I Am Charlotte Simmons

33. The Soul Without Quotation Marks

It was nine-thirty p.m. by the time Charlotte left Adam’s and walked alone in the dark through the City of God and across the campus and reached Little Yard. What a relief it was to escape at last from Adam’s stifling, psychologically polluted sick bay of a slot…and what a sour taste remained. She felt used. Adam had made an awfully miraculous recovery from terminal neurasthenia and the imminence and immanence of death. Once he got out of bed and began reading his thirty-four e-mails and started making phone calls and trying to figure out with Greg which TV and newspaper interviews to do and which ones not to bother with, his ego began refilling so fast Charlotte could see it and hear it…Color and clear eyes returned to his face. Irony and intellectual showboating returned to his speech. “Tomorrow” returned to his vocabulary. He was so busy online and on the cell phone, he…carved out…the time it took him to thank her and say good-bye.

Her sense of relief had lasted barely one block into the City of God, however, and that had nothing to do with the slum’s much-feared bad boys, who were not to be seen, in any event. Charlotte’s night had just begun, not even counting all the homework she had yet to do for tomorrow. This was “it,” and “it” possessed her as she departed the elevator on the fifth floor of Edgerton and walked down the hall. How should she word “it” when she called Momma? Nine-thirty was awfully late to be making the call, given the diurnal cycle of country people, but she no longer had a choice. What would work best? Contrition, confession—a strictly academic confession, that is—humility, a plea for forgiveness, and a promise to make up for “it”? Or what about a by-the-way approach? “Momma, it’s me!…Oh, I just wanted to hear your voice and find out how everybody is…Good, and how is Aunt Betty’s angina?…That’s a relief. By the way, I’ve run into sort of a glitch in the academic side of things. It’s not the end of the world, and it’ll be easy to turn it around, but do you remember at Christmas when I was telling you all about…” Oh, sure…the way she must have looked and sounded to everybody…Momma was no fool. She would never swallow the notion that her prodigy’s hog wallow in misery had been induced by a glitch. Well, what about a completely true confession, an abject, hold-nothing-nothing!-back confession, committing herself to Momma’s mercy the way she did when she was a little girl?…The blessed catharsis that always followed…the blissful balm of Momma’s mercy…It had always brought peace to Charlotte’s heart precisely because Momma refused to be “realistic” about “the way things are today”…Oh Momma, Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee!…Pop. The very thought chilled Charlotte to the core. It would be as risky as trying to beat a burning fuse to the dynamite.

Round and round such calculations went until Charlotte actually took a couple of steps past the door to her room. She backtracked and opened it—

Bango!—both Erica and Beverly stood there. Ohmygod, how could she even make the call?

Beverly cocked her snoot and said, “Well! I’ve been wondering where you were. Your phone”—she gestured toward the white room telephone—“what’s going on? It’s driving me crazy.” She didn’t say it nicely.

Charlotte was surprised by her own calm and insouciance, insouciance in the literal sense: just not caring.

“You know, it’s your telephone, too, Beverly. In fact, you own it. You can pick it up and answer it or leave it off the hook or unplug it. If I’m not here, why would I care?”

Beverly bristled. To her, no doubt, those words were the equivalent of an impudent reprimand. Gesturing toward Charlotte, she turned to Erica and said in a bored manner, “My roomie.”

Silence. The moment stretched out…stretched out…and in that moment it occurred to Charlotte that she still envied the Beverlys and the Ericas and the Douches and the Psi Phi Trekkies. She envied them for being wellborn, for having money and all the clothes they wanted, for their natural assumption of social superiority and their actual attainment and enjoyment of it. She admitted this to herself, and it seemed like little more than an observation. For reasons she couldn’t have explained, if asked, she no longer felt cowed or intimidated by these people. They were what they were, and she was Charlotte Simmons. I am Charlotte Simmons. And in that moment it also occurred to her how rarely she had said that to herself over the past couple of months, and how even more rarely did it come burning into her mind with the old fire of defiance.

Perhaps to end the tension and fill the fast-expanding conversational vacuum, Erica spoke up. “Well, Charlotte, I suppose you’ve been keeping up with the adventures of our Mr. Thorpe today.”

Interesting. It was the first time Erica had called her by name. “I heard something about it,” said Charlotte.

“You haven’t read the Wave?”

“No.”

“You really haven’t?”

“I really haven’t.”

“Ohmygod, I don’t believe it! You’ve got to read it! I don’t think I’ve ever intentionally picked up the Wave, but today I did. Our Mr. Thorpe has been totally out of control. He’s always been totally out of control, but now he’s over the top.”

Erica paused, as if to see how this might strike the girl who was divested of her virginity by Mr. Hoyt Thorpe in what had been practically an exhibición in a hotel. Charlotte was absorbed in something else: the excitement in Erica’s voice as she addressed her, the absolutely flashing excitement in her eyes as she questioned this infamous little freshman and studied her face for any little change of expression that might reveal the emotions she assumed to be boiling inside.

In fact, Charlotte was intrigued by how little Charlotte Simmons cared. She replied in a countrified voice, “Goodness me. I had no—iiii—dee-a.” She gave Erica a supercilious smile.

That plus the sarcasm left Erica offended and speechless. Erica and Beverly exchanged glances and smiled at one another in a certain smart, galling mock-discreet way they had.

Without another word, Charlotte took off her puffy jacket, hung it on the back of her wooden chair, turned on her gooseneck lamp, sat down, and began reading a monograph titled Print and Nationalism. The first paragraph had to do with the extent, demographics, and technology of reading throughout Ancient Greece and Rome—Greece—which made her think of Jojo and his complete lack of guile or irony, which in turn made her think of Erica and Beverly and their excess of both, which in turn made her regret being so sarcastic and arch to Erica, which in turn led her to conclude, with nihilistic aplomb, that it made no difference anyway.

Erica said to Beverly, “You know the word ‘chippy’?”

“Chippy?”

“The Brits are always talking about people being chippy. They always have a chip on their shoulder, and they’re so insecure, they think everybody’s looking down on them.”

“I think I know what you mean,” said Beverly.

Charlotte’s back was to them, and so she had to imagine their little smiles and suppressed sniggers.

Soon they went out, which shouldn’t have made her feel unusually fortunate, since she couldn’t imagine either of them staying in…a dorm room at night…before two or three in the morning. They didn’t say good-bye.

Damn! Now it was nine-fifty, which would make everything just slightly worse when she called. Charlotte stared at the white telephone for a good two minutes before she screwed her courage up enough to dial…

One ring…another ring…another…another…four rings!—and such a tiny house!—could they be out?—so unlike them…another ring!—five—no, God!—if she had to wait until tomorrow to tell Momma, and the letter arrived tomorrow, it would be the same as not calling at all—another ring!—six—

“Hello?” Momma, thank God.

“Momma! Hi. It’s me!”

“Why, Charlotte! Did the phone ring a long time?”

“It did sort of, Momma.” She pulled did out into dee-ud in an instinctive and all but unconscious claim to Down Home closeness.

“Your Daddy and me been watching television with Buddy and Sam, and your brothers had on a movie—you know the ones where the whole thing is just one big fireball after the other?” Farball.

Charlotte laughed, as if their mutual awareness of silly farball movies was one of the funniest things they had ever shared.

Momma laughed, too. “I just barely heard it ring at all! You sound in a good mood. How is everything?”

“Oh, I feel good, Momma! And I just feel better hearing your voice! Well, there is one thing, Momma, I thought I ought to tell you before you just got it in the mail? You know?” Charlotte sped up her delivery to make sure Momma couldn’t slip in a question. “It’s sort of disappointing, actually—well, not sort of—it is disappointing, Momma. Remember how I got four A-pluses at midterm?”

Pause. “I do.” A bit wary.

“Well, I think I got too sure of myself, Momma. In fact, I know I did. And I started letting a few things slide? You know? And I don’t know, Momma, before I could do anything to stop it, it was like a whole landslide, you might say?”

Pause. “Whyn’t you tell me what you mean, a landslide.”

“Some of my grades fell off real badly, Momma.” Charlotte closed her eyes and turned her head so that her deflated sigh wouldn’t be transmitted. Then she blurted it all out, all four of the grades, the minuses and everything.

Momma said, “You got four A-pluses at midterm, and these are the grades you got for the whole semester?”

“I’m afraid so, Momma.”

“How can that be, Charlotte?” Momma’s voice was preternaturally restrained. Or was the word “numb”? “Midterm was early November, best I recollect.”

“That’s true, Momma. Like I said, I guess things just started piling up too fast, and I wasn’t paying attention, and then it was too late.”

“What was piling up, Charlotte? What was too late?” Momma’s voice was getting a bit testy—from her being double-talked.

Charlotte quickly discarded all the little cards she had been ready to play. She didn’t have any choice. She had to move straight to the radical explanation, which was at least in the orbit of the truth, however remotely.

“Momma—the thing is…I got a boyfriend right after midterm. I mean…I just…did. You know?”

No comment.

“He’s a real nice boy, Momma, and he’s real smart. He writes for the Wave, the daily newspaper. As a matter of fact, he might be on television tomorrow, on the news. I’ll call and tell you if I find out ahead of time.” Ohmygod, that was a blunder. If she turns on the TV and there’s Adam talking about oral sex—“Anyway, he’s part of a group of real bright students who have a sort of…society.”

Silence.

“It’s exciting just to hear the way they come up with ideas and dissect them. You know?”

“And that’s why you ended up with…the grades you got?” said Momma. “Because you got a boyfriend and he’s smart?”

That hurt like a lash. If it wasn’t sarcasm—and she couldn’t remember Momma ever being sarcastic before—it was close enough. She felt found out. Lies! Momma had always held up the Cross to lies, and they always cringed and died in that merciless, unforgiving light.

“I’m not saying it’s because of him, Momma! It’s because of me.” The good daughter generously concedes that the buck stops here. “I guess I got too interested in him. You know? He’s very courteous and respectful, and the last thing he would do is try to take advantage—” She stopped, realizing that the fantastic leaps of logic—of illogic—she was making from sentence to sentence were as much of a clue as Momma needed. She charged off in a different direction. “I’m already making a complete turnaround, Momma. I’m setting up a discipline for myself. I’m—”

“Good. So far I haven’t understood one thing you’ve told me, not one thing, except you got terrible grades. When you decide to tell me what’s happened—what’s going on—then we can talk about it.” Momma’s voice was terribly controlled, which was somehow worse than testy or sarcastic. “Does Miss Pennington know about any of this?”

“No, Momma, she doesn’t. You think I should tell her?” Desperately, Charlotte hoped to receive…some low-voltage approval…for having come to Momma first.

“What are you going to tell her, Charlotte, the same as you told me?”

Charlotte couldn’t think of a thing to say to that.

“Sounds to me like what you need right now is a talk with your own soul, an honest talk.”

“I know, Momma.”

“Do you?…’Deed I do hope so.”

“I’m sorry, Momma.”

“Sorry don’t change a thing, darling. Never did, never will.”

Long pause. “I love you, Momma.” The last and lowest resort of the sinner.

“I love you, Charlotte, and so does your daddy and Buddy and Sam. And Aunt Betty…and Miss Pennington. You got a lot of folks you don’t want to be letting down.”

After they hung up, Charlotte sat stricken in her wooden chair, too empty to cry. She had thought it would be a relief to “get it over with.” It wasn’t a relief, and she had gotten nothing over with. She was an ungrateful coward and a liar. What she had accomplished was to egest a putrid, obvious lie.

She had even sunk so low as to pass off Adam Gellin, perhaps soon to be on television, as her boyfriend. Such a lie, such a lie, and to what earthly end? Momma wasn’t stupid. She hadn’t believed a word of it. All she found out for sure was that her little prodigy was, for some no doubt vile reason, a little liar.

“I probably shouldn’t be calling you, but I just had to tell you: you’re awesom, dude, awesome.” As the words came through the receiver of his cell phone, Adam purred. He had been purring a lot this morning. Calls! E-mails!—like a thousand e-mails! Letters slipped under the door! Even a couple of FedExes! He was high, high in the best way a human being could be high, high with the triumph…and high with vengeance satisfied, paid in full. Even this shithole he lived in…glowed as he looked about it, glowed like some…well, holy place…

Nevertheless, this particular call was special. He owed this guy…a lot.

“Thanks, Ivy,” he said into the cell phone. “That means a lot to me, coming from you. I couldn’t have—”

“What’s better than ‘awesome’?” said the exuberant voice. “ ‘Dynamite’ maybe? It was fucking dynamite, dude! Mission Ayyyy-complished. I wish you could come over and see the sonofabitch dragging his rotten fucking ass around this place. He hasn’t said a word about it, as far as I know, but body language says it all. That fucker’s gotten some baaaaaaad news.”

“You’re the one who’s dynamite, Ivy,” said Adam. “I gotta run off to this fucking press conference pretty soon, but I gotta ask you again, because I’ve racked my fucking brain, and I just—cannot—figure—out—how you got those documents from Pierce and Pierce and those tapes from your house there. How did you?”

The voice laughed heartily. “Some things it’s better you—especially you—don’t know. You know what I mean? Let’s just say there’s certain…friends of the family…who used to work at Gordon Hanley and have moved along to…let us say, other investment banks and who’ve—well, let’s just leave it at that. As for the tapes…let’s just say that most Saint Rays are above working with their hands and fooling around with wiring and shit, but every now and then, I guess, somebody comes along who—who—and I think I’ll leave that…at that. Do yourself a favor. Forget I even told you that much.”

“Look, Ivy,” said Adam, “I really do have to run, but we’ve got to get together sometime and let each other in on the complete war stories.”

“Great idea,” said Ivy. “Once all this shit blows over. I tell you what. I’ll take you to dinner some night at Il Babuino in Philadelphia. Maybe you’ve heard of it. It’s as good as any restaurant in New York, and it’s a place where you can hear each other talk. Also, I know there’s not a fucking soul in this house who feels rich enough to go there. Not even our Mr. Phipps.”

“Sounds great!”

“I’ll tell you about all the shit that the shitheads, the major shithead and the minor shithead—well, Phipps isn’t so bad—what the number-one shithead and his pals have dumped on me. I’ll tell you what they fucking did at this formal we had in Washington.”

“I know a little bit about that particular formal, Ivy.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, and I know a little bit about a girl named Gloria.”

“You’re shitting me! Well, obviously you aren’t. You’re too fucking much, Adam! You know everything!”

“Not everything, believe me…not everything, by a long shot. But hey! We can talk about that, too! Right now I really do have to get to this fucking press conference.”

As he lugged his bicycle down the narrow stairway, Adam repeated the words to himself. Not everything…not everything…He hadn’t known enough to hold on to Charlotte and make her love him the way he loved her. He could see her from yesterday as if she were still here today. Not even the greatest triumph of his life, not even an accomplishment of this magnitude, was enough to win Charlotte. There was not a more beautiful girl on this earth…

But he mustn’t let himself be so down right now. There was the press conference, and right after that, a whole segment on the Mike Flowers show on PBS. He just couldn’t believe this was all really happening! He couldn’t let himself wilt now.

Hoyt was drinking alone at the bar of the I.M. with the shell-backed bar stool slump of…the loser who comes to a bar and drinks alone.

Not that by the strictest of definitions one could have described Hoyt as alone. His peripheral vision detected yet another student he never saw before in his life approaching him…and now leaning over the empty seat beside him and saying, “You’re Hoyt Thorpe, right?”

Hoyt turned his head just far enough to get a glimpse of the guy, and he responded, “Yeah,” wearily, as if he had been asked the same question a thousand times already, which he had, or at least it seemed like that many. This guy was very tall and very bony and very pale and acne-scarred, and he had an ingratiating smile. He had grown one of those little stubbly patches of beard not on but underneath his chin. He was a tool, obviously.

“Aw-right!” the tool said. “You’re awesome, dude! I just wanted to tell you that!” So saying, he made a fist and put it practically in front of Hoyt’s nose. So Hoyt made a fist and touched the tool’s fist without even looking.

“Keep on truckin’!” the tool said with comradely warmth as he walked away. “Good stuff!”

Keep on truckin’…Good stuff…That was from Old School…Couldn’t you cram in any more cornball Cool into it?…you toolshed…

It was only nine-thirty, and the evening was just beginning to buzz at the I.M. Fortunately, it was too early for the band and the customary balls-to-the-wall excitement of being “out” at a bar. The sound system was playing CDs…Right now lonesome James Matthews and his lonesome guitar were singing and sighing that lonesome…ballad?—is that the word?—called “But It’s All Right.” It was a relief from the usual, in any case.

Anybody looking on probably thought the phlegmatic give-a-shit way he, Hoyt, was responding to all this was intended to show people he was still cool and not being swept away by all the gushing idolatry coming his way. The funny thing—except that it wasn’t funny—was that the whole campus took this “exposé” by that little shit Adam Gellin as practically a King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table about him and Vance. The little shit thought he had nailed him with the “bribe” shit. But the Night of the Skull Fuck story was so awesome, people seemed to barely notice the rest. With his own ears Hoyt had heard students quoting that one line—“Doing? Looking at a fucking ape-faced dickhead, is what we’re doing!”—and going into convulsions. What was this so-called bribe compared to that? A nice fat Wall Street job with an incredible starting salary floats his way and he takes it? What’s the big deal?

“Hey, dude, sorry to be late.” It was Vance, arriving finally.

“Where the fuck’ve you been?” said Hoyt. “I’ve been sitting here and having to act like a real asshole to save this fucking seat for you.”

Vance slid onto the seat. “I couldn’t help it, man. I got hung up at the library with—”

He couldn’t even finish the sentence, because a guy came up from behind and said, “Wait a sec—aren’t you Vance Phipps?”

Vance acted just like Hoyt, which is to say, bored and uncommunicative.

Once the guy had finished prostrating himself in awe of the Phipps presence and left, Vance said to Hoyt, “Well, monster, you wanted to be a legend in your own time, didn’t you? Congratulations. You’ve done it. You’ve made it. As a matter of fact, I have a feeling it won’t be just in your own time, either. Years from now they’ll still be talking about Hoyt Thorpe and the Night of the Skull Fuck.”

“And what about you?” said Hoyt.

“Me, too, I’m afraid. But you got to admit, I come off as the Herb of the dynamic duo, the straight man. I didn’t get off any great lines like ‘Doing? Looking at a fucking ape-faced dickhead is what we’re doing.’ Wow. That state trooper must have one hell of a fucking power of total recall to give the little shit that line, verbatim near as I can recall. Right, Hoyt?” He gave Hoyt a lip-twisted gotcha smile.

Hoyt finessed it. “How many months we got left before graduation, Vance?”

“I don’t know…March, April, May…three.”

“So I’ve got three more months to be a legend in my own time and for all time, right?”

“That is true,” said Vance. “But you know, you can always come back here every year for reunions, and the Alumni Band will always provide the music.”

“Fun-nee. Could I bust my gut any worse laughing? What happens starting in June? You’ve got it made. You can go to any i-bank you want and get a job. You’ve been ‘hung up’ at the fucking library more than once over the past four years, if I know anything about it. Your transcript will be a passport good at any door on Wall Street—and your last name is Phipps.”

“What the fuck are you complaining about?” said Vance. “You’ve already got a job, at Pierce and Pierce, only the hottest fucking i-bank there is—and you’re getting a starting salary only fifty percent higher than what me or anybody else is going to get. How ungrateful is that?”

Hoyt said, “I got something to show you. It’s why I wanted you to come over here.”

With that, he descended the bar stool, went over to the rack inside the door where everybody’s winter gear was hanging, reached into an inside pocket of his navy topcoat, withdrew a piece of paper, and returned to the bar. “Read this,” he said to Vance.

Vance read it. It was an e-mail printout. At the top it said, “Subj: Re: Application.” It came from rachel.freeman@piercepierce.org.

Dear Mr. Thorpe,

We are grateful for your interest in Pierce & Pierce and for the opportunity to meet with you when our team was at Dupont. Your qualifications are excellent in many respects, but after a thorough review by our Human Resources executive committee, we must conclude regretfully that your strengths are not a true “fit” with our requirements.

We as a team, and I personally, enjoyed our interview, and we wish you well in finding a place elsewhere in the industry, should that continue to be your interest.

Very truly yours,

Rachel E. Freeman

College Liaison

Human Resources

Pierce & Pierce

Vance looked at Hoyt as if waiting for him to comment. A long pause…as if Hoyt was waiting for Vance to comment. Finally Hoyt said, “What do you make of that?”

“What do I make of it?…I don’t know…except that it sounds to me like they’re reneging on their offer.”

“That’s exactly it!” said Hoyt. “They’re fucking reneging! How the fuck do they think they can get away with that?”

“Uh, I don’t know,” said Vance. “You get a signed contract or anything?”

“No! I don’t have any fucking contract, but on Wall Street it’s different, right? Your word is your fucking contract, right? How the fuck else can investors and i-bankers trade fucking billions over the telephone every day?”

“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought of that,” said Vance. “Did anyone else happen to hear her promise you the job?”

“That’s the fucking point I’m making!” said Hoyt. “Witnesses and shit are not fucking necessary! On Wall Street your fucking word is your fucking bond!”

Puzzled pause. “Well, I don’t know. I don’t know what to tell you, Hoyt. I don’t know what applies to job offers and what doesn’t.”

“Look,” said Hoyt. “There’s one very specific reason I had to see you. Your father must know somebody in this fucking area, some lawyer, somebody who knows how to sue their fucking asses off if they try to pull shit like this. How about talking to your father?”

“I don’t know,” said Vance. “Maybe there’s such a person. But one thing I do know. My father doesn’t even want to think about this whole thing. If he could, he’d get a fucking injunction barring the press from using my name in the fucking story. You know his reaction when he first heard about it? His reaction was (A) why hadn’t I told him about it last spring and (B) what kind of a moron had he raised who didn’t know enough to go straight to the police when it happened and file charges for assault against the state trooper, Whatsisname. Hoyt—I can’t even fucking go there where my father’s concerned.”

Hoyt looked off toward the scruffy black raw-edged “paneling” of the I.M.’s walls and expelled a great sigh of resignation. Then he turned back to Vance.

“What am I going to do, Vance? What am I going to do on June the fucking first? I don’t have a job, and you know how much I got to fall back on? Zero! My mother’s blown whatever she had, which was like next to nothing, just keeping me going at this fucking place. What am I fucking going to do! Your transcript’s a passport. Mine—you have no idea how bad my grades are. My transcript’s going to look like a police crime site with fucking yellow tape all over the place to keep people away. You think maybe the Charles’ Society might give me a lifelong pension for being the coolest guy who ever bestrode the soil of the forty-eight contiguous United States and a legend for all time and forever after? Vance—I am fucking fucked!”

He hung his head. Then he looked up at Vance. “One thing I still can’t figure out. How the fuck did the little shit get all that shit about Pierce and Pierce? They’d be the last people in the fucking world to give it to him. And those conversations between you and me in the house. I mean, he didn’t have direct quotes, but he didn’t have direct quotes, but he might as fucking well…” He hung his head again and shook it slowly. “Fucked, fucked, fucked, and fucked.”