Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

Adam forced a big grin, a very big one, and said, “Hi. Nice to meet you.”

Beverly gave him as dead a smile as he had ever seen in his life. Her lips extended about ten millimeters on either side, but the rest of her physiognomy was having no part of it. In that same half second her eyes gave him the once-over, head to toe and back up to his head. Enough of him—she devoted the rest of that second to Charlotte.

“So…the roommate returns,” said Beverly. Her expression said, My, how you do amuse me. “I thought you must have turned right around and gone back to North Carolina. But then I saw you on campus a couple of times during finals. So then I figured you must be staying out on Ladding Walk or someplace.”

Charlotte’s face turned absolutely scarlet. She was speechless. Adam was afraid she might cry. The silence stretched out out out out before Charlotte responded. “I’ve been staying at Adam’s.”

“Oh,” said Beverly. Her voice struck le chant juste of fake sarcastic surprise and interest. She gave Adam another flick of the eyes, going head to toe and back to his head again with an expression that couldn’t have said A PERSON OF NO CONSEQUENCE any louder if she had shouted it. Adam felt wounded and furious before his mind could even process the particulars.

Pretty soon, in due course, at the doorway, Charlotte gave Adam a hug good-bye, but it wasn’t the hug he had come to cherish—and live for—the one in which she threw her arms around him and laid her head on his chest. In fact, it wasn’t much more than a social hug. She gave him a kiss, but he could only imagine it touched his cheek. It was definitely not more than a social kiss. Whispering, she said, “Call me? Or I’ll call you? Promise?”

As the Edgerton House elevator descended, Adam weighed the pluses and minuses and decided the result was very much in the plus column. Of course she hadn’t given him an ardent embrace as he departed…not with that snobbish bitch—the bitch had deigned to look at him exactly twice and speak to him not even once and clearly found him A PERSON OF NO CONSEQUENCE—no preppy pink button-down, no creaseless Abercrombie & Fitch khakis—was that it, you bitch?—no fratty swagger, no fratty smirk?—no inchoately flirtatious fratty twist of the lips and significantly too-long eye-lock, as if to say if the circumstances should happen to change, let’s fuck?—was that it, you bitch?—you sorostitute…you Douche in the larval stage, you cum dumpster for Saint Rays and Phi Gams only—discriminating anorexic bitch, aren’t you—you pus-boil lump of conventional thought, conventional taste, and stillborn conventional passions selected like one of those whatthehellsthename handbags from some giddily expensive purveyor—too true, isn’t it!—that’s what we have here, isn’t it!—and ten years from now, as you sit in your summer place in…in…in Martha’s Vineyard with your Saint Ray clone consort watching a 60 Minutes segment with Morley Safer—he’ll be about a hundred, it occurred to him—Morley Safer interviewing Adam Gellin, creator of the New Matrix of the Twenty-first Century—that will be the title of the segment—you’ll turn to the big cloned jut-jawed titanium head—big but very light—sitting beside you and say, “Oh, I’ve known him for a long time—he was my roommate’s boyfriend at Dupont”—not with that snobbish bitch looking on was Charlotte going to demonstrate the depths of her…her…her feelings for him. That would be too much to expect. But!—she had said frankly, openly, “I’ve been living with Adam—and I don’t care for a minute if you know…you snobbish bitch…I’m proud of it! That’s the way things are! Get used to it!” And she had whispered—he could feel that angelic whisper of hers as well as hear it—“Call me? Or I’ll call you? Promise?” Promise, oh yes…promise me, promise me.

Adam departed Edgerton, the Little Yard, and the Mercer Memorial Gate with visions of loamy loins dancing in his head.

The telephone exploded, and Charlotte woke up from way down deep, wondering where she was. That became clear soon enough.

“Who the fuck is that?”—from beneath a roil of bedclothes, Beverly, groaning, surly, angry over being awakened by your fucking phone call. Groggy voice: “What the fuck time is it?” Whuh the fuck time’sit?

Eight o’clock on the dot, it was. Charlotte picked up the receiver in the middle of the second ring.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s—”

She didn’t get the rest of it, because Beverly’s growl rose up so loudly from her winding sheet of covers. Her head remained mashed flat into a pillow and her eyes remained closed—but I command you to hear my voice: “Drag it the fuck outta here! I mean, shit, it’s the middle of the fucking night!”

Charlotte cupped her hand around the receiver and said, “Hello? I’m sorry?”

“It’s me, Adam. Who was that? Beverly? Want to grab some breakfast at the café before you go to neuroscience?”

“I guess I—I have to think a second.”

Going to the café, which meant Mr. Rayon, would cost her three or four dollars, and she remembered how fast her five hundred dollars had melted away during the first semester. On the other hand, eating alone in the cathedral gloom of the Abbey…More than that, she was feeling guilty about the way she said good-bye to Adam last night…the sort of hug and non-kiss you’d give a cousin…He had clearly been hoping for something more, but she hadn’t wanted to show any more emotion than she did. Why? Well…Beverly was looking, and embraces are intimate…Oh sure! You wish that were the reason! It was because Beverly was looking on, all right—but specifically because Beverly didn’t think much of Adam. She made that clear without saying one word. Adam—one glance, and Beverly ranked him very low on the Cool scale and the Up scale, that being the measure of how much one understands about the higher life, the Up life, the circles where people live a style of life that revolves about the protocols of being rich and the sophistication that wealth can subscribe to, play with, and afford—and she, Charlotte—face facts!—did not choose to be seen throwing her arms around a guy that low on the scales of Cool and Up…She was immediately overcome by guilt…and contempt for herself and her lack of backbone…after Adam had just about saved her life…and for her snobbery—unfortunately, that was the term for it—where Adam was concerned. She was guilty! As guilty as Beverly!…guiltier—inasmuch as she knew Adam, knew how wonderful and charitable and loving he was, and owed him so much.

All of that went through her mind in a rush, and she put maximum enthusiasm into her voice and said into the receiver, “That would be great!” But she hadn’t said, “That would be great, Adam”—because that might arouse Beverly’s contempt all over again.

It aroused her wrath, in any case. She started doing one of her classic bed-thrashing numbers.

Adam’s voice in the receiver: “How soon can you be ready?”

Charlotte, aloud: “Fifteen minutes?”

From the bed: “Shit, Charlotte, drag it the fuck outta here!”

In the receiver: “Okay! I’ll swing by in fifteen minutes.”

Charlotte, aloud: “Thanks! Bye.”

“Goddamn it, Charlotte!” Beverly had now propped herself up on one elbow and was looking right at her. Her head had canted over at such a groggy angle, it rested on her shoulder, and her hair was in her face. “I asked you nicely! I’m trying to fucking sleep!”

Charlotte looked at the big woozy face before her—and she surprised herself. She wasn’t intimidated or even timid. She wasn’t sorry, and neither was she angry. She didn’t even feel like pointing out the absurdity of the word “nicely.” She looked down on the face before her. She existed on a different plane. She had risen from the ashes. I am Charlotte Simmons again, but a Charlotte Simmons who has walked over the coals and through the flames and emerged with the strength to let you know that and, for the first time, to be candid.