I’ve never really liked parties. The music’s always turned up too loud, and you can never hear what anyone is saying to you.

Although at a party like the one at the Tau Phi House, that might actually be a good thing. Because no one here looks like much of a scintillating conversationalist, if you know what I mean. Everyone is super-attractive—the girls with stick-straight blow-outs, the guys with product carefully layered through their rumpled locks, to give them the appearance of having bed head, when you so know they just got out of the shower.

And though it might be below freezing outside, you wouldn’t know it by the way the girls are dressed—spangly halter tops and low-riders so low they’d make a stripper blush. I don’t see a single pair of Uggs. New York College kids are nothing if not up on their Hot or Not lists.

I am dismayed when we come off the rickety elevator to see that the words FAT CHICKS GO HOME are still spray-painted along the hallway, though it looks as if a little progress has been made in removing them. They’re not quite as fluorescent as they were last time I was here.

But they’re still there.

And I certainly don’t see anyone above a size 14 at the party. If I had to guess, I’d say the average size present is a 2.

Although I don’t know how these girls find thongs in the children’s section, which is undoubtedly where most of them have to shop in order to find anything that fits them.

But not everyone seems to find their incredibly slim waists (how do all their internal organs even fit in there? I mean like their liver, and everything? Isn’t it all squashed? Don’t you need at least a twenty-nine-inch waist in order for everything in there to have enough room to do its job?) freakish. Jordan is soon having a very nice time, since the minute he walks through the door, a size 2 runs up to him and is all, “Ohmigod, aren’t you Jordan Cartwright? Weren’t you in Easy Street? Ohmigod, I have all your CDs!”

Soon more size 2s are gathered around him, wriggling their narrow, nonchildbearing hips and squealing. One of them offers Jordan a plastic cup of beer from a nearby keg. I hear him say, “Well, you know, after my solo album came out, there was a bit of a backlash from the media, because people aren’t comfortable with that which isn’t familiar,” and I know he’s gone, sucked into the Size 2 Zone.

“Leave him,” I say to Gavin, who is staring at Jordan in concern—as who wouldn’t? Those girls look as if they haven’t eaten in days. “It’s too late. He’s going to have to save himself. Have you seen Doug anywhere?”

Gavin looks around. The loft is so crowded with people—and the lights are turned so low—that I don’t see how he could recognize anyone. But he manages to spy Doug Winer in a corner over by the wide windows, making out with some girl. I can’t tell if the girl is Dana, his paramour of the other morning. But whoever she is, she is keeping Doug occupied… enough so that I don’t have to worry about him lifting his head and spotting me for the time being.

“Great,” I say. “Now, which one is Steve?”

He looks around again. This time he points in the direction of the billiards table and says, “That’s him. Playing pool. The tall one, with the blond hair.”

“Okay,” I say. I have to shout in order for him to hear me, because the music is pulsing so loud. It’s techno pop, which I actually sort of like. To dance to. Sadly, no one is dancing. Maybe it’s not cool to dance at college parties? “We’re going in. You’re going to introduce me, right?”

“Right,” Gavin says. “I’ll say you’re my girlfriend.”

I shake my head. “He’ll never believe that. I’m too old for you.”

“You’re not too old for me,” Gavin insists.

I’m unbuttoning my coat and pulling off my hat. “You called me Grandma!”

“I was joking,” Gavin says, looking sheepish. “You couldn’t really be my grandma. I mean, how old are you, anyway? Twenty-five?”

“Um,” I say. “Yeah.” Give or take four years. “But still. Tell him I’m your sister.”

Gavin’s goatee quivers indignantly. “We don’t look anything alike!”

“Oh, my God.” The techno pop is starting to give me a headache. What am I even doing here? I should be home, in bed, like all the other late-twenty-somethings.Letterman is on. I’m missing Letterman! I fold my coat over my arm. I don’t know what else to do with it. There’s no coat check, and I don’t dare leave it lying around. Who knows who might throw up on it? “Fine. Just say I’m a friend who’s looking to alter her state of consciousness.”

Gavin nods. “Okay. But don’t go off with him alone. If he asks.”

I can’t help preening. Just a little. I finger the tendrils that have escaped from my up do. “Do you think he will?”

“Steve’ll do anything that moves,” is Gavin’s disconcerting reply. “He’s a dog.”

I stop preening. “Right,” I say, giving my miniskirt a tug to make it a millimeter longer. “Well, let’s go.”

We make our way through the crowd of writhing bodies to the pool table, where two guys are taking turns shooting, in front of an appreciative audience of size 2s. Where did all these tiny girls come from? Is there some kind of island where they’re all kept, and only let out at night? Because I never see them during the daytime.

Then I remember. The island is called Manhattan, and the reason I never see them in the daytime is because they’re all busy at their internships at Condé Nast.

Gavin waits politely for a tall guy to put the six ball in the corner pocket—much to the appreciative sighing of the size 2s—before going, “Steve-O.”

The tall guy looks up, and I recognize Doug Winer’s pale blue eyes—but that’s it. Steve Winer is as lanky as his little brother is stocky, a basketball player’s body to Doug’s wrestling frame. Wearing a black cashmere sweater with the sleeves pushed up to reveal a set of very nicely tendoned forearms, and jeans so frayed they could only be designer, Steve sports the same carefully mussed hairdo as all the other guys at his party—with the exception of Gavin, whose hair is mussed because he really didn’t comb it after he got up.

“McGoren,” Steve says, a smile spreading across his good-looking face. “Long time no see, man.”

Gavin saunters forward to shake the hand Steve’s stretched out across the table. Which is when I notice that Steve’s jeans are hanging low enough on his hips to reveal a few inches of his washboard stomach.

It’s the sight of the stomach that does it—plus the fact that there are a few tawny tufts of hair sticking up from under his waistband, as well. I feel as if someone just kicked me in the gut. Steve Winer may be a student and potential murderer, and therefore off-limits.

But he’s got a wicked bod.

“Hey, dude,” Gavin says, in his habitually sleepy drawl. “How’s it goin’?”

“Good to see you, man,” Steve says, as the two of them clasp right hands. “How’s school? You still a film major?”

“Aw, hells yeah,” Gavin says. “Made it through Advanced Experimental last semester.”

“No shit?” Steve doesn’t seem surprised. “Well, if anyone could make it, it’d be you. You ever see that Mitch guy who was in our group in Tech Theory?”

“Not so much,” Gavin says. “Got busted for meth.”

“Shit.” Steve shakes his head. “That fuckin’ sucks.”

“Yeah, well, they sent ’im to minimum security federal, not state.”

“Well, that’s lucky, anyway.”

“Yeah. They let ’im take two pieces of sporting equipment, so he packed his hacky-sack and a Frisbee. He’s already got a killer Frisbee team started. First one in the prison system.”

“Mitch was always an overachiever,” Steve observes. His gaze strays toward me. I try to adopt the same vacuous expression I see on the faces of the size 2s around me. It’s not hard. I just imagine I haven’t eaten in twenty-four hours, like them.