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

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

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

Once more Charlotte crashed and burned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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