Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

“Let’s go!” He seized her by the hand and tried to pull her toward the dance floor.

“You”—a rush of uncontrollable outrage. “Stop it! Let go of me! I changed my mind! I don’t want to dance!”

He let go, startled by her outburst.

He held his hands up in a defensive posture. “Hey! Okay. Chill!” He smiled broadly. “Who said anything about dancing? I said house tour, and I meant house tour!”

That’s better, she thought. He couldn’t take her for granted anymore. This speck of encouragement expunged her angry stare. In fact, she found herself giving him a rueful little smile. But she still resented his attitude. All these people rubbing…their genitals together!…like dogs in heat…How dare he? She was better than the whole bunch of them! She was better than him! What did he have to be smug about?

When he put his hand on the small of her back again and began steering her out of the terrace room and into the grand hall, she knew she should jerk away from him—but Bettina and Mimi! There they were in the midst of the mob with Bettina’s friend Hadley and some other girls—and Bettina was looking straight at her! They were too far apart to even shout to one another, but Bettina arched her eyebrows and pulled a face that as much as said, “Whoa! Look at you—with a hot guy like that!” Mimi’s face fell. She stared at Charlotte with amazement and envy. She and Bettina were still stuck in a freshman herd.

Charlotte immediately looked up at Hoyt and smiled and tried desperately to think of a question to ask so he would have to turn his face toward hers and Bettina and Mimi and their herd would think they were having a great time. This Hoyt represented social triumph.

“Uh…what uh—” Why couldn’t she come up with a question! “Uh…I—”

“Beat it up!” said Hoyt, smiling and revolving his hand, encouraging her to get the words out.

“What’s uh—what’s the name of the band?”

“The Odds!” he shouted.

“The odds?”

“The name of the band! The Odds! Fuck! I can’t hear anything! Let’s go downstairs.”

Downstairs?

“The secret chamber!” Hoyt arched his eyebrows several times in an exaggerated way to indicate he was only being funny.

But what if he wasn’t! Why had he put it that way? On the other hand, she was still floating on the awed face Bettina had made and Mimi’s sullen wonder—Mimi, who had made her feel so timid, hicklike, and awkward, in short, unconnected with anything at this elite place. Charlotte craned about for another glimpse of the two of them, who she was sure were tracking her every step, but she could no longer see them.

Absentmindedly she said to Hoyt, “All right.” Whatever his so-called secret chamber was, she now felt adventurous enough to take it. The looks on their faces!

Before she knew it, Hoyt had steered her down a dim, hazy corridor paneled with carved walnut. There were small, ribbed half columns of the same wood where the panels joined. The panels were so dark they soaked up what little light there was. The haze became a churning fog, and revelers wandered about yawping and cackling in a lunatic way.

Hoyt stopped behind two boys and two girls who were hovering over a table next to the wall. Seated at it was another brute—white, massive, young, but fast going bald, with a green T-shirt tight enough to show off great slabs of muscle, those and the dark triangle of wet sweat where the two bulging halves of his chest joined above the midsection. An argument was in progress.

“Well, how do you think we got in in the first place?” said a tall boy with a wide neck and a tough-guy face softened only by the thatch of brown curls coming down over his forehead.

The brute seated at the desk crossed his arms, which made them seem twice as big, and leaned back in his chair and shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. I just know you gotta be a member or have a ticket to go downstairs.”

The flat-faced boy, who had the dull stare of somebody drunk, launched into some heated remonstrances. Hoyt stepped forward and said to the sentinel behind the desk, “We got an issue here, Derek?”

The sentinel, Derek, said, “He says they had tickets, but they”—he motioned upward with his head, indicating the monitors on the floor above—“took them from them when they came in.”

Hoyt slipped his arm away from Charlotte’s waist, stepped forward, and said in a challenging tone, “Who invited you? Who gave you the tickets?”

A pause. Sensing, hoping for a rude confrontation, random onlookers began gathering around. Finally the guy said, “His name’s Johnson.”

“Eric Johnson?” said Hoyt.

“Unh hunh, Eric Johnson.”

“Well, there’s nobody in this fraternity named Johnson, and there’s nobody named Eric,” said Hoyt.

A couple of the gawkers laughed. Realizing he had been made to look like a fool in front of his friends and an audience, the guy felt compelled to begin the male battle. “And so who the hell are you?”

“God, as far as this conversation is concerned,” said Hoyt. “I’m a Saint Ray.” He had no expression except for an accusing stare and a slight thrust of his chin.

The guy set his jaw and lowered one eyebrow. Charlotte, like the others, quickly sized the two of them up in terms of male combat. The would-be crasher was taller, heavier, tougher looking, and more powerfully built. “That’s very cute,” he said to Hoyt, “but you wanna know what I think?”

“Not particularly,” said Hoyt, “unless you’d like to explain why you shouldn’t be a pal and fuck off.”

The boy took a step closer, opened his mouth slightly, pressed the tip of his tongue against his lower lip, and narrowed his eyes to slits, as if trying to decide exactly which way to tear his adversary limb from limb. Hoyt maintained his insulting stare. The brute manning the desk was on his feet. He held an open hand up in front of the boy’s chest. His bare forearm was the size of a cured ham.

“Time out, tiger,” he said. “We can’t let you go downstairs, and you don’t want beef. Okay? Do like he said and take a walk.”

Furious and powerless, the boy turned and walked away. His bewildered friends followed him, and the gawkers took it all in, disappointed that things hadn’t progressed to bloodshed, cracked bone, and loosened teeth. After he had taken five or six steps, the guy wheeled about and pointed his forefinger at Hoyt.

“I’ll remember you! And next time it’ll be one on one!”

Hoyt raised his cupped hand to his mouth and pantomimed knocking back three gulps. You’re just another drunk. The gawkers laughed some more.

Charlotte flashed back to Daddy and Sheriff Pike’s confrontation with Channing Reeves and his buddies. Despite the language he had used, Hoyt’s attitude of cool command impressed her.

The brute, Derek, smiled, shook his head, and said to Hoyt, “I always love these guys who are gonna come back and do something.” Then he put the heel of his hand on the carved walnut panel on the wall behind him. It swung inward. It was like a secret door from out of a movie. The brute gestured, indicating that Charlotte and Hoyt should come on through, and then he scanned the remaining gawkers to make sure they didn’t have any ambitions of their own.

Hoyt slipped his arm around her waist again, as if he was just steering her through the doorway. She stiffened for a moment but didn’t disengage. It was just…his way of being a host.

“Where are we going?” she wanted to know.

“Downstairs,” said Hoyt.

“What’s downstairs?”

“You’ll see.”

“I’ll see what?”

“You’ll see!” said Hoyt. He assessed her wary expression and sighed. “Oh, okay, you’re ruining the surprise, but I might as well—no—I can’t do that—I can’t tell you, but there’ll be a lot of people there. We won’t stay very long. You just ought to see it.”