Charlotte started laughing.

“What’s…fuh-ney?” Hoyt was working so hard, holding her body flat against him with one hand and manipulating her buttocks with the other, his very words came out like grunts.

That made her laugh even harder.

“Whunh? Whunh?” said Hoyt.

“You don’t see it? Black-tie Holstein bulls—” She realized she wasn’t making any sense—but it was so funny. “Black-tie black-and-white Holstein bulls”—which threw her into a regular convulsion of mirth.

Hoyt’s response was to remove his hand from hers, up in the conventional ballroom-dancing position, and place it on her buttocks, so that he now had both hands on her buttocks. He began pulling her buttocks and her entire pelvic saddle in toward his groin with all his strength, until his breathing became stertorous and he was exhaling little grunts himself. He was getting so carried away, intoxicated by her, Charlotte Simmons!—she tilted her head back and took a look at his face. He had his eyes closed. His entire being—the coolest being of all the cool beings at Dupont—was now consumed by his desire for her—Charlotte Simmons! Then he slid one hand up to the small of her back and, keeping her body up against his, brought the other hand up and slipped it under her long hair at the back of her neck, cocked his head—and went in for the kiss, the tonsil-hockey kiss, not just pressing his lips upon hers but devouring them—and he thrust his tongue inside her mouth. It practically choked her but at the same time gave her the delicious feeling that he had overpowered her, and her entire self now consisted of his tongue inside her mouth and the oscillating groin joint—although now she began to feel the presence of his belt buckle—why such a big metal belt buckle?—felt like the lump of metal had torn straight through her thin dress—she was overwhelmed. This kiss seemed to last forever. He took his hand away from the back of her head and began sliding it up and down her body, first along the side, down to her ilial crest, and up to her armpit and then more toward her abdomen down to the gully that ran from her ilial crest to her crotch and then up to her breast, which he cupped from the side, outside her dress, drawing it closer to him. When he withdrew his hard-munching lips and his behemoth tongue, she felt dizzy, and the scene broke up into slices and flakes—the black-tie Holstein bulls rutting rutting rutting rutting—a flash of I.P. rutting rutting not with but against Gloria, whose face was as calm as a statue’s, whose eyes were directed forty-five degrees from I.P.’s panting mouth—a slice of Vance rutting rutting rutting with his lips an inch away from Crissy’s ear, no longer maestro of the Saint Ray’s, now Crissy’s whipped whipped whipped whipped whipped boy—while Hoyt’s adventurous hand slid from the channel and onto the delta of Venus, as Anaïs Nin called it—and she wanted Hoyt’s hands there, wanted him holding her up against him, wanted him to choke her with that big rolled salami of a tongue, wanted them to see it, the Crissys, Hillarys, all the –ey snobs—just get an eyeful of a cool guy—the coolest—falling in love—she wanted to keep moving like this eternally, dancing, loving—in this deliriously dizzy spin in the dark as light reflected white off the faces of the old people up on the balcony consumed by envy and regrets.

Every—what?—half hour?—saline-depleted, sweating, she and Hoyt would sit down at one of the tables on the edge of the dance floor and have some more drinks. One thing she had come to realize about wine: it tasted so good. Wasn’t like vodka at all, and even if you were dizzy, as she was, with the roar of the bottom of a waterfall inside your head, it didn’t make you any dizzier, the waterfall didn’t roar any louder, it just kept you so alive to your body and unashamed of your love, proud of it, in fact, and she had overcome all the shyness of a little girl from 2,500 feet up a mountain.

Vance and Crissy sat down at the table and ordered tequilas from a little colonel. Vance was sweating so much, his collar was wet and wrinkled. Even the perfect Crissy’s face was flushed, and she didn’t look so disdainful. And the first thing Vance said was not to Hoyt but to her—by name!

“Charlotte, you ever had a date with a shit-faced Hell’s Angel before?” He nodded toward Hoyt.

She didn’t feel mousy and at a loss for words at all! “He’s not a Hell’s Angel, he’s a black-tie Holstein!”

Vance and Crissy looked blank at first. But then they turned toward one another and arched their eyebrows and pulled funny oh-I-get-it faces.

Vance said to Hoyt, “Hoyto, and that—whatever the fuck it is—is—fucking—that.”

The three of them—Vance, Crissy, and Hoyt—laughed, but without looking at her. Charlotte couldn’t help but smile. Beam, in fact. They got it! She had a wit that snuck up on people and—gotcha! All the while, Hoyt never took his hand off her. Every now and then, while he and Vance were talking, Hoyt would reach way over and wrap his hand around her shoulder and pull her toward him—practically pull her whole chair over!—and lean way over toward her and, from out of nowhere, apropos of nothing, say to Vance and Crissy, “Is this girl cute or what?” He always said the same thing, so she took to pulling her head away and looking at him crossly in a fake way, as if to say, “Why are you always so mischievous?”

Then they’d go back onto the dance floor and Hoyt would press her body against his and fondle…that and that and them and those and this…and he would overpower her with more tongue insertions.

The entire atrium was slowly turning clockwise. Then it stopped and began turning slowly counterclockwise. The flashes and slices came faster. The D.J. switched to a slow number, “Dear Mama” by Tupac Shakur. Charlotte remained pasted up against Hoyt, who was still visiting those and them and that and that, when she thought she heard someone wretching convulsively, a girl, if she had to guess, over near the privet-hedge entryway to this section. The putrid smell of vomit came wafting by but soon dissipated, probably thanks to the fact that there was no ceiling, unless you counted the skylight thirty stories above. Then came the familiar bracing smell of a mop bucket full of ammonia…Charlotte was in a…delirium…but a perfect delirium…and the perfection made her realize that she was superior to every other girl on the floor—being, as she was, Charlotte Simmons—and what she thought and what she felt physically had never been in more perfect accord as Hoyt’s body became a part of her central nervous system.

Tupac Shakur was still plaintively adoring his momma when Hoyt whispered in her ear, “Want to go upstairs?”

“But I’m not tired yet. What time is it?”

“Ohhh…twelve-thirty. I’m not tired, either. Let’s just go up for a sec, before Julian and Nicole get there.”

Charlotte knew what he was getting at, but there was also the fact that she wanted to hook up, without going all the way, of course. She wanted to please him, to run her hands through his hair, make him smile the way he smiled at her all night, but more intensely and ecstatically, have him eager for her, like an animal. That was what made her…thrill inside. He was a beautiful animal at the peak of his rude animal health. And yet she could always control him. “All the way”—that was exactly what she wanted him to want! To know that this beautiful animal named Hoyt—the coolest and sleekest and most beautiful animal, the elite animal of the elite Dupont—to know that she had reduced his world to a single obsessive thing—wanting Charlotte Simmons! That was what she wanted! He was the animal, and she was the hunted. He was in love with her. That she knew. He lusted for her. That she knew. To see his love and his lust and his very mind, for that matter, turned white-hot and forged into a single super-concentrated alloy—whose shape she would determine—that was all she wanted!