Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

The door opened, and in came Beverly, her head leaning into the cell phone she held up to her ear, and right behind her was Erica. Beverly stopped in her tracks, the cell phone still at her ear, glowering, especially at Mimi—in her room—in her chair. Mimi sat up very straight on the edge of the chair—Beverly’s chair—as if ready at any moment to depart the nest, like a barn swallow.

Beverly now stared at Charlotte. Into the cell phone she said, “Jan…Jan…I know…Gotta go. Call you back.”

She took a few more steps into the room, staring at Charlotte but saying nothing. Erica came in behind her, and Charlotte seized the moment to stand up and sing out, “Hi, Erica!” Mainly she didn’t want Beverly to advance into the room looking down at her—and she didn’t want to stand up as if out of respect.

Erica gave Charlotte a stone-cold smile. Charlotte thought of it as the Groton smile. Before Beverly could say anything, Charlotte said, “Sorry, Beverly. I just didn’t think you’d be here. We…we’re having a sort of meeting.” She didn’t dare get into what for.

Charlotte said, “This is Erica?—Mimi? Bettina?”

Erica at least looked at everybody long enough to freeze their bones with a withering, bone-dry preppy smile. Beverly glanced at Mimi and Bettina, just those two, and that was it.

“Well—” said Beverly, looking at Charlotte with a neutral expression. Charlotte decided it must be Sarc 2. “So what’s going on?”

Charlotte had no idea what to say, but Bettina piped up, “It’s major, Beverly.”

Charlotte could tell immediately, from Bettina’s loud tone and the ultra-familiar way she used Beverly’s name, that she was tired of everybody giving way before this supposed paragon of the boarding-school elite—and that her anger actually came from her realization that despite all the ways the Lounge Committee had of dismantling the status, the worth, of this elite, down deep she still regarded them as…the elite.

“Wow,” said Beverly in a completely careless, Sarc 3 tone of voice. She was not looking at Bettina, either, but straight at Charlotte. She flipped her palms upward in an idle fashion and said in the same tone, “Must be big news. So what is it?”

Rather than appear to Mimi and Bettina that she was ducking from Beverly, Charlotte just blurted it straight out. “I’ve been invited to a formal, and I’m trying to decide whether to go or not.”

“Really? Who with?”

“Hoyt Thorpe.”

It was Erica who chimed in, “Hoyt—Thorpe?” She had a big, incredulous smile on her face and popped-open eyes. “Are you serious?” It was the first time she had ever responded directly to anything Charlotte said or did.

“Yeah…”

“Where is this going to be?” The same popped eyes and an expression on a crest between laughter and astonishment.

Charlotte’s voice cracked slightly as she said, “Washington…” This stuck-up…bitch…rattled her.

“D.C.?”

“Yeah…”

“How on earth did this happen to you?” said Erica, whereupon she broke into a chilling boarding-school laugh.

Beverly said, “Oh, Charlotte knows Hoyt Thorpe.” Not even Sarc 3; straight-up-front Sarc 1.

Erica put on a Sarc 3 look of seriousness and concern. “You know who they invite to formals, don’t you—especially the Saint Rays and…Hoyt Thorpe.”

“Hope you get along with all the Saint Ray frat whores.”

“I’m not the least bit worried about Hoyt,” said Charlotte. “Not for one second. Hoyt knows beter than to try—to—whatever you’re talking about—with me. And I don’t know anything about any…‘frat whores.’”

Erica said, “Okay, just make sure you don’t become one of them.”

Beverly said, “Ha! Charlotte! A frat whore? She’ll probably bring her pajamas and bathrobe with her and insist on sleeping on the couch!”

“You know I’m still in the room,” Charlotte said. “Plus, it’s none of your business where I sleep.”

“Ooh, getting a little testy, aren’t we?” said Beverly.

“Well, sorry if I don’t broadcast where I sleep like you do,” said Charlotte.

“Oh, please!” said Beverly. “Not that I’d tell you anything, but at least I do get some play every now and then. Be careful at the formal, Charlotte. No one likes a goody two-shoes.”

So anxious was he to be on time, Hoyt got to the lobby of the Inn at Chester, where he was to meet Rachel—Rachel—Rachel—he couldn’t remember what she said her last name was—nobody had last names anymore anyway—Rachel—she of the lips—he could close his eyes and see those teasing, serpentine lips—so eager was he to make this stroke of luck pay off, he got to the lobby fifteen minutes early and sat down in a commercial knock-off Sheraton armchair in a lobby cluster, as hotel franchise decorators called them—clusters of couches, armchairs, side tables, and polyurethaned coffee tables, all calculated to domesticate the lobbies, which these days were usually like this one, cavernous spaces caked with marble and plasticized-shiny showy-grain wood.

The lobby vista at eye level, to anyone sunk down in a chair, seriously subverted whatever glamour the place might have conjured in the mind of a twenty-two-year-old who lived in the give-a-shit squalor of a fraternity house. Everywhere he looked…potbellies, sagging paunches—an entire field of them, as far as the eye could see—an entire tableau of men whose abdominal walls had given way. Disgusting…certainly to any male who had attended Dupont for going on four years—Dupont, where buff and dense bodies had become a part of fashionable male dress, and flat, cut, ripped, cobblestone body-armor abs were Buff at its best. These innumerable disgusting guts befouling his line of sight hung from middle-aged and even mid-thirties men, scores of them, perhaps hundreds, apparently attending some sort of business conference, by the looks of the name cards pinned to their shirts. Their shirts were no small part of the problem. Obviously the invitations, or instructions, had gone out marked “Dress: Weekend Casual.” They were wearing short-sleeved sport shirts, polo shirts, V-neck cashmere sweaters with T-shirts showing in the V, the occasional huntin’-n’-fishin’ khaki twill shirt—without jackets—all guaranteed to reveal not only their ponderous guts but also their stooped shoulders, double chins, wattles, and etiolate arms. Did it bother them? Not for a moment, judging from the roaring surf of conversation, the cackles—such hearty old-folks cackling as you never heard!

Hoyt was floating in this pool of blissful superiority, a hard frat guy in a world full of blubber, when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Startled, he swung his head about—

Looking at him with a bemused expression from behind the chair was the hottie from Pierce & Pierce, Rachel. “Ohmygod—I frightened you.”

Her smile! Her smooth white flesh glowed. She looked even more lubricious than she did the other night—the same businesslike black suit and the black V-neck sweater—but it wasn’t a sweater, it was black silk—reached even deeper, revealing an expanse of bare white flesh—with the tiniest of gold chains circling her lovely neck, bearing only a single small pearl that whispered in its small pearly way, This tiny strand is all that stands between you and all my fair white flesh—if—if!—and it was no mere happenstance that her eyes were made up to suggest the mysteries of the night and that her hair was now so silken, shiny, and blown full—

Pop. Before he could say another word, she had come around the chair and extended her hand in a perfectly businesslike way. They shook hands.

Chester was not noted for its restaurants. In fact, the Inn’s main dining room, officially the Wyeth Room, was about as good as it got in Chester cuisine. The place was packed, and the maître d’ said there was no table for two available. Rachel of Pierce & Pierce produced a scalding hiss and said, “Then we’ll take a table for four or six…or eight…or twelve. I made this reservation…right here…in this very spot…twenty-three hours ago, and I want…our table.”