I Am Charlotte Simmons (100 page)

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Authors: Tom Wolfe

BOOK: I Am Charlotte Simmons
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“I know, Momma.”
“Do you? … ‘Deed I do hope so.”
“I'm sorry, Momma.”
“Sorry don't change a thing, darling. Never did, never will.”
Long pause. “I love you, Momma.” The last and lowest resort of the sinner.
“I love you, Charlotte, and so does your daddy and Buddy and Sam. And Aunt Betty … and Miss
Pennington. You got a lot of folks you don't want to be letting down.”
After they hung up, Charlotte sat stricken in her wooden chair, too empty to cry. She had thought it would be a relief to “get it over with.” It wasn't a relief, and she had gotten nothing over with. She was an ungrateful coward and a liar. What she had accomplished was to egest a putrid, obvious lie.
She had even sunk so low as to pass off Adam Gellin, perhaps soon to be on television, as her boyfriend. Such a lie, such a lie, and to what earthly end? Momma wasn't stupid. She hadn't believed a word of it. All she found out for sure was that her little prodigy was, for some no doubt vile reason, a little liar.
 
 
“I probably shouldn't be calling you, but I just had to tell you: you're awesom, dude,
awesome.”
As the words came through the receiver of his cell phone, Adam purred. He had been purring a lot this morning. Calls! E-mails!—like a
thousand
e-mails! Letters slipped under the door! Even a couple of FedExes! He was
high
, high in the best way a human being could be high, high with the triumph … and high with vengeance satisfied, paid in full. Even this shithole he lived in …
glowed
as he looked about it, glowed like some … well, holy place …
Nevertheless, this particular call was special. He owed this guy … a lot.
“Thanks, Ivy,” he said into the cell phone. “That means a lot to me, coming from you. I couldn't have—”
“What's better than ‘awesome'?” said the exuberant voice. “‘Dynamite' maybe? It was fucking dynamite, dude! Mission Ayyyy-complished. I wish you could come over and see the sonofabitch dragging his rotten fucking ass around this place. He hasn't said a word about it, as far as I know, but body language says it all. That fucker's gotten some baaaaaaad news.”
“You're the one who's dynamite, Ivy,” said Adam. “I gotta run off to this fucking press conference pretty soon, but I gotta ask you again, because I've racked my fucking brain, and I just—cannot—figure—out—how you got those documents from Pierce and Pierce and those tapes from your house there. How did you?”
The voice laughed heartily. “Some things it's better you—especially you—
don't
know. You know what I mean? Let's just say there's certain … friends of the family … who used to work at Gordon Hanley and have moved along to … let us say,
other
investment banks and who've—well, let's
just leave it at that. As for the tapes … let's just say that most Saint Rays are
above
working with their hands and fooling around with wiring and shit, but every now and then, I guess, somebody comes along who—who—and I think I'll leave
that
… at
that
. Do yourself a favor. Forget I even told you that much.”
“Look, Ivy,” said Adam, “I really do have to run, but we've got to get together sometime and let each other in on the complete war stories.”
“Great idea,” said Ivy. “Once all this shit blows over. I tell you what. I'll take you to dinner some night at Il Babuino in Philadelphia. Maybe you've heard of it. It's as good as any restaurant in New York, and it's a place where you can hear each other talk. Also, I know there's not a fucking soul in this house who
feels
rich enough to go there. Not even our Mr. Phipps.”
“Sounds great!”
“I'll tell you about all the shit that the shitheads, the major shithead and the minor shithead—well, Phipps isn't so bad—what the number-one shithead and his pals have dumped on me. I'll tell you what they fucking did at this formal we had in Washington.”
“I know a little bit about that particular formal, Ivy.”
“You
do
?”
“Yeah, and I know a little bit about a girl named Gloria.”
“You're shitting me! Well, obviously you aren't. You're too fucking much, Adam! You know everything!”
“Not everything, believe me … not everything, by a long shot. But hey! We can talk about that, too! Right now I really do have to get to this fucking press conference.”
As he lugged his bicycle down the narrow stairway, Adam repeated the words to himself.
Not everything
… not everything … He hadn't known enough to hold on to Charlotte and make her love him the way he loved her. He could see her from yesterday as if she were still here today. Not even the greatest triumph of his life, not even an accomplishment of this magnitude, was enough to win Charlotte. There was not a more beautiful girl on this earth …
But he mustn't let himself be so down right now. There was the press conference, and right after that, a whole segment on the Mike Flowers show on PBS. He just couldn't believe this was all really happening! He couldn't let himself wilt now.
 
 
Hoyt was drinking alone at the bar of the I.M. with the shell-backed bar stool slump of … the loser who comes to a bar and drinks alone.
Not that by the strictest of definitions one could have described Hoyt as alone. His peripheral vision detected yet another student he never saw before in his life approaching him … and now leaning over the empty seat beside him and saying, “You're Hoyt Thorpe, right?”
Hoyt turned his head just far enough to get a glimpse of the guy, and he responded, “Yeah,” wearily, as if he had been asked the same question a thousand times already, which he had, or at least it seemed like that many. This guy was very tall and very bony and very pale and acne-scarred, and he had an ingratiating smile. He had grown one of those little stubbly patches of beard not on but underneath his chin. He was a tool, obviously.
“Aw-right!” the tool said. “You're awesome, dude! I just wanted to tell you that!” So saying, he made a fist and put it practically in front of Hoyt's nose. So Hoyt made a fist and touched the tool's fist without even looking.
“Keep on truckin'!” the tool said with comradely warmth as he walked away. “Good stuff!”
Keep on truckin' … Good stuff …
That was from
Old School …
Couldn't you cram in any more cornball Cool into it? … you toolshed …
It was only nine-thirty, and the evening was just beginning to buzz at the I.M. Fortunately, it was too early for the band and the customary balls-to-the-wall excitement of being “out” at a bar. The sound system was playing CDs … Right now lonesome James Matthews and his lonesome guitar were singing and sighing that lonesome … ballad?—is that the word?called “But It's All Right.” It was a relief from the usual, in any case.
Anybody looking on probably thought the phlegmatic give-a-shit way he, Hoyt, was responding to all this was intended to show people he was still cool and not being swept away by all the gushing idolatry coming his way. The funny thing—except that it wasn't funny—was that the whole campus took this “exposé” by that little shit Adam Gellin as practically a
King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table
about him and Vance. The little shit thought he had nailed him with the “bribe” shit. But the Night of the Skull Fuck story was so awesome, people seemed to barely notice the rest. With his own ears Hoyt had heard students quoting that one line—“
Doing?
Looking at a fucking ape-faced dickhead, is what we're
doing
!”
—
and going into convulsions. What was this so-called bribe compared to that? A nice fat Wall Street job with an incredible starting salary floats his way and he takes it? What's the big deal?
“Hey, dude, sorry to be late.” It was Vance, arriving finally.
“Where the fuck've you been?” said Hoyt. “I've been sitting here and having to act like a real asshole to save this fucking seat for you.”
Vance slid onto the seat. “I couldn't help it, man. I got hung up at the library with—”
He couldn't even finish the sentence, because a guy came up from behind and said, “Wait a sec—aren't you Vance Phipps?”
Vance acted just like Hoyt, which is to say, bored and uncommunicative.
Once the guy had finished prostrating himself in awe of the Phipps presence and left, Vance said to Hoyt, “Well, monster, you wanted to be a legend in your own time, didn't you? Congratulations. You've done it. You've made it. As a matter of fact, I have a feeling it won't be just in your own time, either. Years from now they'll still be talking about Hoyt Thorpe and the Night of the Skull Fuck.”
“And what about you?” said Hoyt.
“Me, too, I'm afraid. But you got to admit, I come off as the Herb of the dynamic duo, the straight man. I didn't get off any great lines like ‘Doing? Looking at a fucking ape-faced dickhead is what we're
doing
.' Wow. That state trooper must have one hell of a fucking power of total recall to give the little shit that line, verbatim near as I can recall. Right, Hoyt?” He gave Hoyt a lip-twisted
gotcha
smile.
Hoyt finessed it. “How many months we got left before graduation, Vance?”
“I don't know … March, April, May … three.”
“So I've got three more months to be a legend in my own time and for all time, right?”
“That is true,” said Vance. “But you know, you can always come back here every year for reunions, and the Alumni Band will always provide the music.”
“Fun-nee. Could I bust my gut any worse laughing? What happens starting in June? You've got it made. You can go to any i-bank you want and get a job. You've been ‘hung up' at the fucking library more than once over the past four years, if I know anything about it. Your transcript will be a passport good at any door on Wall Street—
and
your last name is Phipps.”
“What the fuck are you complaining about?” said Vance. “You've already got a job, at Pierce and Pierce, only the hottest fucking i-bank there is—
and
you're getting a starting salary
only
fifty percent higher than what me or anybody else is going to get. How ungrateful is
that
?”
Hoyt said, “I got something to show you. It's why I wanted you to come over here.”
With that, he descended the bar stool, went over to the rack inside the door where everybody's winter gear was hanging, reached into an inside pocket of his navy topcoat, withdrew a piece of paper, and returned to the bar. “Read this,” he said to Vance.
Vance read it. It was an e-mail printout. At the top it said, “Subj: Re: Application.” It came from [email protected].
Dear Mr. Thorpe,
We are grateful for your interest in Pierce & Pierce and for the opportunity to meet with you when our team was at Dupont. Your qualifications are excellent in many respects, but after a thorough review by our Human Resources executive committee, we must conclude regretfully that your strengths are not a true “fit” with our requirements.
We as a team, and I personally, enjoyed our interview, and we wish you well in finding a place elsewhere in the industry, should that continue to be your interest.
Very truly yours,
Rachel E. Freeman
College Liaison
Human Resources
Pierce & Pierce
Vance looked at Hoyt as if waiting for him to comment. A long pause … as if Hoyt was waiting for
Vance
to comment. Finally Hoyt said, “What do you make of that?”
“What do I
make
of it? … I don't know … except that it sounds to me like they're reneging on their offer.”
“That's exactly it!” said Hoyt. “They're fucking
reneging
! How the fuck do they think they can get away with that?”
“Uh, I don't know,” said Vance. “You get a signed contract or anything?”
“No! I don't have any fucking contract, but on Wall Street it's different, right? Your word is your fucking contract, right? How the fuck else can investors and i-bankers trade fucking
billions
over the telephone every day?”
“I don't know. I hadn't thought of that,” said Vance. “Did anyone else happen to hear her promise you the job?”
“That's the fucking point I'm making!” said Hoyt. “Witnesses and shit are not fucking necessary! On Wall Street your fucking word is your fucking bond!”
Puzzled pause. “Well, I don't know. I don't know what to tell you, Hoyt. I don't know what applies to job offers and what doesn't”

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