why are you always so mischievous?”

Then they’d go back onto the dance floor and Hoyt would press her body against his and fondle…that and that and them and those and this…and he would overpower her with more tongue insertions.

The entire atrium was slowly turning clockwise. Then it stopped and began turning slowly counterclockwise. The flashes and slices came faster. The D.J. switched to a slow number, “Dear Mama” by Tupac Shakur. Charlotte remained pasted up against Hoyt, who was still visiting those and them and that and that, when she thought she heard someone wretching convulsively, a girl, if she had to guess, over near the privet-hedge entryway to this section. The putrid smell of vomit came wafting by but soon dissipated, probably thanks to the fact that there was no ceiling, unless you counted the skylight thirty stories above. Then came the familiar bracing smell of a mop bucket full of ammonia…Charlotte was in a…delirium…but a perfect delirium…and the perfection made her realize that she was superior to every other girl on the floor—being, as she was, Charlotte Simmons—and what she thought and what she felt physically had never been in more perfect accord as Hoyt’s body became a part of her central nervous system.

Tupac Shakur was still plaintively adoring his momma when Hoyt whispered in her ear, “Want to go upstairs?”

“But I’m not tired yet. What time is it?”

“Ohhh…twelve-thirty. I’m not tired, either. Let’s just go up for a sec, before Julian and Nicole get there.”

Charlotte knew what he was getting at, but there was also the fact that she wanted to hook up, without going all the way, of course. She wanted to please him, to run her hands through his hair, make him smile the way he smiled at her all night, but more intensely and ecstatically, have him eager for her, like an animal. That was what made her…thrill inside. He was a beautiful animal at the peak of his rude animal health. And yet she could always control him. “All the way”—that was exactly what she wanted him to want! To know that this beautiful animal named Hoyt—the coolest and sleekest and most beautiful animal, the elite animal of the elite Dupont—to know that she had reduced his world to a single obsessive thing—wanting Charlotte Simmons! That was what she wanted! He was the animal, and she was the hunted. He was in love with her. That she knew. He lusted for her. That she knew. To see his love and his lust and his very mind, for that matter, turned white-hot and forged into a single super-concentrated alloy—whose shape she would determine—that was all she wanted!

She followed him into the elevator.