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After that, he was regarded as cool by all factions. As he began to fill out and his cleft chin took on manly contours, he was regarded as hot by all the girls. He was fourteen when he first scored, as the expression went. It was one night on the couch in the den in the girl’s own house, while her parents were directly overhead in their bedroom. The girl didn’t go to Greenwich High, however, but to Greenwich Country Day. Without consciously pla
Thanks to his comparatively rigorous preparation at Greenwich Country Day, Hoyt was a good year ahead of most of his classmates at Greenwich High. He was diligent about maintaining that advantage, not because of any true interest in academic excellence, but rather because good grades were a sign that you were part of the better element. At the begi
Attached to Hoyt’s Dupont application, the photo was dynamite as far as the admissions office was concerned. Here was a good-looking young man who was not only sympathetic to the downtrodden but also imaginative and enterprising. He had created and organized a mobile food-collecting service, complete with uniforms, to provide the needy with nutritious food from the best restaurants in a wealthy town, an implication that Hoyt let stand. It didn’t hurt that he himself was from a broken home and his mother had been reduced to drudgery at a place called Stanley Tool. These days such things were a definite plus at college admissions offices.
Hoyt had to emphasize his “deserving poor” credentials in order to get a partial scholarship, which was essential. Putting himself in this light galled him, however, and he had never revealed it to a soul at Dupont. If anybody asked, he said he had gone to a “day school” in Greenwich. Anybody who knew anything about Greenwich took this to be an unpretentious way of referring to Greenwich Country Day—even people who didn’t assumed that “day school” referred to a private school. He said that his parents were divorced and his dad was an investment banker who operated internationally (the fleeced little Estonian morsel at the bank). Stanley Tool and its accounting department he took care not to mention.
It never occurred to Hoyt that here was another tendency he shared with his father: blithely covering up his past and manufacturing a pedigree. In short, he was a second-generation snob. He looked so great, had such confidence, projected such an aura, had cultivated such a New York Honk, it never occurred to anyone to question his autobiography. He had no trouble getting into what everybody knew was the most socially upscale fraternity at Dupont, Saint Ray—far from it. Four fraternities had vied for him. None was quite what Saint Ray was, however. Saint Ray was the natural home of the ideal-typical socially superior student, who would be someone like Vance, whose father, Sterling Phipps, a golf nut, had retired at fifty after ru
“—here looking for us!” Vance was saying, his voice rising an uncool octave or so.
“Vance,” said Hoyt, “we’re not go
“Go
Hoyt loved the fear on Vance’s face. He, Hoyt, didn’t really know what he was talking about, either. But the general idea felt right.
He couldn’t resist shaking Vance up a little more. “If we can get him here, we can make that fucker fucking sit up on his hindquarters and beg.”
For a moment Vance said nothing. Then he said, “Hoyt, if you—has anybody ever been honest with you and told you you’re insane?”
Hoyt couldn’t hold back a laugh and a big grin. He loved it…an even bigger legend in his own time…It only remained to figure out how to get the governor of California to the campus on Chevalier Hoyt’s terms…He knew of one thing that turned the governor of California to a quivering gob of jelly…
Vance was saying, “You think that’s cool, don’t you, somebody saying you’re crazy. You think it’s a compliment.” He couldn’t believe the dreamy look that had stolen across Hoyt’s face. “Well, it’s not. You’re not crazy cool, Hoyt, you’re just crazy.”