Tom Wolfe - I Am Charlotte Simmons

As for Charles, he was sitting in front of his locker, four lockers down from Jojo’s, changing clothes and enjoying his other favorite sport, which was giving Congers a hard time.

“Hey, Vernon,” Charles was saying in a loud voice no one in the room could miss, “I see you got yourself a new whip.” Whip was ghettospeak for automobile.

Congers, whose locker was opposite Charles’s, said, “Yeah…” warily. He had long since learned that very little Charles had to say to him could be taken at face value, starting with the fact that Charles only spoke ghetto when he was being ironic.

“Whattaya call a whip like that?”

“A Viper,” Congers said tonelessly.

“A Vipuhhh,” said Charles. “Unnnhhhh unnh! You gon’ be a playa now, baby! Whenja get it?”

Congers said nothing at first. Then, “A coupla days ago.”

“A Vi-puhhh. How much it setchoo back?”

Another pause…“Somebody give it to me.”

“Somebody give it to you?” said Charles. “Somebody sure loves you, bro. One a yo’ peeps?”

“No.”

“Then I hope the motherfucker’s straight. That whip’s worth fifty or sixty large. Don’t you let the dude pat you on the ass or invitechoo in for a Slurpee when you say good night.”

“A Slurpee,” said Treyshawn. “Hegghh Hegghhh hegghhh.” He liked that one.

Congers’s face clouded. He wasn’t happy about the insinuation. “What the fuck you talking about?” he said to Charles. “I don’t even know who give it to me.”

“Don’t even know? Some dude give me a whip like that, I’d remember his fucking name. Whatchoo mean, you don’t know?”

“I don’t know, man!” said Congers. “I’m getting dressed after practice, and I’m putting my pants on, and there’s a set a car keys inna fucking pocket, and hanging off of it is this little thing”—he made a shape with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand—“about like this. Know’m saying? And on one side of it, it says Vernon Congers, and on the other side of it there’s a number, a license plate number. Know’m saying? And so I be walking outta here, and right there at the curb’s this car, and it’s the one. Got the same number. Know’m saying? The doors was open, so I get in, and I be looking around…and there’s the registration and this title thing, and both’m’s got my mama’s name on it. So—”

“Shhhhh!” said Charles with an exaggerated look of alarm on his face. “Don’tchoo be telling anybody about this—”

Jojo didn’t listen to any more of it—Charles making fun of Congers… What he had heard was already too much to take. Congers, a freshman—hadn’t even played for Dupont yet, and the boosters had already given him a car…a hot car, no less…a Viper…Obviously the word was out everywhere, even among the alumni groupies. The ascension of the freshman phenom…the descent into oblivion of Jojo Johanssen…He had never felt lower in his life. His own teammates avoided looking at him, his oblivion was so embarrassing. Or was he being paranoid? He still couldn’t believe it, but it had happened. His entire purpose for being on this earth was to play in the League. Jojo Johanssen’s purpose had just been deleted. And yeah, yeah, don’t give up, just play harder, suck up your guts, and the tough get going, and so forth and so on.

Over the next few minutes, no doubt, would come stage two of his decline and fall. The game was three days away, which meant that today and tomorrow the first team would scrimmage with the second team. The second team would be nothing but sparring partners, mimicking the Cincinnati offense, running Cincinnati’s plays and setup patterns—in other words, serving as dummies for the benefit of the fabulous ones, the starting five. He would no doubt be impersonating Cincinnati’s power forward, Jamal Perkins, known in the sports columns as “the Disciplinarian” because of his “physical” game, meaning rough and dirty. He would be playing against his nemesis, Congers, in the scrimmage, but if he got rough with him in Jamal Perkins–style, he would look spiteful and resentful. Roughhousing and rebounding—to sharpen up Congers’s game…Great.

Out of the corner of his eye Jojo saw a shimmer of Dupont mauve enter the locker room. He didn’t need to look straight at the man to know it was Coach in his starter jacket. Well—it would be okay to look at Coach, he decided. Besides, he couldn’t resist. Nobody could. At any given moment Coach was about to explode with anger—or turn into a stern but loving father appealing to your better self. So Jojo turned his head. There he was, Buster Roth, in a deep mauve nylon starter jacket emblazoned with DUPONT in gold letters. Behind him were two assistant coaches, Marty Smalls, who was white, and Skyhook Frye (“Sky” for his height, “hook” for his favorite shot as a center for Dupont…back when), a towering black man. All fourteen players were looking at Coach. His eyes were narrowed, and he had folded his eyebrows in toward one another, but it was still impossible to read his face. He stopped a step or so from where his players sat on the benches in front of their lockers and put his fists on his hips, which was not a good sign. He rocked back on his heels and drew his chin down toward his clavicle, which seemed to widen his already thick neck and make his head look as if it had erupted from the throat of the canary yellow polo shirt he was wearing. That was not a good sign, either. Then he ran his eyes over his flock slowly, one by one. The silence became a mounting pressure.

He motioned to Marty Smalls to wheel the blackboard over to where everyone could see it, which he did.

“Marty, gimme some chalk.” Which he did.

“And gimme a red, too.” Which he did. “Okay. Okay. Cincinnati’s got two new players. I’ve seen them at the camps. They’re tall, and they’re quick, but nothing’s gonna make Garducci change his offense. For a start, he’ll still run the back door.”

Whereupon Buster Roth started drawing an elaborate diagram on the blackboard in white and red, showing the Cincinnati strategy of overbalancing its offense on one side of the court and then suddenly looping a pass to a forward or a guard driving toward the basket down the other side, coming in through “the back door.”

“They’ve still got Jamal Perkins,” Coach continued, “and he’ll be down there holding, elbowing, stomping, and generally fouling the shit out of whichever one of you’s closest to the basket.”

Reluctantly, woefully, Jojo paid close attention to what Coach had to say about Perkins’s role. Soon would begin stage three of the demise of Jojo Johanssen: the moment he stepped out onto the court playing the role of a dummy representing Jamal Perkins for the benefit and greater glory of the Viper-driving Vernon Congers.

Coach finally completed his discourse and turned away from his chalk-board and said, “Okay, you got that?” Nods all around. “Anything else you need to know?” Fourteen silent faces. “Okay. Let’s get started. Charles, Mike, Cantrell, Vernon, Alan—you’re Cincinnati. Marty?”

As Marty Smalls stepped forward with a freshly laundered stack of yellow practice shirts, Jojo sat catatonically on his bench, paralyzed by conflicting waves of wonder and belief. If Congers was playing for “Cincinnati,” then Jojo Johanssen must be on the starting five—or had he missed something? Or once they got on the court, would Coach see he had gotten it backward and have them exchange shirts again? Now he couldn’t resist looking at the others, although he did it sidewise. Mike was slipping his yellow shirt over his head, whereupon he looked straight at Jojo with his head cocked, his eyes popped open, and a twisted little smile on his face, as if to say, “You and all your blubbering about the end of your career. Are you happy now?”