Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

Something about the Pennsylvania Legislature…and gender…and sex…and a servant class and the master class…and automobile dealers…debris from the waters, and every now and then a bit of it lodged in Charlotte’s brain, but mainly she just kept floating and bobbing with her eyes closed in Adam’s gentle, earnest swell of words in 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit…same as her body…perfect state of sensory deprivation. She could feel the tension draining out of her nerves, the toxins draining out of her brain…time vanishing…her body, at last perfectly relaxed, sinking into Adam’s bones bathed by the flow, the flow, the warm bouillon flow of his words…Tawny, his words were, tawny as oxtail bouillon, and warm…

So fluent—not to mention convincing—did Adam feel, it was quite a spell before it occurred to him that the girl in his arms, the beautiful girl miraculously in his arms, was no longer listening. He craned his head down in order to look directly into her face. Had she fallen asleep? Her eyes were closed and her body was at last relaxed, but she wasn’t breathing like someone asleep.

He stopped talking, even though he hadn’t gotten to the point he wanted to make about how the “intellectuals” were ignorant of what Darwin actually said. He knew she was interested in Darwin. Well, it was enough, wasn’t it, that at last she was in his arms. What a weird place for it—sitting on a concrete floor deep in the bowels of the stacks. Talk about gloomy…and yet here she was in his arms…He had dreamed about this, but not in such a weird place…What if he gave her a soft and tender kiss on the lips, sort of a consoling kiss after what she has been through?…Bad idea. For him to make a move after everything she had just told him—she might not interpret that as consoling. Besides, it was physically impossible in this position. Her head was lying on his chest. When he bent his head over to look at her, he had barely been able to see her face. To get his mouth all the way to her mouth, he’d have to rearrange her whole body, and that might bring her out of the spell she was in. He’d have to remove his glasses and put them…where? For about the three thousandth time he thought of laser corrective surgery. But what if he was that one in five thousand who rolled his eyes a sixteenth of an inch at exactly the wrong moment and the laser beam fried his eyeballs?

He stared into the biblioglutted gloom. He should be grateful enough just to be holding her in his arms…which he was, for a while. The two pressure points where his pelvic saddle rested on the concrete began to annoy him. One of his legs was going to sleep in the thigh. It was damned frustrating to have your loved one in your arms…and she’s off in…a spell, a trance, the Land of Nod, a stress coma—he had heard of such a thing. He looked at his watch. He’d been down here for more than an hour! She didn’t seem aware of where she was…

He held her some more, but it was becoming tedious…He tightened his embrace a bit…Nothing…Then he began rocking her again…Nothing…Finally he bent his head over as far as he could and said, “Charlotte…Charlotte…” For a moment…nothing—but then she lifted her head from his chest and gave him a look of weary disappointment.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I think we ought to get up from here. We’ve been sitting on this concrete floor for a long time.”

For an instant she looked annoyed on top of disappointed, but she began to get up, nonetheless. He sprang to his feet in order to experience the ineffable joy of extending his hand and helping her up. She thanked him in a distracted, perfunctory way—but then, without a word, hooked her arm inside his and leaned her head against his shoulder as they walked toward the stairway.

When they reached the grand Gothic lobby, she took her head off his shoulder but clung more tightly, if anything, to his arm.

“You feel any better?” he said. “Maybe a little better?”

“Yeah.”

Outside, the Great Yard was covered in seven or eight inches of snow, with an icy crust that looked somehow corroded where the walkway lamps washed it with wan coronas of light. A penetrating wind swept across it. In the darkness, the great stone hulks of the Gothic buildings facing out on the Yard appeared frozen in place, like ships trapped in ice.

Adam didn’t want…this…to end. He absolutely thrilled to the look she had in his arms. He ransacked his brain for some way—“I’m kind of hungry. Why don’t we stop by Mr. Rayon for a second? It’s on me.”

“No!” It was more of a startled cry than a rejection. “I just want to go to sleep.”

Her head was buried deep within the parkalike hood of her quilted jacket.

Once more she leaned her head, now deep within the hood, against his shoulder. Once more he thrilled to the pressure of her extremities against his arm. Every conceivable strategy churned in his brain—and all were stymied by the fact that she had come to him already traumatized, literally in tears, because of the sexual predations of a frat boy like Thorpe. He hated that smug bastard.

Adam began walking in the direction of Little Yard, where, feeling once more thwarted, he would no doubt be unable to come up with any comment tender enough and cool enough and Lothario enough to…to…to…

They couldn’t have gone a hundred feet before Charlotte held on to his arm tighter than ever and stopped and looked up at him, her eyes two little orbs reflecting light from deep within the recesses of the hood, and said in a little voice, “Adam—please—don’t leave me.”

Adam stood there still and speechless—petrified lest he overinterpret what he was now hearing.

“I can’t go back to my room,” she said. “I can’t stay there with my roommate. It’s like being cooped up with—I can’t do it, Adam, I can’t do it…” She was on the verge of tears. “Can I stay with you?”

“Of course.” His imagination was feverish and yet not big enough to comprehend what on earth he was hearing. Ever fearful of disappointment, he decided to assume a cavalier air. “Whatever your”—then he caught himself. It wasn’t his métier, cavalier. He would just be himself: “Whatever you want.”

Her eyes narrowed so far, the lights went out. She turned her head so far, the hood popped up in front of him like a wall. He would never understand her. But then she turned the mouth of the hood back toward him and the eyes were lit once more.

“Just anyplace to lie down, Adam. A couch, the floor, anyplace. I can’t be alone. I can’t explain it. You’re my only friend—” She began sobbing. Her voice came out in little tremulous cries: “My…on-ly…fri-end!”

She buried her face, hood and all, into the breast of his North Face jacket, racked with sobs, and he wrapped both arms about her. “Of course you can stay at my place.” She abruptly stopped crying. How brave she was. “I won’t let you be alone. You can stay there as long as you like. I have a futon. I’ll always be there for you. You can have the bed, and I’ll take the futon.”

“No—no—” She began sobbing again. “Just put me”—sobs—“where I’ll be the least trouble. I don’t”—sob—“deserve—” whereupon the “erve” in “deserve” broke up into racking sobs: “erve-erve-erve-erve.” Adam, essentially a literary intellectual, didn’t realize he was listening to the typical depressed girl who has made the appalling discovery that she is worthless.

She put her arm around his waist and her head against his shoulder, and he put his arm around both her shoulders and hugged her upper body tightly against his own. It was a bit awkward, since his stride covered more ground than hers, but they walked that way out of the Great Yard for seven blocks until they reached the old town house in the City of God where Adam lived.