I Am Charlotte Simmons (86 page)

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Authors: Tom Wolfe

BOOK: I Am Charlotte Simmons
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He stopped talking, even though he hadn't gotten to the point he wanted to make about how the “intellectuals” were ignorant of what Darwin actually said. He knew she was interested in Darwin. Well, it was enough, wasn't it, that at last she was in his arms. What a weird place for it—sitting on a concrete floor deep in the bowels of the stacks. Talk about gloomy … and yet here she was in his arms … He had dreamed about this, but not in such a weird place … What if he gave her a soft and tender kiss on the lips, sort of a consoling kiss after what she has been through? … Bad idea. For him to make a move after everything she had just told him—she might not interpret that as consoling. Besides, it was physically impossible in this position. Her head was lying on his chest. When he bent his head over to look at her, he had barely been able to see her face. To get his mouth all the way to her mouth, he'd have to rearrange her whole body, and that might bring her out of the spell she was in. He'd have to remove his glasses and put them … where? For about the three thousandth time he thought of laser corrective surgery. But what if he was that one in five thousand who rolled his eyes a sixteenth of an inch at exactly the wrong moment and the laser beam fried his eyeballs?
He stared into the biblioglutted gloom. He should be grateful enough just to be holding her in his arms … which he was, for a while. The two pressure points where his pelvic saddle rested on the concrete began to annoy
him. One of his legs was going to sleep in the thigh. It was damned frustrating to have your loved one in your arms … and she's off in … a spell, a trance, the Land of Nod, a stress coma—he had heard of such a thing. He looked at his watch. He'd been down here for more than an hour!
She
didn't seem aware of
where
she was …
He held her some more, but it was becoming tedious … He tightened his embrace a bit … Nothing … Then he began rocking her again … Nothing … Finally he bent his head over as far as he could and said, “Charlotte … Charlotte …” For a moment … nothing—but then she lifted her head from his chest and gave him a look of weary disappointment.
“I'm sorry,” he said, “but I think we ought to get up from here. We've been sitting on this concrete floor for a long time.”
For an instant she looked annoyed on top of disappointed, but she began to get up, nonetheless. He sprang to his feet in order to experience the ineffable joy of extending his hand and helping her up. She thanked him in a distracted, perfunctory way—but then, without a word, hooked her arm inside his and leaned her head against his shoulder as they walked toward the stairway.
When they reached the grand Gothic lobby, she took her head off his shoulder but clung more tightly, if anything, to his arm.
“You feel any better?” he said. “Maybe a
little
better?”
“Yeah.”
Outside, the Great Yard was covered in seven or eight inches of snow, with an icy crust that looked somehow corroded where the walkway lamps washed it with wan coronas of light. A penetrating wind swept across it. In the darkness, the great stone hulks of the Gothic buildings facing out on the Yard appeared frozen in place, like ships trapped in ice.
Adam didn't want … this … to end. He absolutely thrilled to the look she had in his arms. He ransacked his brain for some way—“I'm kind of hungry. Why don't we stop by Mr. Rayon for a second? It's on me.”
“No!” It was more of a startled cry than a rejection. “I just want to go to sleep.”
Her head was buried deep within the parkalike hood of her quilted jacket.
Once more she leaned her head, now deep within the hood, against his shoulder. Once more he thrilled to the pressure of her extremities against his arm. Every conceivable strategy churned in his brain—and all were stymied
by the fact that she had come to him already traumatized, literally in tears, because of the sexual predations of a frat boy like Thorpe. He
hated
that smug bastard.
Adam began walking in the direction of Little Yard, where, feeling once more thwarted, he would no doubt be unable to come up with any comment tender enough and cool enough and Lothario enough to … to … to …
They couldn't have gone a hundred feet before Charlotte held on to his arm tighter than ever and stopped and looked up at him, her eyes two little orbs reflecting light from deep within the recesses of the hood, and said in a little voice, “Adam—please—don't leave me.”
Adam stood there still and speechless—petrified lest he overinterpret what he was now hearing.
“I can't go back to my room,” she said. “I can't stay there with my roommate. It's like being cooped up with—I can't do it, Adam, I can't do it …” She was on the verge of tears. “Can I stay with you?”
“Of course.” His imagination was feverish and yet not big enough to comprehend what on earth he was hearing. Ever fearful of disappointment, he decided to assume a cavalier air. “Whatever your”—then he caught himself. It wasn't his métier, cavalier. He would just be himself: “Whatever you want.”
Her eyes narrowed so far, the lights went out. She turned her head so far, the hood popped up in front of him like a wall. He would never understand her. But then she turned the mouth of the hood back toward him and the eyes were lit once more.
“Just anyplace to lie down, Adam. A couch, the floor, anyplace. I can't be alone. I can't explain it. You're my only friend—” She began sobbing. Her voice came out in little tremulous cries: “My … on-ly … fri-end!”
She buried her face, hood and all, into the breast of his North Face jacket, racked with sobs, and he wrapped both arms about her. “Of
course
you can stay at my place.” She abruptly stopped crying. How brave she was. “I won't
let
you be alone. You can stay there as long as you like. I have a futon. I'll always be there for you.
You
can have the bed, and
I'll
take the futon.”
“No—no—” She began sobbing again. “Just put me”—sobs—“where I'll be the least trouble. I don't”—sob—“deserve—” whereupon the “erve” in “deserve” broke up into racking sobs: “erve-erve-erve-erve.” Adam, essentially a literary intellectual, didn't realize he was listening to the typical depressed girl who has made the appalling discovery that she is worthless.
She put her arm around his waist and her head against his shoulder, and he put his arm around both her shoulders and hugged her upper body tightly against his own. It was a bit awkward, since his stride covered more ground than hers, but they walked that way out of the Great Yard for seven blocks until they reached the old town house in the City of God where Adam lived.
They spoke very little. Most of the way Charlotte continued sobbing softly, while Adam interjected his
There theres, It's all rights
, and
Don't worry, I'm not going to leave you, honeys.
The
not going to leave you, honeys
did more to quiet her than anything else. Otherwise they barely spoke at all, but Adam's brain and central nervous system were making the circuit at a furious rate.
One moment—euphoria! His fondest dream had come true
just like that
! Charlotte was moving in with him—and it was her idea! She wouldn't take three steps without clinging to his body—holding his arm, putting her head on his shoulder! She beseeched him not to leave her. She did everything but say “Take me! I'm yours!” He was giddy, delirious, here in the dark from the radiant happiness soon to be his. Dupont, society, the world, the cosmos, all of existence was now compressed into two people, himself and Charlotte Simmons. It was that blissful suspension of disbelief called love.
The next moment—the Doubts. It was all
too
good to be true. He happens to bump into her, literally, in the library, and—
bango!—
all at once she's
his
?—but specifically because she's disgusted and chagrined by sex?—and suffered a trauma in losing her virginity? Where did that leave him—and his burning desire to lose
his
virginity to this girl, because she was as innocent as he was and wouldn't look down on him for his lack of experience?
The next moment—she'll be with me in my apartment all through the night, in the same room, because there is only one room, and it's a small room and her body will be there and there's only one real bed, and one thing leads to another in life, doesn't it?
The next moment—but how do you get a girl into bed with you when she has come to you in flight from a frat-boy sexual predator? The next moment—
—and on it went and off it went on/off/on/off/on/off and the binary circuit burned and burned.
As they drew near Adam's building, he began to tremble, aroused by the thought of what might possibly, miraculously, now be his … and anxious about how the dump might look to his beloved. What would she think? Place reeks from dirty, moldy clothes and shit lying around … The house itself was in a moldering old district full of brick houses with wood trim built way back in the early twentieth century as one-family residences on tiny lots.
Each house was barely seven feet from the next, creating dank alleyways that never saw daylight and always felt damp. The bricks had long since turned five shades darker from grime and coal soot. The wood trim in the cornices, corbels, overhanging eaves, shutters, window frames, architraves, front doorways, and small front porches—everything was dry-rotting, warping, flaking from poor paint jobs or else too few. Generations of black wires slopped with white paint ran from top to bottom next to the gutter pipes, which had their own problems. Most of the houses, like the one Adam lived in, had long since been cut up into small apartments.
But tonight Charlotte was no sightseer. She whimpered and held on to him for dear life. The staircase up to his apartment was a steep, narrow, dingy shaft painted brown. It clattered from the aged metal strips on the leading edges of the steps. It was too cramped for them to ascend side by side; so as he led the way, Adam extended one hand behind him for Charlotte. She desperately insisted on holding on to him. The four-story climb was disorienting enough even when you did it every day. And this time Adam was dizzy with love. His hands trembled as he unlocked the three dead-bolt locks on his door. He opened it, clicked on the light—and his spirits plummeted—
—for he now saw his apartment through his loved one's eyes. This was no “apartment”! This was a slot!—one of four created by cutting an ordinary front bedroom and rear bedroom in two. Three graduate students rented the other slots. Adam's was ten feet wide and felt even smaller because it was beneath an eave whose slope eliminated half the ceiling and nearly all of one wall and threatened to pound your head down into your thoracic box from the moment you entered. The “kitchen” consisted of the smallest “stove,” “sink,” and “refrigerator” ever made squeezed into what had been a closet in a former, better life. The quotation marks spread like dermatitis in Adam's brain as he thought of what must be going through the mind of the girl of his dreams. The “bed” was a mattress on a cheap, unfinished flush door from a lumberyard, supported at the corners by cinder blocks. And the blankets, sheets, and pillow on that “bed”? A rat's nest! And from that rat's nest and the dust-ball-filthy floor—both strewn with dirty socks, sneakers, underwear, handkerchiefs, sweatpants, sweatshirts, sodden towels—there arose such an odor that it overwhelmed even him, he who breathed this foul air day in and day out. And the answer to his prayers couldn't even see the worst of it yet: the bathroom … was in the hall … and the wretches in all four slots had to use it!
He glanced fearfully at her. She was looking at him with a pained expression.
He said, “I know it's not what you—”
“Oh, Adam!” she exclaimed. “Thank … ank … ank … ank … ank”—the “thank” broke up into sobs—“ … ank you …” Whereupon she threw her arms around him and pressed her head against his chest. She began talking weirdly, her voice muffled by his North Face jacket. “I'm so tired, Adam. I feel so terrible. Please stay with me. There's no way you can know how I feel. I can't be alone tonight. I'll—I can't, Adam, I can't … I just canh-anhanh-anh-anh-anh't.” She tightened her embrace of his rib cage.
A hail of thoughts blipped through the Wernicke's area of his brain, one of which was that she no longer said
caint
for
can't.
“Don't worry, honey,” he said, “I'm right here with you, and I'm going to stay right here with you.”
She stopped crying, released her embrace, and stood up straight. “Adam, Adam, Adam,” she said, shaking her head in an expression of starry-eyed wonderment. “There's just no way I can thank you—”
But there is!
“—enough. I'm so anxious and so tired.” Pause. “Could you show me where your futon is?”
“I'll get it out, but you're not sleeping on it. You're my guest. You get the bed. I'm going to change the sheets and make it up for you.”
“No—”
“No no's, Charlotte. This is my place, such as it is, and that's the way I want it.”

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