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 allâI 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 â¦
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 â¦
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.
âor 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
menage 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'sâHoyt'sâdate.
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 ofâwhat?âstale 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 Roquefortâand 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 bagâbut 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, becauseâohmygod look at that!âthe 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 bareâbut 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 legâjust the outer flank, which didn't seem so awful, since she had so much leg showing in the first placeâstroking her cheek, stroking her hair where it cascaded down the back of her head and neckâ
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.
T
he 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 â¦
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 Dupontâwho caressed her hand now and again with light squeezes. She couldn't help but
wonder who was lookingâand 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 scarletâagainst a field of deepest aubergine, embroidered with small corn-yellow stars. As every Saint Ray was told at the time of initiationâand forgot within a weekâthe 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 entranceâat 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 andâyes! Vance and
CrissyâCrissy 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 cleavageâCharlotte 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 rememberâyou 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 thatâa 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”âhe gestured toward Charlotteâ“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 â¦
but â¦
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 nowâit 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 theirâ
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. Wellâshe'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 sticksâbut now these two cool guysâ”
Pretty soon Harrison returned with two orange juices with vodkaâor 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, selfwrestled into tuxedos, all ululating and doing red yodels of unbound vulgarity, but Prometheus was not vulgarâso they're not Prometheuses but ⦠Bacchuses ⦠a photograph inâwhat book?âMichelangelo'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 â¦
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 herâNicole in her tube dress, Crissy revealing as much breast as she dared. Charlotte had nothing against these girls any longerâbut 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 â¦
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 epidermisâ
“Your glass?” One of the Caribbean army colonels was right there, pointing toward the empty glass in her hand.
“Ohâthank 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 hersâohmygod, the magical, melting look he was giving her! Hoyt turned back to the waiter and said, “
With
â¦
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 â¦
completely out of sight of Nicoleâ
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 forâshe couldn't remember what the ad was for. For an instant she wished Nicole would go over there and stumble upon that sceneâbut 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 Nicoleâ
âwhereas Crissy, who had behaved much worse toward her than NicoleâCrissy 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
!âso 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 remarkâthen realized she was shrieking, her words laced with laughter in a way that had seemed like so â¦
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 Hoytâwho still had his arm around her waistâto 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!”âwhich 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.