I Am Charlotte Simmons (62 page)

Read I Am Charlotte Simmons Online

Authors: Tom Wolfe

BOOK: I Am Charlotte Simmons
12.7Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Adam heard himself saying, “Yes, sir.”
Roth gestured toward an armchair near the desk. As Adam approached, Roth squinted his eyes at him and turned one side of his lips up in a smile that wasn't so much a greeting, as Adam saw it, as a conclusion: I know your kind.
Adam sat down, and Roth, still rocked way back in his desk chair, said, “How long you been with us, Adam?”
“You mean tutoring?” said Adam.
Roth nodded yes.
“Two years, sir.” Why was he adding all these sirs? But he knew why. It was fear. He also knew viscerally that Roth was one of that breed of men who was totally unlike himself, the kind who welcomes a fight over anything whatsoever, the better to demonstrate his dominant nature, the kind who, in fact, couldn't wait to show you how much he liked to tangle, the kind who, as a boy, dared you to take him on and then made sure you caved in immediately, perhaps by bullying but more often subtly, through “good-natured” roughhousing in which you always wound up as the “mock” victim and through a condescending obliviousness when you went out of your way to flatter him or curry favor. Adam, like so many others, had grown up knowing that the male sex was divided into these two types, those who seek to impress by their willingness to fight and who abide no insinuations that they might not have it—and those who, like himself, know from age six on that they don't have it and who seek to avoid all situations where the distinction might be made. He would live out his life knowing which breed he was. He would be aware of it every day until the day he died. His shame would be profound, so profound that he would never mention it to a living soul, not even the intimate soul to whom he had divulged …
everything
…
“Two years …” Buster Roth was saying. He began nodding, as if ruminating over this interesting piece of information. “Well, I'm sure in two years you've gotten to know a lot more about sports and athletes than most students.”
Adam couldn't figure out what the right answer to that might be. One answer might indicate that he knew more about it than was good for him. Another answer might indicate that he had a negative attitude.
Finally Adam said, “I can't really tell, sir. I don't know how much other students know. Other students certainly talk about the sports program a lot. I know that.”
“Well, you're talking about
fans
now, Adam. I'm talking about—but by the way, since we're on the subject, would you call yourself a fan?”
Adam didn't know the right answer to that, either. “Yes” seemed like the better part of wisdom, but his pride wouldn't let him say that, not even in front of an audience of one—one who had committed his entire life to sports. So he said, “Sort of, I guess, but I guess not in the way”—he wanted to say not in the way you mean, but that didn't sound tactful enough—“not in the way most fans are fans.”
“Sort of but not in the way most fans are fans …” said Buster Roth with an unnatural drawl. Irony? “What would you say yours is?”
“Well, I'm like interested in sports … as sports, I guess you'd say. I mean I think it's really interesting that millions of people become completely absorbed in sports, emotionally involved.”
The tactician in Adam—which is to say, his powers of logic—told him to drop the subject and act dumb or ask Coach Roth some humble question that would flatter the man's sense of mastery of the world of sports. Neutralize yourself! Make
him
the subject! Why didn't you just say, “Oh, yes, I'm a fan …” But the intellectual exhibitionist in him brushed the tactician aside, and he said, “Well, I guess I mean I'm interested in what makes fans
fans
.”
He wanted to say, “Why on earth do Dupont University students with average SATs of fourteen-ninety get excited, scream their hearts out over ‘their' basketball team—which is made up of a bunch of hired mercenaries who probably wouldn't average nine hundred without the swimmies—who live a life completely apart from the real students, who feel infinitely superior to them, who eat better food in a better dining room, who have tutors to do their schoolwork for them, who say
you ain't, he don't
, and
nome saying?
, who look upon friendly student fans as either sluts or suck-ups—why are they
fans
of such people?” But not even the egoist in Adam could push him that far, so he settled for, “I keep wondering why people in Boston, where I'm from, get so excited over the Red Sox. I mean, there's not anybody on the team who's from anywhere near Boston. They don't set foot in Boston, most of them, except to go to Fenway Park. But that doesn't matter. Red Sox fans are the most loyal fans in the world.”
He sensed that he was already getting too wound up. This was not the
time, if ever, to try out the theory of championism on Buster Roth. “I mean, that's the sort of thing that interests—that I'd like to figure out, I guess.”
“I see,” said Buster Roth with a tuned-out expression on his face. “What about the athletes themselves? You've gotten to know some of the athletes pretty well by now, I'd imagine.”
Adam hesitated. “I don't know. I guess there are all kinds.”
Buster Roth smiled, which Adam took to be a good sign.
“Well, let's talk about our mutual friend, Jojo. Jojo's got a serious issue on his hands here. Whattaya think he ought to do?”
Adam had never thought of it from that point of view. It confused him. “Well … I don't know …”
“If I were you, Adam, I'd give it some thought. If Jojo is penalized over … whatever has happened … you could run the risk of the same penalty.”
The idea stunned Adam. His brain churned, finally settling on a single consideration. If that was true, if any such thing happened, he could say good-bye to the Rhodes scholarship, to any and all scholarships, to any and all consulting jobs, and to the pretension of being a Millennial Mutant.
He croaked out, “I don't understand.”
“Let's suppose,” said Buster Roth, “that you wrote the entire paper for Jojo, and all he did was hand it in. I'm just saying what if.” He paused and squinted at Adam. “I'm not saying that's what happened. Jojo doesn't say that's what happened. But if the panel decided that's what happened, then Jojo would be suspended for the next semester, which happens to be the basketball season. And so would you.”
Adam felt an adrenal flash flood. “The panel?”
“Oh yes. If things got pushed far enough, there would be a panel of four students and two faculty members, and there would be what amounts to a trial, and if the panel found Jojo guilty of any such thing, then anybody who knowingly aided and abetted him would be considered just as guilty.”
Adam didn't know what to say. He had the terrifying feeling that the brute behind the desk—with his arms as big as Adam's thigh, with his look of domination over …
the other breed—
was ready to swat him like a fly. “I—” He didn't know how to word what he wanted to say. “But—the Athletic Department
hires
the tutors and makes it clear that we're supposed to give the athletes all the help they need. That's what we're told—all the help they need.”
“Oh? Did anyone in the athletic department ever tell you to write an entire
paper for an athlete and all he had to do was hand it in? If so, I want to know that individual's name. Not that I'm saying that's what happened. All I'm saying is that's what Jojo's teacher thinks. The actual truth could be something else entirely. Only you and Jojo know.”
Adam could feel his pulse galloping in the carotid artery in his neck. The next question would be, “So what
did
happen?” and he hadn't a clue as to how to answer it. He waffled as best he could: “It's hard to give like a … yes-no—”
Buster Roth held up his right palm in the halt mode. “I'm not asking you to go through the whole thing right now. What I want you to do is take a day or two and try to remember everything you can about what happened … or didn't happen. You understand what I'm saying? Make sure you haven't forgotten anything.”
Adam's mind was spinning. He immediately feared the worst. He was being set up—although exactly how, he couldn't imagine. He was being tested—but for what? Loyalty? Coolness at conniving? He was being made to
look
as if he were lying—by accepting the suggestion that he take a few days to “remember.” He was being toyed with—because the warrior breed, eating spareribs, bones and all, loved to torment the
other
breed. On the other hand, suppose he just blurted it all out, as he could right now, without forgetting one speck of detail—could it be that Buster Roth was offering him a way out by “remembering” what happened … in a certain way …
And then he couldn't resist: “What does Jojo say happened?”
As soon as he asked, his heart fell. A question like that—he was as much as admitting his willingness to cook up some kind of story in order to wriggle out of the jam he was in.
Buster Roth looked him in the eye and said in a level, almost monotonous voice, “Jojo says he wrote it himself. At the last minute he realized there was some important material he needed, so he called you up and you showed him the books where he might be able to find it. So he used those books, and by now it was the last minute and he'd run out of time, and he didn't know exactly what all the terms meant, but he used them anyway. That's what Jojo says happened.”
Buster Roth stopped talking but continued to look Adam right in the eye. The atmosphere was now humid with the matter of whether Adam remembered it that way or not. But Roth never asked.
Adam wouldn't have known what to say if he had.
 
 
As soon as Vance came into the library, Hoyt jumped up and steered him into the billiard room. “You wanna hear something incredible, Vance-man?” With great gusto, he told him about Rachel and Pierce & Pierce.
“Shit, Hoyt,” said Vance, “that's fucking awesome!” He looked toward the doorway. There was I.P., saying, “Anybody got—”
“Nobody
got
,” said Hoyt. “Saint Rays only fuck around for
real.”
I
know they'll be older than I am, I know they'll be better dressed than I am, cooler cooler cooler oh so much cooler than I am, but please, God, don't let them be blond and skinny, don't let them be cute and bitchy, don't—please, God!—don't let them be the sort of boarding school Sarc 3 girls like Beverly or Hillary or Erica, who can cut you open before you even know the knife has gone in—
Oh, please, God!
By now, three-thirty p.m., the sun was already low in the sky, and the rays came slanting through the trees here on Ladding Walk, breaking everything—the old buildings, the antique lampposts, the cobblestones—into dancing flecks of shadow and flickers of light so bright they made Charlotte avert her eyes. She didn't expect there to be many students on Ladding Walk on a Saturday afternoon, but the ones she saw were walking toward her, toward the bosom of the campus, which all knew by heart, sounding so carefree and happy, chattering away on their cell phones … as they, too, broke up into dappled dancing shadows and lights before her averted eyes. It struck her as … ominous. They were heading
toward
the bosom of Dupont. She was the only one heading
away
, toward the edge, destined for someplace shady—namely, the Saint Ray house. If Marsden Hall, the main classroom building on the Walk, weren't in the way, she could see the house from here.
It occurred to her that she had never seen it in daylight. The Saint Ray house had always been that dangerous, that tempting Devil's nest of the night.
Beverly—Beverly, who knew about such things!—had warned her not to go off with Hoyt or any other Saint Ray to another city for a formal. But how could she pass up a chance at such eminence, a freshman invited to a formal all the way down in Washington, D.C., by a senior, the coolest guy in the coolest fraternity at Dupont? I am Charlotte Simmons! Besides, that was two weeks ago, when the formal wouldn't be until “two Saturdays from now,” and two Saturdays was a long way off, wasn't it? But this … is
that
Saturday. A frightening look at herself as if from above, in astral projection: nothing but a little girl, all alone, just recently come down from the mountains, clad in a red T-shirt, a pair of tight jeans, and an ugly, puffy khaki colored synthetic-down-filled jacket from Robinson's in Sparta, which made her look about seven when it was zipped up like this—a round, puffy bundled-up seven, carrying a canvas boat bag containing everything she was taking for the dinner and the dance in a fancy hotel. That was her luggage! A boat bag Bettina had lent her, which, she now realized, only made it worse! She could just imagine what Vance's and Julian's dates, whom she had never met or laid eyes on before, were going to think about a canvas boat bag, the warm and toasty little girl's coat—
Oh dear God, don't let them be blond and skinny!
Now she could see the Saint Ray house. It looked so much smaller … and shabbier … in daylight, more like just some old house, albeit with columns before the front door—not like the Devil's nest, in any case. SUVs were parked out front—illegally—on the Walk itself. Guys were going back and forth from the SUVs to the house. Vance was in the front yard. He was making exaggerated gestures to someone on the porch and yelling something Charlotte couldn't make out. Quite a show he was putting on. She was willing to bet anything it all had to do with a girl.
Charlotte hurriedly unzipped her puffy jacket and thrust it back until it was barely hanging on her shoulders. Godalmighty, this wind! But make sure she doesn't look seven, make sure they all get an eyeful of her body. That was the main thing …
She wasn't worried about Vance, Julian, and Hoyt. It was all … the dates. Julian was taking his regular frat-house girl, named Nicole, who had never been there when Charlotte was there. Vance was taking his regular girlfriend, whoever she was. Charlotte had never heard of her hanging around Saint Ray at all. She knew they would both be upperclassmen—and
female upperclassmen, she kept being told, resented “fresh meat” in the first place.
Two girls stood next to each other on the porch. Surely, God—not those two! One was blond and the other almost blond, so light was her long brown hair—and both were skinny. The almost-blond one … Charlotte could have sworn she had seen her before. Where … she couldn't imagine. Two other girls, one blond and the other dark-haired and skinny, were sitting down on the edge of the porch.
Vance was looking straight at the light-brown-haired one and barking, “Come on, Crissy, how about giving me a fucking hand? Where'd you put the thirty-rack? And what the hell'd you do with the handle?”
The girl cocked her hips in a mocking way and said airily, “That's not my job, Vance. You're the one who's going to get sloshed the second we get there.” She turned to the blonde and, not lowering her voice in the slightest, said, “My boyfriend's a fucking alcoholic, Nicole.”
With a cry that was half shriek and half laugh, the blonde, Nicole, poked her thumb into Crissy's side—a big twitch and a
Heyyy
—and said in a merry coloratura, “Oh, you little hypocrite!”
Vance motioned toward an SUV, which turned out to be Hoyt's Suburban, and said, “All right, then where's the rest of your shit? Your shit's your job, right? I don't know if we have room for all this girl stuff. You think we're going away for a week or something? Why'd you need a duffel bag?”
Stern
—and Vance wasn't the stern type.
Charlotte began to get the picture. Vance was rolling out all the gruff stuff to show Julian, Boo-man, Heady, and the other guys just who wore the pants in this relationship. God help him if he indicated in some unguarded moment that he felt
tenderly
toward her.
Now Charlotte remembered where she had seen this Crissy before. She was the girl Vance had tried to bring into the bedroom that night at the Saint Ray party, prompting Hoyt to say, “This is
our
room.” She obviously had him whipped. And why not? She was merely perfect. Wide jaws, smooth jawline, model-girl face, big blue eyes, long good-as-blond brown hair, a suede jacket so soft it made you want to bury your head in it, a brown leather belt that matched it, a button-down shirt with the top four buttons undone, absolutely the right jeans, pointy-toed boots polished to a mellow glow, as opposed to a sharp shine, and a little bright brown leather bag that probably cost more than everything Charlotte had on put together. The blonde had the pointy boots, the jeans, the same little brown bag, and a tight T-shirt
with bright yellow and light blue horizontal stripes that made her chest look bigger.
And here came Charlotte Simmons in her mousy outfit, half of it borrowed, a ratty red T-shirt—a pair of still not-quite-right jeans, and sneakers—
sneakers!
—no handbag at all, no garment bag, not even a duffel bag, but rather—a shapeless canvas boat bag.
Amid all this scurrying around the front yard, however, no one had even acknowledged her arrival. And why should they? Some droopy little freshman standing there in rags toting her miserable sack. Julian was busy trying to jam more “girl stuff” into the rear end of the Suburban. Vance was busy trying to stare down the good-as-blond Crissy, who stood on the porch with her hips cocked insolently and the rest of her body Cybex-machined, treadmilled, and de-carbohydrated to near perfection. Boo-man, Julian, and Heady had lowered their voices an octave in order to sound like manly rakes. They bantered, they bellowed, they ribbed one another with hawhawhawhaws. And Charlotte just stood there in social oblivion. Where was Hoyt? Should she start looking for him? But she couldn't … too demeaning … too demeaning …
“Crissy!” the blonde, Nicole, was saying. “You are
so
bad! How can you say
he's
an alcoholic? I mean, I wish I had a little video of you at the
after-party
last night. You don't remember how you like … got down on all fours—”
“Hahhhhh!”
Crissy soared into a trill of laughter, “Oh, puh-leeese! Give—me—a—
break
! Do you honestly think you could have like …
aimed
a camcorder? How many times did you go throw up?”
“Ohmygod,” said the blonde, rolling her eyes, “don't even
mention
that ohmygod … that bathroom was
so-o-o-o-o
disgusting. Did you go in there?
Eccccch.
I woke up with
such
a hangover this morning. I'm not talking about a
hangover
, I'm talking about like a toxic hangover.”
“Tell me about it.”
“But I mean
poisonous
. I got up and I was walking like … what are those birds that have one leg shorter than the other?”
“The dodo bird?”
“I guess. Whatever. I could like hardly make it downstairs to the dining room. I stuck my head in the kitchen, and I said—”
While Charlotte stood there like an invisible waif, the two girls regaled each other with “hilarious” accounts of how each, unbeknownst to the other, had gone to the kitchen of their sorority house and implored the cook,
Maude, evidently black, judging by the way they mimicked her accent—“Maude took one look at me … I didn't even know I still had Vance's sweater on … the fucking thing comes down to
here …
and my hair was all like … plastered down over my face … it stuck like fucking
Velcro …
and Maude, she's like, ‘Lawd God in Heaven, Crissy, lookitchoo! Whatchoo girls be up to now!'”—how they implored her for “grease,” greasy omelets, greasy French toast, biscuits glopped with butter, which made Nicole feel like she had just swallowed a basketball afterward, but how the fuck else could you deal with a hangover except with grease?
“I need some grease right now,” said the blonde. “I need some
serious
grease. I mean, like french fries. You know the really
nasty
kind, like they have at the Sizzlin' Skillet?”
Both laughed and laughed.
To Charlotte, this bit of repartee could scarcely have been more deflating. They had to make the
Sizzlin' Skillet
the lowest and most disgusting of all cheap food … The two were upperclassmen, great pals, members of what was known as the hottest, most socially luminous sorority at Dupont—Delta Omicron Upsilon, or DOU, affectionately—even reverently—called the Douche—blessed with an aura of northeastern private schools, fair, straight hair, and sophistication. And they were such lovely little liars. Charlotte couldn't imagine an ounce of grease going down the gullet of either one of those two perfect skinny bodies.
“Hey, babe! Put your stuff in the car?”
It was Hoyt! Coming out the front door of the Saint Ray house, beaming a big, hearty smile at her! Thank God! She felt saved from
utter
oblivion. He bounded down the steps toward her, as perfect in his frat-boy way as the two Douche girls were in their way. He had on a well-worn tan hunting jacket over a light blue shirt unbuttoned down the front to just above the sternum, the shirttails hanging out over a pair of chinos frayed at the bottom of the pant legs, and flip-flops.
“Put your stuff in the car?” he said again as he came closer, still smiling. Charlotte hung on to that smile for dear life. It was her validation. No matter what she looked like to them, she was under the aegis of the coolest of the cool, Hoyt Thorpe.
But she didn't know how to answer him. She couldn't just hold up the boat bag—
So she said, “Not yet.”
What a sad, weak
not yet
! She couldn't get a word out with the careless
ease, the perfectly at-home insouciance of the two girls standing near her on the porch.
“Well, we can't keep dicking around or we'll be late,” said Hoyt, pleasantly. “We got a band to make connections with, the hotel's got waiters and shit lined up for us. I see Vance. Is everybody else here?” He turned that way and saw Julian. He turned this way and saw Vance's date, Crissy, and the other one. “Djou meet Crissy and Nicole?”
Charlotte looked at the pair with a sinking heart. Crissy
and Nicole
. On top of everything else, they were both —
ey
girls. All the
cool
girls at Dupont, the ones who were
with it
, were —
ey
girls—Beverly, Courtney, Wheatley, Kingsley, Tinsley, Avery, and now Crissy. Of course, there was Nicole … and Erica … but thinking of Erica made her sink still farther—
She croaked out a miserable little “Hi”—just that, all the while realizing that her stricken, frightened face spoke volumes concerning her confidence, maturity, strength, social competence,
bon vivance
, charm, wit, knowledge of the ways of the world—
volumes!
“And this is Charlotte,” said Hoyt, gesturing toward her.
Oh God, it was too much. The two
—ey
girls merely waved to her—no, not so much a wave as a half a wrist tick … and that
dead smile
… the same one Beverly's chum Erica had given her … The lips widen and even turn up slightly at the corners, but the eyes die and the brow ages twenty bored years and the lights go out.

Other books

Leavin' Trunk Blues by Atkins, Ace
The Bridge of Peace by Cindy Woodsmall
Shadow Hills by Anastasia Hopcus
Warlord of Kor by Terry Carr
Miss Dower's Paragon by Gayle Buck
Wicked Christmas Eve by Eliza Gayle