“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 sticks—but now these two cool guys—”

Pretty soon Harrison returned with two orange juices with vodka—or 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, self-wrestled into tuxedos, all ululating and doing red yodels of unbound vulgarity, but Prometheus was not vulgar—so they’re not Prometheuses but…Bacchuses…a photograph in—what book?—Michelangelo’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…

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 her—Nicole in her tube dress, Crissy revealing as much breast as she dared. Charlotte had nothing against these girls any longer—but 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…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 epidermis—

“Your glass?” One of the Caribbean army colonels was right there, pointing toward the empty glass in her hand.

“Oh—thank 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 hers—ohmygod, the magical, melting look he was giving her! Hoyt turned back to the waiter and said, “With…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…completely out of sight of Nicole—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 for—she couldn’t remember what the ad was for. For an instant she wished Nicole would go over there and stumble upon that scene—but 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 Nicole—

—whereas Crissy, who had behaved much worse toward her than Nicole—Crissy 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!—so 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 remark—then realized she was shrieking, her words laced with laughter in a way that had seemed like so…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 Hoyt—who still had his arm around her waist—to 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!”—which 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.

Now Julian was coming toward them, and the cute brunette he had hit on was right by his side. Wait a minute…if Charlotte’s eyes weren’t deceiving her…Julian had his left hand down against his left thigh, and the brunette had her right hand down against her right thigh, and the two thighs were pressed practically flat against one another, and sandwiched in between the thighs, where they no doubt thought no one could see it, they had their fingers intertwined and—and what on earth were they doing? And they thought no one could see them doing it! It was so-o-o-o funny! She looked up at Hoyt to tell him—he would get such a laugh out of it—but he had been distracted by Vance. Uh-oh…Julian had spotted Nicole, who was no more than ten or twelve feet away, and his face became long, solemn, and guilty, and he disengaged fingers with the brunette and moved about a foot away from her, as if he were the most innocent boy in the world and on top of that a shade sad, and Charlotte had never seen anything so funny, and what was it Julian had kept saying to Hoyt—“You dawg, you”? Julian was now heading straight for Hoyt, with the girl tagging along a discreet half step behind, also with a who me? deadpan look on her face.

Now they were barely three steps away, and Charlotte, on impulse, rushed toward Julian, grinning—she couldn’t help it—and heard herself saying, “Why, Julian, you old playa , you, where have you been?” Bee-ehn—but she was laughing so hard she didn’t worry about a little hickism sneaking in, and she gave him a little touch on the posterior of his upper right arm, and two things happened. He gave her an astonished “Who me? What are you talking about?” expression, and simultaneously something swelled up under the hand she had on the back of his arm. She was mystified for a couple of heartbeats, and then she figured out what it was: his triceps muscle. Charlotte laughed and laughed. She removed her hand from his arm and held up a forefinger and wagged it and said, “Julian, you’re so vaaaiin!”