I Am Charlotte Simmons

16. The Sublime

STATIC::::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC :::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC :::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC choked the Buster Bowl, choked it here on the LumeNex-floodlit polyurethaned blond wood floor of the court, choked it up up on and up the cliffs of seats, choked it all the way to the dome—choked it—but Jojo could hear every word the black giant, Jamal Perkins, said as Perkins and his 250 or so pounds bellied him from behind.

“Yo, Token—yo’ white ass better hope the man don’t th’ow it to you, ’cause yo’ token white ass gon’ fuck up, Token! Yo’ fucking fingers made a china, and you shaking like a fucking cup, Token—”

So Jojo backed his own 250 pounds even harder into Perkins’s midsection, all the while watching the orange ball, which was now the center of the world, as Dashorn, the point guard, was dribbling it way out beyond the three-point line, looking for an opening in the Cincinnati defense…and the crowd, the full fourteen thousand, sold-out, was roaring, but Jojo no longer heard it as a human sound. The roars ricocheted off the cliff until they somehow fused and became sheer

::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: in Jojo’s ears, and the ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: enveloped Jojo and the other nine players on the court and shut out everything else in the world—George III, resentful professors, smart but weak tutors, Sleeping Beauties who wouldn’t give him the time of day, brothers barreling down the track to parent-approved success as lawyers and investment bankers ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: Only when enveloped by the ::::::::::STATIC did Jojo feel alive and in his realm and fulfilled in the ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: of battle, where the boundaries are clearly the boundaries and the rules are clearly the rules and the tally of battle is up on an electric board and is clearly the tally and smart mouths and the insidious strategies of weaklings mean nothing. Jojo’s greatest dread was the sound of the horn, the horn, whose bray would signal a time-out, a substitution, the end of a quarter—and the play would stop, the static would turn back into human voices, and just like that he, Jojo the Athlete, would be back in the world where small people with shrewd purposes would once again have the power to humiliate him.

Still out there beyond the three-point line…bounced the orange ball. Dashorn passed it to André, who bent at the waist, holding the ball low with both hands about knee level, swinging it to this side and that, looking for a way to fake his man out and drive around him—gave up and passed it back to Dashorn, while Jamal Perkins was trying to get inside Jojo’s head.

“Wuz all ’at wiggling yo’ token white ass, Token? The bitch coming out? Hunnh?—the bitch coming out, Token? Four at home and five on the road—shit, you ain’t gonna last five minutes in this game. This game rightcheer, right now! Old Buster gon’ yank yo’ white ass and put in Congers! Oh yeah, yank yo’ flat-footed white ass and put Congers—”

Jojo was stunned. How did a Cincinnati player like Jamal Perkins know about his Vernon Congers problem? And if he knew, then the rest of the Cincinnati squad knew it, and if they knew it, then every team on the schedule knew it—

—and Jamal Perkins had now done it. He had gotten inside his head. He was messing up his mind…and now all the trash he’d been talking began to sting. Not that Perkins was some unknown black monster from the deep. Jojo played against him last year—played against him in the AAU leagues and at the shoe-company camps before that—but now this big bastard had gotten inside his head, and he couldn’t remove him—which meant that now he couldn’t let the bastard get away with talking about the bitch coming out, could he, since that was exactly the same as calling him a faggot, wasn’t it, a faggot, and—that bastard!—you couldn’t just take shit like that, could you.

Jojo blurted back over his shoulder in desperation, “Yeah, and outcho momma’s ass, too, Jay maulll. Why she be calling you Jaymaulllll? Yo’ daddy a fucking Ay-rab? Or you even know, Jaymaulll? Where yo’ daddy at Jaymaulll, out butt-fucking camels—Jaymaullll?”

Jamal Perkins went silent, as if his breath had been knocked out :::::::::: STATIC::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: then a seething whisper: “Just keep on talking, you gray motherfucker. You got ass-rape on your fucking mind? We gon’see who’s gonna get fucking ass-raped!” He dug the heel of his left hand into Jojo’s left kidney.

A trill of delight! The black giant had wedged his way into Jojo’s head, but now Jojo was inside of Jay maulll’s head, way inside, and that dumb fuck was never—but how did he know about Congers?

At that moment, Dashorn, dribbling with his right hand out beyond the three-point line, looked at Jojo and put his left hand up in the air. Then he turned his head toward André Walker, also out beyond the line, stopped dribbling, and held the ball in both hands. They had practiced this so often that Jojo didn’t even have to think about it in any sequential way. He thrust himself back harder into Jamal Perkins’s midsection in order to have the big man back on his heels when the ball came.

Dashorn faked a pass to André and, without looking, threw the ball inside to Jojo. The orange core of the world—Jojo had it in his hands in the ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: of fourteen thousand cheering souls. Jojo’s part was to pivot away, jump as if he were about to try a short jump shot, and instead pass off to André, who would come driving straight down the lane toward the basket—or to Treyshawn, who was to muscle his way around his man and drive toward the basket from over along the baseline.

Jojo jumped—both hands on the ball, Jamal Perkins up with him on top of him—André not in the lane—pick hadn’t worked?—Treyshawn ramming his way to the basket, his man all over him but a fighting chance, Jojo lowers his arm to dish off to Treyshawn—now!—whack, Perkins chops Jojo’s forearm, the ball pops out at a crazy angle, Jojo lands off balance on his back looking up at the LumeNex lights in the ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: melee over the ball ::::::::::STATIC

:::::::::: Perkins bulls his way in got it dismayed ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: beaten! ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: Jojo rolls over ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: striped shirt referee’s over him blowing his whistle swinging his arms in a scissor fashion to halt play ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: calls a foul on Perkins. Jojo will shoot two.

STATIC:::::::::: dies down…He’d won…He’d gotten inside the big fuck’s head and provoked him into a blatant foul…He wanted some way to announce it to the crowd…give them the whole trash-talking dialogue…explain how he obliterated the big fuck’s delusion of domination…said unspeakable things to him…out-niggered him!…Yo! And you think it was just two big men fighting over a ball!

As he approached the free-throw line, a girl’s voice shrieked, “Go go, Jojo!” A swell of cheers from all the cliffsides…Jojo tried to pick her out…The cry came from…over there…near the floor…but no luck, even though he could pick out individual faces now—

He’d never been calmer at the free-throw line in his life. He’d already won—if only everybody could know the truth of it. The others were lining up on either side of the lane. Treyshawn was giving him a big, goofy grin from down near the basket…In a falsetto voice: “Go go, Jojo!” Falsetto…Treyshawn knew how he’d won…Jojo could feel this confirmation by Treyshawn The Man…feel it, even though he wouldn’t have dared explain it out loud to a living soul.

He sank the first shot just like that, without thinking about it. The noise of the crowd swelled…André walked up the lane toward him…Jojo met him, and they touched fists in the congratulatory way—

“Twenty-four! Twenty-four!” A girl’s voice, again from courtside. A couple of beats before Jojo realized that was his number…He stared at the first courtside section of seats…You couldn’t miss her…standing, beaming, red faced, miles of blond hair…Some sort of white thing…cardboard?…began to rise up in front of her until it covered her face…a poster with amateurish, inelegant, big, thick, unmistakable hand lettering: 24! I’LL BE YOUR WHORE! Great whoops from the other side of the arena, from those who could see it. The poster began to descend, and when it reached the floor of the stands—poof!—the girl was gone. More whoops, laughter, and mock but lusty cheers. A ribald buzz rose in the Buster Bowl, and heads were craning this way and that. 24! I’LL BE YOUR WHORE!

That warrior, Number 24, returned to the free-throw line, and the referee tossed the ten-inch orange core of the world to him. Jojo had never felt looser at the free-throw line than he did right now. The buzz had scarcely abated. The Buster Bowl moaned from the girl’s salacious proffer. Jojo bounced the ball four times, held it in a crouch, then rose to almost his full height before releasing it. The Buster Bowl went dead silent as the ball reached the apogee of its arc toward the basket…Whisk…It snapped the strings of the net, so clean was the trajectory and so steep the descent.

A roar—immediately rose to STATIC:::::::::::: of stupendous intensity. It hummed in Jojo’s very hide as he ran down to the Cincinnati end to play defense. He had to fight off the desire to smile for the crowd’s benefit. As he passed the Dupont bench, in peripheral vision he could see Coach on his feet. Buster Roth in the tan gabardine suit, the shirt and tie he wore for games. The shirts were always white, custom-made, with some kind of go-to-hell high roll in the collar, and he always wore a Dupont tie, Dupont mauve with a print of golden basketballs emblazoned with small mauve versions of the Dupont D. Coach had his own unsmiling, clench-jawed look of triumph on his face and was leaning forward toward Jojo and yelling something to him. Whatever it was, Jojo wished he could hear it. His first name wouldn’t be Fucking. Coach never used Fuck Patois in approval or triumph.

Over his shoulder he could see Perkins, whom he’d be guarding, coming up behind him…Not a good idea…asking for it…but he couldn’t resist. As Jojo turned about to take up a defensive posture and play his man, he gave Perkins a sneer and a single dismissive wave of his hand. Perkins just stared at him with his lips slightly parted. No expression…Oh, Jojo had gotten inside the dumb fuck’s head, all right, deep inside…Jay-maulllll, him and his “white ass” and “Token” and “bitch”…Jojo had invaded the dumb fuck’s head and caused him to lose it, commit a foul so flagrant no referee in the world could have missed it.

Perkins played inside, the same way Jojo did, and Jojo took up his position between Perkins and the basket while the Cincinnati point guard, a black guy, American but named Winston Abdulla, not much over six feet but with prodigiously large hands—everybody who played against him talked about his hands—Abdulla dribbled about, looking for a way to get something going. Jojo immediately bellied into Perkins’s back to reestablish dominance, get deeper inside the big fuck’s shaved head. Perkins’s delts and lats were so big, his upper back looked a mile wide through the shoulders and tapered down sharply to a narrow waist.

Jojo started in immediately. “Yo, Jay maullll…What happened, Jaymaullll? You jes’ plain-long fucking lost it’s what happened…Nome sayin’, Bluhhhhhd?…The white man gitchoo all choked, Bluhhhhhhd?”—and on in that vein.

Perkins said nothing—nothing. He, Jojo, had crowbarred his way inside the giant’s head, and the bullshit had hemorrhaged out of his fucking brain. Now Perkins was leaning back into him very hard, and Jojo began pushing back with both hands. The referees would allow that much as the big men went sumo to sumo inside. Winston passed to Cincinnati’s great shooting guard, a willowy black guy named McAughton. Both Dashorn and Curtis moved in on him. Curtis covered him, and then Dashorn moved in from the side and almost knocked the ball out of his hands. Totally hemmed in, McAughton made a desperate bounce pass inside to Perkins. Jojo was all over him. Perkins held the ball up over his head out of Jojo’s reach and seemed to be looking about to feed the other guard who was a step ahead of Curtis and cutting inside. Perkins brought the ball down and bent way over, as if to tuck it in his midsection—pushed off one foot, dribbled once, took two steps, wheeled about, and leaped as high as Jojo had ever seen anybody leap on a basketball court. Jojo jumped to block him. The next instant stuck in his mind like a photograph: the orange center of the world and Perkins’s black arm in a corona of LumeNex light at an apogee a full foot above Jojo’s own hopeless fingertips. Perkins rammed home a seemingly effortless dunk. He sailed over ::::::::::STATIC::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: the second tallest Dupont player on the floor and made it look easy.

How could it have happened? As Jojo ran back down the court, defeat registered with a pain real enough to be tactile :::::::::STATIC:::::::::: STATIC::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: didn’t want to so much as glance at Coach as he passed the bench, but his peripheral vision betrayed him. Buster Roth had his hands cupped around his mouth like a megaphone. He was leaning forward, a contorted figure emerging from the atomic fog of the ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::::::

When Jojo got down near the basket to take up his position, Perkins was waiting for him, staring…but not saying a word. Instead, he had his tongue stuck in the big pocket of flesh between his gums and his lower lip. It created a bulge above his chin and a wholly mechanical smile in which his eyes weren’t involved at all. Perkins had a pair of mean-looking eyes. He nodded up and down ever so slightly, as if to say, “Yes, white boy, that’s how it’s going to be. Get used to it.”

Jojo felt fear. He wondered if Perkins could smell it. Jamal Perkins was not only big, he was quick and a plyometric marvel on top of that ::::::::::STATIC

::::::::::STATIC::::::::::

Perkins didn’t say anything. This Jojo took as a bad sign. It was abnormal. Jojo backed into him, and Perkins shoved back, always with the heels of both hands over Jojo’s kidneys. Not that it hurt particularly, but there was something…sinister…about it, something calculating…Out on the three-point line’s semicircle, Dashorn and Curtis and André were shuttling the ball back and forth and trying picks that didn’t work and getting generally frustrated by the Cincinnati defense. The shot clock was running down. Finally André faked a three-point jumper that was in fact a soft, looping feed to Treyshawn. Cincinnati’s big Serb, Javelosgvik, was all over him. He was so aggressive and had such long arms that Treyshawn had to try a fadeaway with a high arc from ten feet out. It clanged on the cantilever that attached the basket to the backboard and bounced. Jojo and Perkins went up for the rebound :::::::::::::STATIC:::::::::::::::STATIC::::::::::::: The ball took a lazy bounce almost straight up, and both men came back to the floor…had to jump again. Perkins shoved Jojo sideways with his forearm and beat him easily on the second jump, but the ball took a second clanging bounce on the rim and Perkins was already descending, heading back to the floor again as Jojo regained his footing and jumped up and seized the ball above the level of the rim and came down with it and, hemmed in by Cincinnati uniforms, fed it out to André, who immediately threw it back inside to him.

Perkins was all over Jojo’s back. He growled out a single sentence: “Jes’ give it up, bitch.”

Jojo saw red—a red mist before his eyes. The Congers move popped into his head. He drew the ball in close to his chest and glanced back to gauge where Perkins’s solar plexus was…yes…pivoted to his left and brought the ball up as if about to attempt a jumper—took his right hand off the ball, swung back to the right, and drove his elbow into Perkins’s midsection immediately below the sternum with all his might—

Ooooofff!

—hit home!—swung around Perkins with a bounce and three strides and soared to stuff the ball—can’t believe it! A black arm is already there, blocking the ball, which spins off his fingers. Jojo comes down off balance, stumbling away from the ball—the Serb has it, flailing his elbows back and forth and then shuttling it off to the point guard, McAughton—

What just happened couldn’t have happened! He’d given Perkins a whack right in the solar plexus—and Perkins takes it and is somehow…there…to block an easy stuffer that was as good as made—

McAughton is already racing toward the Dupont basket on a fast break, feeds his shooting guard with a pass across court. Only an incredible leap by André Walker deflecting the feed back to McAughton averts another conversion. Jojo lets out his breath and convinces himself: at least he couldn’t be blamed.

The next—what?—minute, minutes?—went by in a delirium. He managed to get downcourt in time to intercept Perkins, but the next thing he knew, Perkins was feinting this way and that until he had Jojo flat-footed, and he drove to the basket along the baseline. With a lunge and a leap Jojo managed to get his hand up at least six inches above the rim as Perkins took off. But Perkins hurtled under the basket and did a twisting fall-away layup from the other side.

Jojo couldn’t keep track of the sequences, but the same show was on, over and over. Perkins has Jojo so bottled up on offense that Dashorn, Curtis, and André give up going inside to him and seek out Treyshawn. Guarding Perkins—it isn’t guarding. It’s humiliation after humiliation. Explosions of quickness and power—and Perkins goes around him, over him, under him—three more baskets that seem to occur with such suddenness that Jojo—Jojo—Jojo—

And then the dreaded horn sounded. No longer inside the STATIC pearl…back into the world, where all was politics, judgment, and abrasion. The dreaded horn had sounded! The noise had not really died down all that much, but now the crowd was no longer dematerialized in an atomic fog. Jojo could see individual faces, even though he went to some pains not to look into them. He was conscious of the Cottontop Box at midcourt, the Pineapple Grove.

“Yo! Jojo!” A young voice from a section of the stands above the rich old people. “Which way’d he go? You’re money, Jojo! Maybe a nickel!” Followed by a round of laughter.

Against his better judgment, Jojo looked up. There, in an aisle, was a clump of four guys—students by the looks of them—staring at him with smirks and crooked, slightly wary grins, waiting for him to respond.

Jojo looked away and headed on toward the bench. Only then did he look up at the scoreboard. He knew they were behind, but he didn’t know it was that bad: 12–2. Jamal Perkins had scored eight of Cincinnati’s twelve—all of them in man-to-man duels with Jojo Johanssen…the white boy…

He could already hear what awaited him at the bench. Coach was into full Fuck Patois. He wasn’t even going to let the starters sit down…Fucking this and fucking that. He was letting Dashorn, Treyshawn, Curtis, and André have it…Even Treyshawn…

Just like that, the band, always installed throughout the game in the first eight rows of the stands at one corner of the court, broke out in a blast of brass and drums…the theme song from Rocky rendered in an insane arrangement…a convulsion of jazzy optimism. Lines of cheerleaders in clinging sleeveless V-necked mauve jerseys and pleated yellow miniskirts lined both sides of the court, wagging their fannies, making the music seem even fluffier. They were on the court before Jojo could even return to the bench. Where did they come from? It was as if they had flown down from the upper reaches of the Buster Bowl dome. Scampering right by Jojo came the dancers, the Charlies’ Angels (Chazzies), in golden Lycra tights, cut almost as low as the top of the cleft in the rear declivity. The swath of flesh between their golden Lycra athletic bras and the low-cut golden tights was a twenty-first-century Venus bellyscape of winking navels and high-definition abdominals. Many was the time Jojo had found it arousing—this juxtaposition of the sharpness of the taut, ripped, shredded abdominals…and the soft, mysterious swells…But lust was completely foreign to him at this moment. Just like that, the dancers hurled themselves into modern dance choreography that turned the theme music from the movie Rocky, an anthem of martial determination, into a belly or, rather, abdominals, dance. At every corner of the court were acrobats and tumblers and gymnasts. Young men—with arms of steel, and mauve-and-yellow striped tights that clung to immensely muscular upper thighs—worked in pairs, launching lovely little cupcake gymnasts into the air above them, where the little lovelies did somersaults, half gainers, and back flips with yawning twists before they fell back into the young men’s arms. The band, the cheerleaders, the dancers, the acrobats—an instant circus covering the court!—and this was nothing more than a time-out! The band exploded with giddily merry music, not stirring but…giddy, inexplicably joyous, aimlessly ecstatic. And hadn’t the players, these giant men on campus, taken note of this hardwood platter of lithe and crazy little cupcakes? Oh yes, they had. To be sure. Some had gone through them serially. By now it seemed like a natural reward for the eminent warrior. Jojo had had his flings like the rest. It meant about as much as a nice cold beer…having a romp with one of these little cupcakes who bucked and humped and swiveled and swagged and worked so hard, shaking their bottoms from cliff to cliff.

The pandemonium was such that as Jojo neared the bench, he could no longer hear Coach raging in Fuck Patois. But it wasn’t something that required hearing. Seeing it was quite enough…the way his upper teeth overbit his lower lip in order to spit out a fucking at maximum strength. All was uproar, and the band was playing “Love for Sale” at a tickled-pink tempo that longed for a drum major and six majorettes.

Out of the corner of his eye Jojo saw Dashorn and Treyshawn bending over at the waist to hear Coach better and, presumably, more privately, and Curtis and André were just joining them. Obviously Coach was gathering the five of them, as usual, for instructions before they returned to the court. He steeled himself. He knew he himself would get an earful, no doubt. He took a deep breath, joined the huddle—Congers—a visceral chill before his mind could fasten upon the logic—

Owing to Treyshawn’s huge bulk, Jojo hadn’t realized until this instant that sandwiched in between Treyshawn and Coach was Vernon Congers. He had bent over, his hands on his knees, like the rest of them…to get the word before play resumed. Jojo started to do likewise—but the logic kicked in, and he remained erect, his shoulders slumped and his lips parted.

Coach looked up at him with an expression that seemed to say, “Oh, hi, I didn’t expect to see you here.” To make it worse, his voice was kindly…

“Jojo, I want you to take a break.” He motioned in a vague direction with his head…in a vague direction…but not so vague that Dashorn, Treyshawn, André, Curtis, and least of all Vernon Congers could fail to realize that it was toward the bench.

All except Coach turned their faces away from him, and Jojo looked away from them. Desperate to fix upon some thing, any thing, his eyes found the scoreboard. Four minutes and forty seconds of the first quarter had elapsed.

It was as Jamal Perkins had predicted. His tenure as a starter for Dupont had lasted less than five minutes of the first game of the season—the season that would make or put an end to his career as an athlete, which is to say, the only career open, the only role imaginable, to Jojo Johanssen in this world.

He became acutely conscious of the band. Now the trumpets, the trombones, the clarinets, the French horns, the mighty drums, were playing “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” with the unremittingly bubbly beat of “On the Sunny Side of the Street.”

Two students who could care less about what was happening in the Buster Bowl were walking along in the rusky, dusky Monday night quiet of Ladding Walk. The Walk’s ornamental streetlamps—feeble, all too feeble—cast the old buildings and trees on either side into grotesque shadow. One could feel it, the presence of so many architectural and arboreal hulks, stone-dead, dead still, in the dark.

“It does weird you out a little,” said Adam, hoping to sound nonchalant. “Come to think of it, I don’t even remember being on Ladding Walk at night before. But I also don’t remember anything ever happening on Ladding Walk at night…or in the daytime, for that matter. Whatta you think there is to be scared of?”

“I’m not talking about…scared exactly,” said Charlotte. “I just didn’t want to walk all the way over here in the dark by myself…and then all the way to the end down there?”

Far ahead, the two edges of the Walk appeared to converge in total darkness, with only glimmering globes of light to mark the way.

“It’s spooky, is what I mean,” Charlotte was saying. “I was here one night with Mimi and Bettina. I don’t remember why, I just remember how spooky itwas…All right, I’m a plain-long scaredy cat! I’ll admit it. I’m being silly—but I really do ’preciate you doing this.”

She gave him a smile that made him want to throw his arms around her, lift her off the ground—pop. He just kept on walking. He was glad the light was too weak for her to see him blush. He felt noble; and more than noble, brave, or mildly so; and more than noble and brave, admired by the girl who was the answer to his prayers and, more than that, his virginity. It dawned on him that he had never seen her wearing jeans before. He motioned toward them. “Those new?”

“Sort of,” said Charlotte. “Not exactly.”

“Now, tell me again why you’re going to the Saint Ray house?” said Adam. “To thank this guy who did what for you?”

As they walked along, Charlotte told him a rather long and involved story about this guy who had saved her from a terribly drunk and menacing lacrosse player. Why a girl like her would even go near a tailgate never became clear. Tailgates were idiotic Saturday afternoon blackout parties for cretins whose idea of a fulfilling weekend was to drink until they passed out Saturday night and then tell war stories about it on Sunday and Monday. He couldn’t imagine a freshman, least of all a lovely little flower like Charlotte—who wouldn’t even touch a beer—going near a tailgate.

“So this guy saves you from a drunk lacrosse player, and he doesn’t even know your name?”

“He didn’t then,” said Charlotte. “I guess he does now.”

She proceeded to tell him a rather boring story about how she and Mimi and Bettina had fled from the tailgate and how she felt bad because she hadn’t thanked her savior. Adam tuned out at that point, and she rambled on. The gist of it seemed to be that she would feel remiss if she didn’t thank him.

Adam said, “If he didn’t know your name, how did you find out his name? How did you know how to get in touch with him?”

“I heard somebody call him Hoyt,” said Charlotte. “That’s kind of an unusual name, I guess, and when I told my roommate, she said her sister, who’s a senior, knew a senior named Hoyt? Hoyt Thorpe?”

Adam stopped and just stood there in the middle of Ladding Walk and stared at Charlotte with his hands on his hips and his jaws agape.

“You’re kidding.”

“You know him?”

“I’ve met him. You…are…kidding me! And now he’s slugged Mac Bolka? Ohmygod, talk about insane—I cannot…believe this!”

“Believe what?”

“I’ve been trying to do a story on Hoyt Thorpe! Do you know about him and the Night of the Skull Fuck?”

“Well—Beverly told me something about it…”

“I want to do a whole takeout on it…everything, beginning to end. I mean, this involves a guy who could become President of the United States.”

Feeble as the light was, he thought he could see Charlotte’s eyes grow larger. Such a rapt look. She beheld him in dawning admiration, brighter, brighter, brighter, until the…glow on her face had become an aura, unmistakable even here in the gloom of Ladding Walk…and now maybe he could do it. Maybe it would be all right to try it. Not enfold her in his arms—well, no, but maybe put his arm around her waist? He tried to picture it. What the hell would that be, or supposed to be, about? He felt so amateurish…a pathetic virgin…

What could only be the Saint Ray house was just ahead. It was the only building alive on the entire Walk. Brass lanterns by the front door…lights in the upper windows, presumably bedrooms…all quiet and serene compared to the random Saturday nights he had gone to open-house fraternity parties…a thought that triggered a sinking feeling. He had had a uniformly miserable time at frat parties…all the hearty Big Man bellowing that went on…but then rational judgment, albeit wounded, returned.

Adam stopped again. They were barely twenty-five yards from the Saint Ray house front lawn. “Hey, I just got a great idea, Charlotte.” His face had lit up with the excited smile that often comes with the Aha! phenomenon. “Why don’t I go in there with you? You want to thank Thorpe, and I want to talk to him!”

Charlotte looked startled. For a moment she bit her upper lip with her lower teeth. “I…don’t think that would be a good idea…I don’t want him to think I came over to thank him just so a friend of mine could get a story for the Wave—you know?”

“All right,” said Adam. “I won’t try to interview him. I won’t do that until some other time when he’s not even going to think about any such connection. But in the meantime he would see me in a like…you know, personal light. When I finally do ask him for an interview, like down the line, he won’t see me as just some—” He started to say “nerd,” but caught himself. He didn’t want her to know that frat boys or jocks or anybody else thought that way about people who worked for the Wave. “—just some guy from out of nowhere who wants to ask him some questions about the Night of the Skull whatever.” He wasn’t entirely sure why, but he decided he should lay off the word “Fuck” while he was asking her for a favor.

“Golly, I don’t know…”

“It’ll seem completely natural, Charlotte! I’m some guy who just happened to walk you over here in the dark.” He turned his palms up and arched his eyebrows, as if to say, “What is there to object to?”

Charlotte grimaced and shook her head but didn’t seem to be able to put her concern into words. “I can—that may be—I know what you’re saying?—and I really am grateful?—but you said—when you write your story you said yourself this could be a really big story?—and what if he’s upset? I mean, I already feel so guilty because I haven’t thanked him up to now, and this is two days later?”

“But he loves to talk about it! He’s proud of it!” Adam could feel his Aha! smile morphing into the excited beseeching of a beggar, but he couldn’t do anything about it. The emotion was too real. “I know that for a fact! One of his fraternity brothers told me. He loves to sit around and talk about it. The other guy, Vance something, he’s the one who doesn’t want to talk about it.”

Quietly: “Now you’re making me feel guilty over you.”

“It’s really not a big deal, Charlotte. It’ll be so…easy!”

“I know,” said Charlotte. “It’s not that. It’s just…I just want to thank him, and then—you know—like I just want to get it done? And leave…with no complications? Besides, if he likes to talk about it, why don’t you just call him up and ask him?”

“I told you. I did. But he doesn’t know who I am. I’m sure he’ll talk to someone he feels comfortable with.”

“I’m sorry, Adam.” It was almost a whisper, and she averted her eyes when she said it. “I just want to get this done, and that’ll be it.” Then she looked up into his eyes and brought her raised face up to his with great earnestness and said, “Oh, Adam, I really am so grateful to you. You’re so wonderful.”

With that, she drew closer and put her hands on his shoulders and brought her face up to his and her lips toward his lips—and detoured at the last instant to his cheek, upon which she planted a kiss.

“Oh, Adam,” she said again, “thank you. Thank you for doing this for me. When I get back, I’ll call you. Okay?”

Now she was turning away to head to the door of the Saint Ray house. A kiss on the cheek? But then she looked back with the sort of smile that tells you so much. She seemed on the verge of tears…that would flow from the eyes of love…Tears…Tears of joy? But what exactly were tears of joy?

Tears for the protector? He had quite an interesting theory he was developing about how all tears, at bottom, have to do with protection. We cry at birth because we come naked into this world and we need protection. We cry for those we love who were desperate for protection and didn’t get it in time. We cry with gratitude for those historic souls who have protected us at critical moments, with great risk to themselves. We cry for those who are voluntarily heading off into the valley of the shadow of death in order to protect us and who will need protection themselves as they do so. We cry for those who needed protection so very much and, with it or without it, have fought the good fight against great odds. All tears had to do with protection. No tears have to do with anything else.

The whole theory had matured nicely in these few minutes—moments?—in the dark on Ladding Walk. Could bliss come any better than this?…afloat in one of the loveliest and most prestigious university settings in the world, gazing down upon old bricks laid in a herringbone-and-diamond pattern created by the sorts of masons who no longer exist in our world, buoyant on the verge of two triumphs…conquests of the heart and of the head…a second major contribution-in-embryo to psychology—was there any greater happiness? Yes! The sublime was called Charlotte Simmons.