Katherine and Michael meet at Sybil’s New Year’s Eve party

Katherine Danziger and Michael Wagner meet at Sybil Davison’s New Year’s Eve party, where an awkward exchange over fondue becomes the first sign of an attraction Katherine is reluctant to acknowledge. The party does not immediately bring them together: both kiss other people at midnight. Instead, the encounter takes shape through glances, half-concealed interest, and a small piece of news passed between friends after the guests go to bed.

The invitation and the fondue party

Katherine and Erica Small decide at the last minute to attend the party. They have little prior knowledge of Sybil Davison, who lives in Summit, New Jersey, while Katherine and Erica live in Westfield, New Jersey. They go because Sybil has invited them and because they have no better plans. The gathering is a family-room fondue party, with about twenty people seated on the floor around a low table. Pots of steaming Swiss cheese, baskets of bread, and long, two-pronged forks give the crowded occasion a casually intimate setting. Katherine has eaten only a couple of bites when a boy seated across Erica tells her, “You've got some on your chin.”

He leans across Erica and offers his napkin, asking, “You want me to wipe it off?” Katherine cannot tell whether he is teasing her, and answers, “I can wipe my own chin,” while trying to swallow the bread in her mouth. He introduces himself as Michael Wagner. Her brief “So?” prompts Erica to introduce herself and identify Katherine as her friend, calling her strange. Michael replies, “I noticed.” The exchange is prickly rather than openly welcoming, but Katherine registers his appearance: glasses, abundant reddish-blond hair, and a small mole on his left cheek. For a reason she cannot explain, she thinks of touching it.

Attention across the table

Katherine turns back to the bread and to Fred, the boy sitting on her other side, who says he lives next door to Sybil and attends Dartmouth as a freshman. She privately considers him a creep. As he keeps talking, her attention drifts away from him and toward Michael’s conversation with Erica. Katherine wonders where Michael goes to school and hopes it is somewhere nearby, such as Rutgers. Erica tells him that she and Katherine are high-school seniors from Westfield and that they are spending the night at Sybil’s.

Michael introduces Erica to Elizabeth, a pale, dark-haired girl sitting beside him, and puts his arm around her. Katherine sees this and pretends to become interested in Fred after all. That performance establishes the scene’s tension: Katherine is curious about Michael, but the first visible sign of intimacy between them belongs instead to Michael and Elizabeth. The party offers no clear assurance that Katherine’s interest is returned, and she responds by directing her attention elsewhere rather than exposing it.

Midnight and the first contrast

At midnight, Sybil flashes the lights on and off. Fred wishes Katherine a Happy New Year and tries to force his tongue into her mouth. Katherine keeps her lips tightly shut. While Fred kisses her, she watches Michael kissing Elizabeth. The parallel actions make the contrast plain: Fred’s unwanted advance meets Katherine’s resistance, while her attention remains fixed on Michael, whose kiss with Elizabeth she observes instead of returning Fred’s.

Michael appears taller than Katherine had first thought, and she describes him as thin but not skinny. After the party, Katherine and Erica help Sybil and her parents clean up. Around three in the morning they trudge upstairs to sleep. Sybil falls asleep as soon as her head reaches the pillow; Katherine and Erica, lying in sleeping bags on the floor, have trouble falling asleep, perhaps because of the hard arrangement or Sybil’s loud snoring. The late hour and shared sleeping space carry the first encounter beyond the party, into a quieter conversation between the two friends.

What the encounter leaves behind

Erica asks whether Michael is a nice guy. Katherine answers by teasing that he is much too tall for Erica, who is only four feet ten inches and would come up to his belly button. The joke deflects the question from Katherine’s own reaction, although Erica soon supplies the detail that makes that deflection harder to maintain: Michael asked her for Katherine’s last name and phone number. Katherine turns around in surprise and asks whether he really did. Erica confirms it, then suggests that Katherine probably does not care. Katherine gives her a half-hearted kick; both laugh and fall asleep.

The request for Katherine’s name and number is the encounter’s most concrete indication that Michael’s attention may extend beyond their brief exchange over the fondue. It does not erase the scene’s uncertainty: he has kissed Elizabeth, while Katherine has watched from the other side of an unwanted kiss. But the moment closes on a possibility rather than a rejection. Katherine’s guarded replies, her involuntary attention to Michael, and Erica’s report leave the two young women with a private joke—and Katherine with reason to wonder what the meeting might lead to.