Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

Anybody looking on probably thought the phlegmatic give-a-shit way he, Hoyt, was responding to all this was intended to show people he was still cool and not being swept away by all the gushing idolatry coming his way. The funny thing—except that it wasn’t funny—was that the whole campus took this “exposé” by that little shit Adam Gellin as practically a King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table about him and Vance. The little shit thought he had nailed him with the “bribe” shit. But the Night of the Skull Fuck story was so awesome, people seemed to barely notice the rest. With his own ears Hoyt had heard students quoting that one line—“Doing? Looking at a fucking ape-faced dickhead, is what we’re doing!”—and going into convulsions. What was this so-called bribe compared to that? A nice fat Wall Street job with an incredible starting salary floats his way and he takes it? What’s the big deal?

“Hey, dude, sorry to be late.” It was Vance, arriving finally.

“Where the fuck’ve you been?” said Hoyt. “I’ve been sitting here and having to act like a real asshole to save this fucking seat for you.”

Vance slid onto the seat. “I couldn’t help it, man. I got hung up at the library with—”

He couldn’t even finish the sentence, because a guy came up from behind and said, “Wait a sec—aren’t you Vance Phipps?”

Vance acted just like Hoyt, which is to say, bored and uncommunicative.

Once the guy had finished prostrating himself in awe of the Phipps presence and left, Vance said to Hoyt, “Well, monster, you wanted to be a legend in your own time, didn’t you? Congratulations. You’ve done it. You’ve made it. As a matter of fact, I have a feeling it won’t be just in your own time, either. Years from now they’ll still be talking about Hoyt Thorpe and the Night of the Skull Fuck.”

“And what about you?” said Hoyt.

“Me, too, I’m afraid. But you got to admit, I come off as the Herb of the dynamic duo, the straight man. I didn’t get off any great lines like ‘Doing? Looking at a fucking ape-faced dickhead is what we’re doing.’ Wow. That state trooper must have one hell of a fucking power of total recall to give the little shit that line, verbatim near as I can recall. Right, Hoyt?” He gave Hoyt a lip-twisted gotcha smile.

Hoyt finessed it. “How many months we got left before graduation, Vance?”

“I don’t know…March, April, May…three.”

“So I’ve got three more months to be a legend in my own time and for all time, right?”

“That is true,” said Vance. “But you know, you can always come back here every year for reunions, and the Alumni Band will always provide the music.”

“Fun-nee. Could I bust my gut any worse laughing? What happens starting in June? You’ve got it made. You can go to any i-bank you want and get a job. You’ve been ‘hung up’ at the fucking library more than once over the past four years, if I know anything about it. Your transcript will be a passport good at any door on Wall Street—and your last name is Phipps.”

“What the fuck are you complaining about?” said Vance. “You’ve already got a job, at Pierce and Pierce, only the hottest fucking i-bank there is—and you’re getting a starting salary only fifty percent higher than what me or anybody else is going to get. How ungrateful is that?”

Hoyt said, “I got something to show you. It’s why I wanted you to come over here.”

With that, he descended the bar stool, went over to the rack inside the door where everybody’s winter gear was hanging, reached into an inside pocket of his navy topcoat, withdrew a piece of paper, and returned to the bar. “Read this,” he said to Vance.

Vance read it. It was an e-mail printout. At the top it said, “Subj: Re: Application.” It came from rachel.freeman@piercepierce.org.

Dear Mr. Thorpe,

We are grateful for your interest in Pierce & Pierce and for the opportunity to meet with you when our team was at Dupont. Your qualifications are excellent in many respects, but after a thorough review by our Human Resources executive committee, we must conclude regretfully that your strengths are not a true “fit” with our requirements.

We as a team, and I personally, enjoyed our interview, and we wish you well in finding a place elsewhere in the industry, should that continue to be your interest.

Very truly yours,

Rachel E. Freeman

College Liaison

Human Resources

Pierce & Pierce

Vance looked at Hoyt as if waiting for him to comment. A long pause…as if Hoyt was waiting for Vance to comment. Finally Hoyt said, “What do you make of that?”

“What do I make of it?…I don’t know…except that it sounds to me like they’re reneging on their offer.”

“That’s exactly it!” said Hoyt. “They’re fucking reneging! How the fuck do they think they can get away with that?”

“Uh, I don’t know,” said Vance. “You get a signed contract or anything?”

“No! I don’t have any fucking contract, but on Wall Street it’s different, right? Your word is your fucking contract, right? How the fuck else can investors and i-bankers trade fucking billions over the telephone every day?”

“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought of that,” said Vance. “Did anyone else happen to hear her promise you the job?”

“That’s the fucking point I’m making!” said Hoyt. “Witnesses and shit are not fucking necessary! On Wall Street your fucking word is your fucking bond!”

Puzzled pause. “Well, I don’t know. I don’t know what to tell you, Hoyt. I don’t know what applies to job offers and what doesn’t.”

“Look,” said Hoyt. “There’s one very specific reason I had to see you. Your father must know somebody in this fucking area, some lawyer, somebody who knows how to sue their fucking asses off if they try to pull shit like this. How about talking to your father?”

“I don’t know,” said Vance. “Maybe there’s such a person. But one thing I do know. My father doesn’t even want to think about this whole thing. If he could, he’d get a fucking injunction barring the press from using my name in the fucking story. You know his reaction when he first heard about it? His reaction was (A) why hadn’t I told him about it last spring and (B) what kind of a moron had he raised who didn’t know enough to go straight to the police when it happened and file charges for assault against the state trooper, Whatsisname. Hoyt—I can’t even fucking go there where my father’s concerned.”

Hoyt looked off toward the scruffy black raw-edged “paneling” of the I.M.’s walls and expelled a great sigh of resignation. Then he turned back to Vance.

“What am I going to do, Vance? What am I going to do on June the fucking first? I don’t have a job, and you know how much I got to fall back on? Zero! My mother’s blown whatever she had, which was like next to nothing, just keeping me going at this fucking place. What am I fucking going to do! Your transcript’s a passport. Mine—you have no idea how bad my grades are. My transcript’s going to look like a police crime site with fucking yellow tape all over the place to keep people away. You think maybe the Charles’ Society might give me a lifelong pension for being the coolest guy who ever bestrode the soil of the forty-eight contiguous United States and a legend for all time and forever after? Vance—I am fucking fucked!”

He hung his head. Then he looked up at Vance. “One thing I still can’t figure out. How the fuck did the little shit get all that shit about Pierce and Pierce? They’d be the last people in the fucking world to give it to him. And those conversations between you and me in the house. I mean, he didn’t have direct quotes, but he didn’t have direct quotes, but he might as fucking well…” He hung his head again and shook it slowly. “Fucked, fucked, fucked, and fucked.”