“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. Greatâyou strike me as some child from the sticks. She zapped him with the Sparta rat-tat-tat, not out of angerâshe was in too good a mood for thatâbut 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 Beethovenâwell, maybe not exactly like Beethovenâbut maybe it was the
equal
of the classical symphonies, the symphonic sound of today. She had the makings of a theoryâ
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 heâ
Thank God this formal actually had something formal about it. The fraternity
brothers dressed up in actual tuxedos and brought datesâthey actually used that word, “dates”âwith 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 â¦
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 âtics 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 danâ
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 diamondshaped 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 facesâhaughty, angry, bored, come-hitherâand 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 andâohmygod!âthe 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' roomâand 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 herâriveted 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 â¦
squalls
of laughter, a roaring
surf
of conversation, the yells of young men drunk on the rising sap of youth, like Bacchus ⦠like Bacchusâhah!âHoyt poured her some more wineâit wasn't that you couldn't actually
tell
âbut after vodka ⦠whew ⦠what was wine? And once you understood that guys like the Saint Rays
were
the Bacchuses of modern timesâbut Bacchus Bacchus Bacchus sack us crackersâthis whole working it out in terms of Bacchus was making her dizzy. What did she really know about Bacchusâother than thatâhad 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
â¦
I've learned to know the score
,
So it's all right ⦔
It made her laugh out loud.
“Wuz funny, babe?” said Hoyt.
“Theâ”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 nowâ
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 longâthe handle was like a lever, and the shovel part got stuck in the frozen mousse andâ
oops
âshe 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 crotchâit 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
thereâ
“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 â¦
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 uproarâaccompanied by banging on the tableâthank 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 andâ
smash
!âsomebody at that table over there had rapped his wineglass so hard it shattered andâ
smash!â
another one, over
there
âand
smash! smash! smash! smash!
glasses were shattering all aroundâ
smash!â
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 wineglassâ
smash!â
he hit it so hard that Gloria and everybody else in the vicinity, including Charlotte, ducked from the flying shards, and he said, “Oh shitâI didn't mean toâyo! 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'tâfuckingâmove!” 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 everywhereâalso a fortyish man with a paunch, shirt and tie, and no jacketâand 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, âFucking 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”â“tight” came off a bit lamely, since “awesome” meant the same thing, but everybody was still with himâ“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”âburst of laughterâthe guys found that extremely funny-elegantâ“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 guysâhey, wait a minute, âAll 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”âuh-oh, he was running into tricolon trouble againâ“you're ⦠the shit! To â¦
us
!Ӊwhereupon 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.