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He faded into the throng I turned to Jonas "Is everybody here like that?"

"Actually, no A lot of the"

I looked at Liz "Don’t you dare leave ht our way to the bar No lukewar table, a white-shirted bartender was franticallyout bottles of Heineken As he shoveled ice into my vodka tonic--I’d learned my freshe to send hie of Marxist-inspired fellowship "I’ht have told hi here any more than you do" ("PS Stand ready! The Glorious Workers’ Revolution coht!")

Yet as he placed the drink incame upon me Perhaps it was the way he did it--autoh-speed robot, his attention already focused to the next partygoer in line--but the thought occurred to me that I’d done it I’d passed I had successfully snuck into the other world, the hidden world This here I had been headed, all along I gavethe Spee: what I had believed utterly impossible justof destiny I would takeits membership, because Jonas Lear would pave the way How else to explain the extraordinary coincidence of our second ? Fate had put him in my path for a reason, and here it was, in the rich ate that radiated froen, one I’d been waiting all my life to breathe, and it ht up was I in this new line of thought that I failed to notice Liz standing right in front of irl

"Tim!" she yelled over the music that had erupted in the room behind us "This is Steph!"

"Pleased to meet you!"

"Likewise!" She was short, hazel-eyed, with a spray of freckles and glossy brown hair Unremarkable compared to Liz, but pretty in her oay--cute would be the word--and sroundwork She was holding a nearly e clear Mine was eo to BU!"

"Yeah!" Because thevery close She sin

"Do you like it?"

"It’s okay! You’re a biocheht?"

I nodded The most banal conversation in history, but it had to be done "What about you?"

"Poli-sci! Hey, do you want to dance?"

I was an awful dancer, but asn’t? We an our aard atte we hadn’t o The dance floor was already full, the ically withheld until everybody was adequately liquored; I glanced around for Liz but didn’t find her I supposed she was too cool to make a fool of herself in this way and hoped she didn’t see me Stephanie, not to my surprise, was an enthusiastic dancer; what I hadn’t banked on was that she’d be so good at it Whereas , wholly unrelated to this song or any other, hers possessed a lithe expressiveness that verged on actual grace She spun, twirled, gyrated She did things with her hips that elsewise ht have looked indecent but under the circumstances seemed ordained by a different, less constricted ed to keep her attention ona warmly seductive smile, her eyes focused like lasers What had Liz called her? A "party girl"? I was beginning to see the advantages

We broke after the third song for yet another drink, slung them back like sailors on leave, and returned to the floor I’d eaten no dinner, and the booze was doing its work The evening dissolved into a haze At sopool with Alcott, as not such a bad fellow after all Everything I did and said seemed charmed More time passed, and then Stephanie, who me by the hand back toward the ht’s own heartbeat I had no idea what ti downshifted, and she wrapped her arood-sainstthe hairs at the back of my neck Never had I received such an undeserved present What was happening toshe could haveended, she placed her lips against my ear, her breath a sweet exhalation that made me shudder