Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

The hotel, called the Hyatt Ambassador, looked new. It was a tower with an absolutely sheer face, absolutely identical ribbons of anything-but-grand windows up above, and a spectacular parabolic arch of concrete serving as a porte cochere over the entrance.

As they drove up, Crissy startled Charlotte by saying in a loud voice, close to the puncture wound in the back of her head, “Charlunngh”—she completely vagued out the second syllable again—“please tell Heeshawn there to take that stupid thing off his head.” She looked at Vance. “You, too, Veeshawn. I wish you could like see how lame you look. Your little goldilocks creeping out from under that thing…”

Nicole, sitting next to Julian in the back row, said, “Right on, sister.” Then to Julian, “How about it, Jushawn?”

Hoyt turned around to look at Vance, and then all three boys looked at one another. Hoyt glanced out the window at the bellman…a young black guy, not big, but with the kind of sunken eyes and sunken cheeks that look…hotheaded…wearing a short-sleeved military tunic of tan and palm green, like a Caribbean colonel’s, pulling a tall baggage cart with a lot of shiny brass tubing. Hoyt did a little dismissive shrug and took his do-rag off, and Vance and Julian followed suit.

Then Hoyt, still looking back at the others, nodded toward the bellman and said, “Fuck him.”

The overt meaning was, “We don’t need to use this guy and give him a tip.” But Charlotte realized that the real meaning was “I didn’t remove my do-rag because I was intimidated by the presence of this mean-looking black kid”…although she bet anything he had…

Crissy and Nicole went inside, into the lobby, and Charlotte, not knowing what else to do, followed them while the boys, who had waved the bellman off, unpacked the car. Why didn’t they hurry up? Charlotte already felt awkward and incompetent and superfluous. Crissy and Nicole ignored her and fell into conversation about what they were going to wear to dinner.

Charlotte had a burning desire to be somewhere else, so she walked away from them and strolled across the lobby, as if to take an idle look around. Soon it became not so idle, this look-about. She had never seen such a lobby in her life. She walked perhaps forty feet—and the lobby had no more ceiling. Her eyes swept upward. The entire core of the building was a vast empty space, circular, bounded by rings of balconies and windows, reaching all the way to the top—she couldn’t even imagine how many stories high—where there was an enormous skylight dome. One level below the lobby, at the base of the enormous cylinder, was an enclosed interior courtyard. Charlotte could see its terra-cotta-colored tile floor between the foliage of tropical trees and shrubs—enormous trees and shrubs, considering the fact that they were planted in ceramic tubs. Somewhere down there…a piano, bass, and drums playing Latin music amplified to overcome the rushing sound of a waterfall and the pings and clatters of silverware and dishes. Now she could make out, beneath the trees, tables and walkways and little bridges and tiled stairs that led up to the lobby in leisurely, meandering segments, with big tiled landings where they turned.

She had never seen a building like this. She and Miss Pennington, like most of the scholars and their mentors, had stayed at a hotel on N Street called the Grosvenor, paid for by the government. They had shared a small room with twin beds, and Miss Pennington snored all night. All the same, it had been exciting. She had never spent a night in a hotel before. For breakfast they had waffles—she had never had waffles before, either, not with real maple syrup instead of artificially flavored Karo. But that was nothing…compared to this! She had an idea. Crissy and Nicole hadn’t seen what she had just discovered.

She hurried back to them. They were still talking away and didn’t notice her or didn’t care to notice her, whichever. She walked right up to Nicole, who seemed like a marginally easier nut than Crissy, and with a smile and bright, wide eyes said, “You have to come see this ho-tel! Right over there”—she pointed—“you look down on this courtyard, with trees and a water fall, and above it there’s this…space, this empty space, and it goes all the way up to the roof, but it’s all inside the building! Y’all oughta come see it!”

The blond Nicole broke off her conversation and gave Charlotte a patient look, bordering on annoyed. “You mean an atrium?”

“Oh,” said Charlotte, “I hadn’t thought a they-at. You mean like in one of those Roman houses? It’s sorta like they-at, but this one goes up—maybe like thirty stories? You oughta come see it!”

“I’ve seen about a dozen of them,” said Nicole, deadpan. “Every Hyatt has one.” Then she turned back to Crissy. “Well anyway, I figured the heels are too high, but like so what? Guys don’t know how to dance anyway, and by the time these guys reach the dance floor, they’ll be like so-oh-oh drunk…”

Charlotte was still staring at Nicole, her mouth slightly open. She felt as if she had just been kicked in the stomach. Her big architectural discovery—it had only revealed, if any further revelation was needed, what a clueless little hick she was. Nicole and Crissy were right in front of her in their perfect jeans, perfect shirts, perfect pointy-toed boots, perfect cocked hips, ignoring her corporeal existence with perfect efficiency.

Hoyt, Vance, and Julian, loaded down with luggage, were walking toward them. Thank God for that. She wouldn’t be left standing here, the lone wayfarer.

Hoyt said cheerily, “Okay, gang, we got the keys. So let’s go on up.” Then he looked at Charlotte. “And oh, hey, babe”—he swung his left side toward her…swung it because he must have had three bags under his left arm—“could you take yours? I feel like my fucking finger’s coming off.”

And there it was, her canvas boat bag, hanging off the crooked little finger of his left hand. She took it. She was too embarrassed to say a word.

“Thanks,” said Hoyt. And then he addressed Crissy and Nicole and laughed. “I thought my fucking finger was coming off!”

And there she was, standing in the lobby of this…this…palace of a hotel—in sneakers, jeans, T-shirt, and cheap, puffy polyurethane-chip-filled jacket that made her look like a tiny walking hand grenade, the complete urchin from the hills, lost in the midst of all this luxury, carrying her belongings in her sole piece of luggage, a little boat bag. In a small, defeated voice she said to Hoyt, “Did you get my key, too?”

“Your key?” He looked nonplussed. Then: “Oh, sure. We got everybody’s keys. Let’s go.”

Crissy looked at Charlotte and gave her the dead smile. Then she said to Nicole, “She’s smart. I don’t know why I brought so much like…stuff.”

Not “Charlotte’s” or even “Charlunnh’s,” but “She’s.”

Charlotte was still sifting all that for Sarc 3—and finding none, although she felt certain it must be there—when Nicole said to her, “What are you wearing tonight?”

Automatically wary, Charlotte didn’t know what to say. Somehow it would come out that she borrowed the dress from Mimi. She didn’t even want to show it to her, either, rolled up—balled up was more like it—in the bottom of her bag. She finally said, “Just a dress and some shoes.”

“A dress and some shoes…” said Nicole. She nodded several times in a ruminating fashion. Then she turned to Crissy and said, “That’s not a bad idea.”

Both sorority girls began nodding, with eyes downcast and serious expressions, as if ruminating upon a remarkable profundity. Charlotte felt devastated. She knew this was classic Sarc 3.

Then Crissy said, “I hope you don’t mind my asking…but what kind of dress?”