—and the hand leaped back up to the side of her hip while they continued kissing, and now it was working its way back up, toward the shoulder presumably, or could it—

—he put his tongue in her mouth…Uh-oh, it—the hand—had jumped the track and was heading inland toward her rib cage until it reached…there! But no, it stopped at the side of the breast and began caressing that, the flesh on the side…Streak! Suddenly it had leaped to the upper outside of her thigh, where the flesh was bare, until she felt the hem of her dress move up on her skin until the hand was only inches from her panties and creep creep caress caress a finger—or was it two fingers?—two, perhaps even three, were under the elastic band of her panties where they fit around the leg and were now traveling down the gulley, and any moment, any millisecond, she would have to say “No, Hoyt”—but this was what she had wanted him to want to do—and she was caught between excitement and panic, and it—the tongue—she felt as if she were swallowing it and she didn’t mind it anymore because Hoyt had begun to moan softly—he couldn’t very well say anything with his tongue in her mouth—streak the hand had leaped back up to the rib cage, no longer on the side but going up the front, inland. Slither slither slither slither went the tongue, but the hand—that was what she tried to concentrate on, the hand, since it had the entire terrain of her torso to explore and not just the otorhinolaryngological caverns—oh God, it was not just at the border where the flesh of the breast joins the pectoral sheath of the chest—no, the hand was cupping her entire right—Now! she must say “No, Hoyt” and talk to him like a dog—and oh God, what was she supposed to do now—inasmuch as it, his hand, was at this instant passing over her entire right breast and she could feel the pressure—light pressure, but pressure—Now! the No, Hoyt—but it was as if the cord between her will and her central nervous system had been cut and there was even something about the big slug that had entered her mouth that now seemed part of her, so much so that she began running her own tongue over the intruder tongue and sought to put her tongue inside his mouth, although things were getting congested and she couldn’t, under any circumstances, let the hand slip inside her bra—and in the next instant it was gone from up there—it had leaped again!—from up here perilously close to down there, sliding up her bare thigh to the elastic of her panties—the fingers went under the elastic of the panties moan moan moan moan moan went Hoyt as he slithered slithered slithered slithered and caress caress caress caress went the fingers until they must be only eighths of inches from the border of her pubic hair—what’s that!—her panties were so wet down…there—the fingers had definitely reached the outer stand of the field of pubic hair and would soon plunge into the wet mess that was waiting right…there—there—

Without conscious decision she withdrew her tongue from Hoyt’s mouth, pulled her head back—and snapped, owner to dog, “Hoyt—no!”

“No—what?”

A bit shortly: “You know what.”

“I know what what?” The voice was combative but the face was a dog’s, the dog that has been caught in a forbidden act and reprimanded and lowers its head and looks up at its owner with sad eyes, distrustful lest it be reprimanded again or else swatted.

But he quickly recovered his Cool King Hoyt of Saint Ray authority and said in a calm voice, oozing with the accusation of contemptible violence against cool code: “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to my room, Hoyt.”

Her voice was faltering. Only the would-be confident tacking on of the Hoyt at the end gave it any semblance of confidence whatsoever. So she reached out and stroked his uninjured left cheek.

“I’m sorry, Hoyt, but I have to go.”

She tried to plant a light kiss on his lips, but he turned his head petulantly to put his lips out of range.

Now afraid she’d gone too far—by not going far enough—and ruined everything: “I’m really sorry, Hoyt.”

“Roger that,” said Hoyt with a devastatingly kind smile that as much as said, “This is the last good-bye.”

“It’s just that—”

“You have to go.” He shrugged and then smiled the devastating smile again and shrugged again.

Charlotte got out and stepped over a railroad tie marking the perimeter of the parking lot and walked up a small grassy slope toward Mercer Gate. A flash of recall—her father with his mermaid tattoo beaming like a red alert from his forearm, shooing off the student porter because he thought he was going to demand a tip…the ratty camper shell on the ratty pickup truck…the Amorys at the Sizzlin’ Skillet—which is to say, the defeats, all the defeats…and how they began…She was all at once overcome by the possibility that what had just happened was the worst defeat of all—giving up a cool coup—a boyfriend, a senior, gorgeous-looking, a victory in and of himself—how she would stand out!—and she had let him go that far…before her little Sparta girl panic set in—but she just couldn’t let him do what he was about to do…It hadn’t been a decision at all, had it. It had been a reflex, as natural as drawing your hand away when the griddle plate on top of the woodstove is red-hot—she’d seen it when it was truly red-hot. A group of boys and girls was just entering the tunnel of Mercer Gate, girls screaming the scream of excitement from being with boys and one boy shouting in a mock-serious deep voice, which you’d think was the funniest voice in the history of the world from the way the girls were screaming. The old-fashioned lights up on stanchions near the tunnel made them all a sickly jaundice yellow until they disappeared into the shadows in the tunnel. She could hear the throaty roar of Hoyt’s Suburban starting up, the roar of a rusted-out muffler, if she knew anything about it—Daddy would have repaired it himself in no time—and she was dying to look back, dying to, even though she wouldn’t be able to tell whether Hoyt was looking at her or not, given the darkness and the sick, jaundiced, moribund light from the useless, fussy old-fashioned light fixture reflecting on the windshield—she wanted desperately to look at him, as if to say, “I didn’t mean that to be final, Hoyt!—please, you mustn’t take it that way!”

“Charlotte.”

She looked about. Bettina was just coming in, too.

Bettina, in a concerned voice: “Hey, what’s up?”

“It shows, hunh?”

“Well…yeah,” said Bettina. “You’re not too hard to read, you know.”

Now they were in the gloom of the tunnel, where a couple of lamps gave off a sickly, feverish glow that was worse than no light at all.

“I just did something so-o-o-o stupid,” said Charlotte. She said it louder than she had meant to, and the words echoed slightly in the tunnel. For a moment the so-o-o-o-o-o lengthened like a moan and a whimper and a stifled wail of grief.

“You did what so stupid?” said Bettina.

But Charlotte wasn’t listening. An impulse had begun wriggling inside her central nervous system, a tiny impulse, which, if it could have spoken, would have asked: was there some pretext, any pretext, on which she could call him without seeming to be begging?

When Hoyt returned, only Vance and Julian were left in the library. Vance said to Hoyt, “You’re not back as soon this time, playa. Getting any sump’m sump’m?”

Hoyt sank into the Hoyt easy chair and said, “Welllll…I wouldn’t call it genuine pink sump’m sump’m, but we work at it. You know? We persevere. We’ll get there. In fact—you know what? I’m going to invite her to the formal.”

“That little girl?” said Julian. “What about Whatshername? I call her Whatshername because it took you about two months of cum dumping”—he motioned upstairs with his thumb—“before you learned her name. If the Guinness Book of Records had a category for anonymous cum dumping, you’d be in the fucking book, playa.”