Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

Charlotte pulled back a few steps to distance herself from her roommate. Beverly hung her head and cried some more. In a burst of fury, she took off her shoes and began hammering the door with the high heels. A terrific racket. The door opened, and a tall, lean youth appeared, clad in nothing but a pair of boxer shorts hanging on his hip bones, exposing the slabs of weight-room muscle on his shoulders, chest, arms, and abdomen. He had close-cropped curly brown hair and a lean face that at this moment looked fatigued and annoyed. He stared at Beverly and took a stance blocking the doorway.

Wearily, contemptuously: “What the fuck are you doing, Beverly?”

Beverly shrank into a little-girl voice. “You said you’d call me.”

Exasperated sigh. “I said if I could.”

“The fuck you said if I could!”

Male controlled rage: “Goddamn it, Beverly, I’m trying to sleep, and you’re fucking blitzed outta your mind. Go home.”

“Go…home,” said Beverly, breaking into a mournful sob and sinking, obviously on purpose, to her knees and then to all fours. “Go…home…”

Charlotte stepped forward to try to put an end to the spectacle.

The all but naked lacrosse player noticed her for the first time. “You with her?” He said it rather crossly.

“Yes.” Quickly adding, “I’m trying to get her to come back to the room.”

Still stern: “Good.” Then he took a second look at Charlotte, who at a glance appeared to be wearing nothing but a pajama top.

Beverly was on all fours, whimpering.

“You’re her roommate?” He beckoned Charlotte closer and said in a very low voice, “Your roommate’s got an issue. You think you can get her outta here?”

“I think so.”

The athlete crossed his arms over his bare chest and tightened his abdominals, causing the boxer shorts to drop still lower. He gave Charlotte a second look. “You know, I could swear you and I’ve met someplace.”

“Maybe,” said Charlotte with a slight smile. “But I don’t think so.”

“Well, you and me, we got to figure it out—we got to get her some—you know—help in the long term.”

Beverly was still on her hands and knees, her head lowered, beginning to hit the high notes of a sob.

“We?” said Charlotte.

Same low voice: “Yeah…you’re her roommate. I’m her friend. I tell you what. You doing anything Saturday afternoon?”

“No…”

“You can come see me at the tailgate.”

Charlotte stared at him for a moment. He had an ever so slight smile. He wasn’t even looking at Beverly. “I don’t think so,” said Charlotte. She wondered what a tailgate was.

The athlete shrugged. “Aw…come on…” He gave her a blip of a wink, and grinned. “I couldn’t stand it if both roommates mean-mugged me. That’s where I’ll be, anyhow.” He gave her a certain smile, the smile of the coconspirator. Then he went back inside his room and shut the door.

Beverly remained on the floor on all fours. She had settled into the forlorn mode and didn’t want to be moved. It took Charlotte a good five minutes to roust her up and onto her feet again and maneuver her back to the car.

When they returned to their room in Edgerton, Beverly was on another crying jag, with lyrics such as, “Why did he think he had to lie to me?”

Charlotte put an arm around her shoulders to steady her. With a wail, Beverly broke free, teetered precariously on her high heels, and pitched face forward onto her bed. In no time her muffled sobs gave way to a low snore. She still had all her clothes on. Charlotte started to remove the high-heeled shoes, then decided not to do anything that might wake her up.

She turned off the lights, put her pajama pants back on, and slipped into bed. She lay there thinking about the lacrosse player, Harrison…He was very good-looking, very well built…What exactly was he saying to her?…But pretty soon she fell asleep.

She woke up in the dark in a stupefied haze. Click click, high heels. She was vaguely aware that Beverly had gotten up off the bed and was heading for the door, but she no longer cared. Even after she heard the jingle of car keys, she rationalized that Beverly was just going across the hall to the bathroom.

Well, she had tried, she had tried. She had done all she could…

When she next woke up, the first thing she noticed was the light coming in between the bottoms of the shades and the windowsills. It was alarmingly bright. My French class!

The little windup clock by the bed: 10:35! Forgot to set it! The class was already over! Couldn’t happen! A scalding feeling at the base of her skull…The long night wasted babysitting Beverly…Beverly—not in her bed—hadn’t touched it since she last staggered out. Must have finally sobbed, whined, wheedled her way back into the bed of her lacrosse player. Slut! Her crawling, drooling, sobbing, slobbering slut of a roommate had done this to her. And into the adrenal panic over heedlessly, pointlessly cutting a class came an ashy resentment.

Charlotte got out of bed and walked toward the windows. She was so groggy. She got down on her knees before she raised the shade about a foot. Brilliant sunlight. Gothic Dupont rose up almighty.

On a walkway out in the middle of the courtyard, near the statue of Charles Dupont, a girl was teetering along on high heels. From up here, five floors above, Charlotte was looking down at a disheveled rick of straight, flat streaked-blond hair on a head hung over toward the ground…the bony processes of her breastbone were showing from the way she had left her cerise shirt unbuttoned way down…a pair of tight black pants—then the sway and staccato of the gait, click teeter click teeter click teeter. Oh God…Her heart misfired—a premature ventricular contraction—Beverly. It couldn’t have been more obvious that she was wearing clothes from last night and was just now returning home, still intoxicated.

From a window across the way a boy yelled out, “You’re money, baby, and you don’t even know it!”

Laughter from another window somewhere.

Beverly started walking faster—clickteeterclickteeterclickteeterclickteeterclickteeterclickteeter—and broke into a run for the entryway to Edgerton, sprinting on the pointed toes of her shoes. She had gone no more than a few yards when one of her high heels struck the walkway. She pitched forward, fell, rolled over the walkway’s border of green-and-white liriope and onto the lawn, where she wound up on her back. She put a forearm up in front of her face to shield her eyes from the sun. Not a sound from the windows now. She rolled over onto her abdomen and struggled up into a crawling position. Her pumps were still on. One high heel had almost completely torn away from the sole and hung at a crippled angle. On all fours now, she lifted one leg and tried to kick the pump off. No luck. A couple of students down in the courtyard just stood there, absorbed in the spectacle. After a clumsy struggle Beverly managed to stand upright. She looked about in an abstract, unseeing way and began limping the rest of the way to Edgerton, one heel high, one heel dragging lengthwise on the walkway.

Charlotte pulled the shade down and stood up. She was torn by competing emotions: sympathy for the weary and heavy-laden, revulsion at what was revolting, guilt over feeling more revolted than sympathetic at the sight of a drunken slut on her Walk of Shame. She had heard the term. Now she was witnessing it. A twinge of sympathy…a twinge of guilt…a surge of revulsion. She caught the wave and rode it for all it was worth. She got dressed even faster than she had before her mission of mercy in the middle of the night. She had babysat this…bitch…enough for one day. Her roommate was on her own now, the Sodom-bottom rotten Groton…whatever…