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.