Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

The eyeballs of the two Beirut players seemed to be popping out of their heads in multiples, the way they did in animated cartoons.

Just then an odd chiming sound began at the center table. The guys and a couple of the girls were tapping silverware against their big balloon-shaped wineglasses, so far empty. Then it spread to every table until all the guys, even Hoyt, and of course I.P., were banging away for all they were worth, and laughter erupted and mock cheers and whistles and more laughter, until the entire room was filled to bursting with the sheer animal exuberance of young manhood, accompanied by a confused storm of rhythmless pings from what sounded like half the wineglasses in the world being used by a demented mob as a glockenspiel.

Then there arose a cry from out of these young male gullets, indecipherable at first but then in unison:

“Sexy—prexy!”

“Sexy—prexy!”

“Sexy—prexy!”

“Sexy—prexy!”

And then a tall, slender figure rose up at the center table, looking perfect—perfect—in a tuxedo and a crisp, high-wing-collared, stiff-bosomed white shirt that looked like they had been made for him (in fact, both had). A tumultuous applause broke out, clapping such as Charlotte had heard only once before—for Charlotte Simmons at graduation last spring—and cheering laughter, whistles of the sort in which the boys put two fingers in their mouths and shot amazing piping rockets of sound into the already bursting air.

It was Vance, looking absolutely patrician…tall, straight as a column. His blond hair, instead of flopping all over the place, was combed back. It was parted in the middle, but his hair was so full, the part was like a tiny roadway down in the bottom of a canyon. He looked like a picture of F. Scott Fitzgerald that Charlotte had seen on the cover of a paperback of This Side of Paradise.

She had never dreamed he could look so handsome, the very image of dignity, yet glamorous at the same time. Ahhh…so he was the sexy prexy, the president of Saint Ray.

With only a slight smile on his face, a calm smile, a confident smile, Vance raised his glass of champagne to the level of his chin, and in a voice stronger than any she had ever heard him speak, he said, “Gentlemen!” He paused. He raised his chin slightly. There wasn’t a sound in the room, aside from some sort of steam jet back in the kitchen. He was practically looking down his nose as he ran his eyes over every Saint Ray at every table. Somehow his presence made the whole bunch of them seem like golden youth, frisky young men in formal dress black tuxedos, white dress shirts, and black bow ties, with golden sunburst medals of Saint Raymond’s cross pinned to their breast pockets and tiny ribbons in their lapels—frisky young men on the very brink of a bacchanal, but at this moment cognizant of the roles Destiny would call upon them to play someday.

Then he raised his glass from the level of his chin to the level of his lips and, tilting his chin up even slightly higher, said, “To the ladies!”

Hoyt, I.P., the two Beirut players, Oliver the oboist—every Saint Ray in the room—rose up. They lifted their glasses to their lips and as if with a single voice boomed back, “THE LADIES!” and in a single choreographed motion tilted the champagne glasses way up and drained them down their gullets.

Then they all sat down laughing and cheering, half of them also lavishing physical attention upon “the ladies.” Charlotte spotted Julian slipping his hand beneath Nicole’s hair at the base of her neck and lifting her head toward him as if he intended to devour her face. He did kiss her briefly on the lips. Heady, who must have been pretty far gone, made a foolish grinning face and then plunged his head into his date’s lap. The girl didn’t know whether to be amused or annoyed. She settled for looking at everybody at the table and arching her eyebrows and shrugging as if to say, “What do you do with a guy like this?”

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.