I Am Charlotte Simmons (92 page)

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Authors: Tom Wolfe

BOOK: I Am Charlotte Simmons
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“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.
“Beverly,” she said, “there's something I want to ask you.” She said it with such a calm, unapologetic voice and with such a level gaze that Beverly's expression went from cross to wary. “You said you wanted details about what happened at the Saint Ray formal. Since then, have you heard what happened? Has anybody told you about it?”
A trace of alertness stole into Beverly's face. “I
heard
something …” She shrugged.
“What you heard was true,” said Charlotte. “And if you heard any details, they were true, too. And if you didn't get enough details, any details you can imagine, they're true, too. So now you know everything? Probably more than I do myself? I gotta meet somebody for breakfast. I'll see you later.”
Beverly stared at her with as blank a look as Charlotte had ever seen on her face. Whereupon Charlotte went into her closet and found her old bathrobe, the one she had been cowed out of wearing soon after she got to Dupont. She put it on with a flourish of the belt, stepped into her banished old fuzzy slippers, picked up her old vinyl kit, and headed for the bathroom. Beverly slowly sagged down off her elbow prop and sank back into her bed without another word.
 
 
When Charlotte and Adam reached Mr. Rayon, the breakfast crowd was just beginning to build. It always built slowly because the typical student didn't wake up before ten a.m. if he could possibly avoid it. Charlotte still felt
strong. She was Charlotte Simmons again. All the same, she looked around to see what she could see. She and Adam got in line. How shiny and slick and light and bright and white the walls were! And overhead, what fierce martial colors the banners had! The laughter of girls and the pings of stainless-steel table utensils against earthenware crockery spiked up through the doggedly manly roar of boys in the season of the rising sap. Charlotte was relieved to be with Adam rather than alone in this crowd. She dreaded the thought of somebody seeing her alone and knowing the story and pitying her.
Adam was right behind her, and she turned to him and said: “Adam—I hope I don't start crying when I tell you this, but you've done so-o-o-o-o much for me. I didn't think I could ever show my face again. I felt like I was caught in a … in like the maelstrom in the Edgar Allan Poe story, and there was no way I could get out of it. But you got me out, Adam. I feel like a human being again. You really—well, I'm more grateful than I can ever put into words.”
Even as she said it, she realized it was for two reasons, and one of them made her feel devious. She said it because she meant it—but she also said it so that if any Crissy or Gloria or Nicole or Erica or Lucy Page or Bettina was looking at her, she would see her in animated conversation, indicating that Charlotte Simmons had not been reduced to a little forlorn and universally scorned cum-rag of a country girl.
Adam slipped his hand around the inside of her elbow, gave it a gentle squeeze, and brought his mouth close to her ear and said, “Thanks, but I really didn't do anything for you. All I did was remind you of who you actually are and what you can become. I just
reminded
you.”
For an instant, when Adam drew so close to her face, Charlotte was afraid he was going to plant a kiss on her cheek or maybe even shoot for her lips or intertwine arms or put his arm around her or make some otherwise embarrassing expression of his ardor. She didn't want
that
. But he withdrew his hand after the little squeeze and was as decorous as you could ask for.
A big joyful smile spread across her face, and she said, “You didn't just
remind
me of anything. You absolved me. You really did. You got me back on my feet.”
Her beaming, tickled-pink smile didn't go with the gravity of the sentiment. Puzzled, Adam drew his eyebrows together, and his head twitched. Her harmless—well, wasn't it?—duplicity was accumulating. Once more she meant it—but at the same time she wanted anyone who happened to be
watching to see that not only did she have company but she was also in excellent spirits, not at all laid low by anything that had happened. The resurrected Charlotte Simmons … a
happy girl
.
And someone was watching! As she moved ahead in the line, she felt a tap on her shoulder and turned about to see Bettina.
“Hey! Where've you been?” An upbeat, sunny Bettina.
“Around,” said Charlotte, moving forward and picking up a tray.
“Hey, what's wrong? You pissed at me?”
“No,” said Charlotte in a noncommittal tone, and she kept moving forward.
“Well, Mimi and I are sitting over there if you want to sit with us.”
“I'm already sitting with someone, thanks.”
“Who?”
“Adam is his name.”
“Who's he?”
“He's right back there—plaid shirt.”
Bettina glanced back and took her time about it and then said to Charlotte, “What is he, a T.A. or something?”
“No, he's my friend.” The way she said it cut off any further discussion.
“Ohhh,” said Bettina. Her nostrils flared slightly and curled, as if Adam gave off an odor from afar. “Okay, then, whatever. See ya later.” Bettina left, miffed, presumably to rejoin the other snake, Mimi.
Charlotte was offended by Bettina's tacit verdict on Adam—and worried by it. Was he that obviously dorky? She tried to work it out in her mind. Even if he was, it wouldn't take much to change that. Some contacts or laser corrections … and get rid of those glasses. That would be the first thing. Cut back on all that curly hair and shape it and get rid of that part. That would focus attention on his face. He had fine features. In fact, he would be handsome, if only he would let himself be handsome and un-dork—such a word?—un-dork his clothes. What are those dark blue wool pants with the pleats and cuffs …
wool?
… no guys wore wool pants … and that old man's belt with that sort of fake-silver sleeve instead of a normal belt buckle, and the plaid shirt with green and tan and rust-red stripes going this way and that on an oatmeal-gray background? She had the sneaking feeling that he had decided to get dressed up for breakfast with her, and this was the result. Those plaid shirts gave off whiffs of Engineering Geek or Chem Major. And those brown moccasins with soles like rock ledges—what was this unerring eye for just the wrong thing? Some simple, plain button-down shirts, some
khakis, some jeans, some flip-flops, some loafers, although she would have to choose the loafers—nothing to it, and he'd be a different person!
Charlotte's breakfast came to $3.25 for orange juice, cereal, berries, and toast. Much too much—did she really need toast? Could she conceivably return it and get her money back? Not she. She knew she wasn't the sort of person who could pull something like that off … Her rehabilitated spirits were sinking. Tray in hand, she led Adam over to the same out-of-the-way table behind the Thai food wall divider where she had her first talk with Jojo; only this time she sat with her back to the room. As to why she had done so, chosen this table, chosen this chair—she knew but fought its rising to the level of conscious knowledge.
They sat down, and Adam looked very happy. She had never seen him look so happy. She had seen him in a good mood before—but only after an odd and in its way exhausting form of combat. He loved to compete with Greg and the other Mutants in conversation—but it was a struggle, because they were good at it. He had a passion, obviously, for
her
, but he didn't know what to do with his glasses if he was going to try to kiss her—another struggle. He got all balled up trying to figure out some way to sound passionate without sounding dorky—yet one more struggle. No one on earth would call Adam laid-back, but that was what he seemed to be at this moment.
“I don't know if I ever told you,” he said, rocking back on two legs of his chair and smiling like a man who just shot the moon, “but I went to Japan the first semester of my junior year, and I spent a week with a family in a little fishing village two hours from Tokyo by train, way out by the ocean. For breakfast they didn't have an entirely different menu the way we do. For breakfast, you know how we—or most people—have things we never think about the whole rest of the day? Juice, cereal, sliced bananas, eggs, pancakes, French toast, English muffins, cheese Danish.” He chuckled, quite delighted with himself. “Hmmm! Never noticed all that pan-European breakfast terminology before! That's completely American, using all those foreign names for simple food. Greek coffee? Nahhh. I don't know anybody who has Greek coffee for breakfast. Anyway, we have our special breakfast foods, and we never think about them again until the next morning. But you know what they have for breakfast out in a little village like the one I was in? They have leftovers from dinner the night before. Fish soup, warmed-over rice, stir-fried dumplings if there are any left; they're really good. Now in that
one thing
, breakfast, you can read the story of the difference between two peoples, two cultures. For a start—”
And off he goes, thought Charlotte. It was endearing, this tendency of his … for the most part … after all, he did have the most wonderful intellectual curiosity.

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