Jojo nodded yes in a distracted fashion that as much as declared he didn't get that, either. “Oh yeah, and I take a course in econ they call Stocks for Jocks,” he said. “At first you think, wow, this is cool. But one day somebody says something to you, the way you did, and it sort of like â¦
zaps
you.”
“Why would you care what I think? I'm just a freshman.”
Jojo cast his eyes down and massaged his huge forehead with his thumb and two fingers. Then he looked up at Charlotte with wide-open eyes. “I don't
have
anybody to talk to about things like this. I don't fucking
dare
! 'Scuse me. I just getâ”
Without finishing his sentence, he leaned farther over the table. “You're
not
just a freshman. What you said to meâit was like ⦠like you had just arrived from Mars. You know what I mean? You didn't come here already affected by a lot ofâa lot of the usual shâ
stuff.
It's like you came here with clear eyes, and you see things exactly like they are.”
“Sparta, North Carolina, is a long way away from here, but it isn't on Mars.” She was conscious of smiling at him for the very first time.
Charlotte immediately detected that something other than his concern for academic achievement was now seeping into that sincere expression of his. She knew this was the moment to put a stop to it. The thought of his starting to “hit on” her again was unpleasant and even frightening ⦠and yet she didn't
want
to put a stop to it. The present moment was much too early in her experience for her to have expressed it in a sentence, but she was enjoying the first stirrings, the first in her entire life, of the power that woman can hold over that creature who is as monomaniacally hormonocentric as the beasts of the field, Man.
“Charlotte ⦠I love that name,” said Jojo.
Charlotte rheostatted her expression down to a completely blank look.
Jojo apparently took that as the rebuke Charlotte meant it to be. He mopped up the hormonal seepage of his expression and said, “My problem is, I don't know any a this ⦠cultural stuff. You know what I mean?”
“No.”
“I mean like where did this idea come from and where did that idea come from. People mention these
names
, like everybody knows who
that
is, but I never know. I never paid attention before! It's embarrassing. I mean like I got this teacher in American history, Mr. Quat, and he's saying the first settlers in America were Puritansâ” He stopped short. “That's not right. What he said was not Puritans but Protestants, although there
was
something about Puritans, okay? Then he's saying in England, the Protestant revolutionâwait a minute, or did he say reformation?âyeah, that was it, reformationâhe's saying the Protestant Reformationâthis is what he said almost exactly: âThe Protestant Reformation fed on rationalism, but rationalism didn't cause it.' Okay? So I'm looking around, waiting for somebody to raise their hand and say, âWhat's rationalism?' But nobody does! All these kids have like ridiculous GPAs, and they know what he's talking about. And here's me, and I'm afraid to raise my hand, because they'll all look at me and say, âYou dumb jock.'”
“They'll say, âYou dumb jock'?”
“They'll
think
, âYou dumb jock.' Do you know what rationalism means?”
Charlotte found herself feeling sorry for him. “Well, yeah, but I had a teacher who took a special interest in me? And she had me read all about Martin Luther, and John Calvin and John Wycliffe and Henry the Eighth and Thomas More and Descartes? I was sort of lucky.”
“All the same, you know what it means, just like all those kids in the class. I never read about Day Cart andâthose other people. What did you sayâWycliff? I never even heard a any those names.”
“You never had to take philosophy?”
Self-pitying: “Jocks don't take philosophy.”
Charlotte looked at him in a teacherly fashion. “You know what âliberal arts'
means
?”
Pause. Rumination. “ ⦠No.”
“It's from Latin?” Charlotte was the very picture of kind patience. “In Latin,
liber
means free? It also means book, but that's just a coincidence, I think. Anyway, the Romans had slaves from all over the world, and some of the slaves were very bright, like the Greeks. The Romans would let the slaves get educated in all sorts of practical subjects, like math, like engineering so they could build things, like music so they could be entertainers? But only Roman citizens, the
free
people?â
liber?â
could take things like rhetoric and literature and history and theology and philosophy? Because they were the arts of persuasionâand they didn't want the slaves to learn how to present arguments that might inspire them to unite and rise up or something? So the âliberal' arts are the arts of persuasion, and they didn't want anybody but free citizens knowing how to persuade people.”
Jojo looked at her with arched eyebrows and a compressed smile, a smile of resignation, and began nodding nodding nodding nodding. Dawn was breaking inside that big head of his. “So that's what we are ⦠athletesâwe're like slaves. They don't even want us to think. All that thinking might distract us from what we were hired for.” He was still nodding. “That's kind of cool, Charlotte.” It was the first time he had called her by name. Now he gave her an entirely different kind of smile. “
You're
kind of cool.”
The look on his face as he said that frightened Charlotte all over again. She stuck rigidly to her role as schoolteacher: “Take some philosophy. I bet you'd like it.”
Jojo seemed to get the message, because he pulled his elbows back from where they supported his yearning hulk on the table and sat up straight. “I wouldn't know where to begin.”
“That's easy,” said Charlotte. “You begin with Socrates and Plato and Aristotle. That's where all philosophy begins, with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.”
“How do you
know
all this stuff?” said Jojo.
What crossed Charlotte's mind was, “Everybody knows
that
.” What she said wasâshrugging, “I guess I just pay attention.”
Jojo remained seated upright. But the smile became even warmer, and he couldn't take his eyes off her, and what had been mere seepage now flowed and flowed and flowed and flowed.
She couldn't very well let that continue. Nevertheless, her very loins were astir with the power.
T
his wasn't the first time Jojo had had an appointment with Coach Roth in the Rotheneum, but it was the first time he had made an appointment on his own initiative ⦠and oh, man, had he had to do some double-talking to avoid having to tell Coach's secretary among secretaries, Celeste, what he wanted to see the great man for ⦠Jojo's going-on-seven-foot self now entered the Rotheneum lobby feeling small and devious.
The Rotheneum was a section of the Buster Bowl building, created specially as an office facility for Buster Roth and his minions. Some young cynic on the school newspaper had come up with “Rotheneum,” and now everybody called it that, although not within Coach's earshot. “Rotheneum” was a play on the word “atheneum.” Jojo didn't know what an atheneum was, but he knew the word had to do with the higher things, things intellectual in nature.
The Wave
obviously thought of Buster Roth as a lower thing, a big-time college coach who made more than a million in salary plus at least twice that in endorsements, public appearances, life-is-like-a-basket-ball-game motivational speeches for businessmen, and swoosh deals, as they were known because of the swoosh symbol of the Nike company, still the biggest swoosh dealer of them all. In a swoosh deal, the coach dresses the entire
team, from top to bottomâjerseys, shorts, basketball shoes, and socksâin the company's products, with each item identified by a logoâin return for ⦠nobody ever seemed to know exactly how much. But it was known that Nike all by itself had a $200 billion advertising budget and that swooshing, also known as “branding,” was their most important form of advertising. As coach of last year's national champions, Buster Roth had just signed a new swoosh deal, this time with the up-and-coming And 1. The numbers being bruited about were phenomenal. Whatever the sum, every cent of it went to Coach.
And there you had the mental atmosphere of the Rotheneum. It was the palace of the sports empire bearing a benign relationship with one of its most important colonies, Dupont University. The Rotheneum lobby had stark-white walls featuring glassed-in niches lined with mauve velvet to display Coach's many trophies. Last year's NCAA national championship trophy was in a niche directly opposite the main entrance. Everywhere you looked, star gleams were exploding off the trophies, thanks to high-intensity pinhole spotlights within the niches.
Coach's domain took up the entire third floor. There was a screening room with a sloping theater floor and forty seatsâposh upholstered theater seats that popped up when you stood upâsolely for the analysis of Dupont basketball games and practice sessions and the play of upcoming opponents. “Now, keep your eye on Number 8, Jamal Perkins ⦠See that! ⦠I'm gonna rewind ⦠Okay ⦠You see the way he sticks his fucking knee out when he executes a pick? Fucking refs never call it!” Jojo could hear Coach's exasperated voice in his head.
The elevator opened into a waiting room with a high ceiling, twelve feet at least ⦠Downlighters cast dazzling beams upon epic-scale photographs framed in the most minimal (1.5 mm) brushed aluminum strips and hung upon more smacking white walls. There was a horseshoe-shaped banquette upholstered in a smart tan leather, on which sat three fortyish white business types with neckties. Opposite the banquette was a glass fence etched with diagonal lines of Dupont D's leaning in cutting-edge italic. Behind the fence, at workstations, as they were called, was Coach's harem of secretaries and assistants, all of them young women with short skirts and glistening shanks. Queen of Coach's harem was Celeste, a tall, willowy brunette with alabasterwhite skin. More than one was the basketball player who entertained the desire to hit on Celeste, and Jojo was among them, but she was said to be the
“office girl” of Coach himself. As Jojo walked in, she stood up and said, “Ahhh, the man of mystery arrives! Have a seat, Jojo.” She gestured toward the banquette.
Jojo said, “Yo, Celeste,” and let it go at that. He didn't take a seat immediately. He eased his shoulders back to emphasize the swell of his pectorals beneath his T-shirt and gave the business types a few seconds in which to fully admire his overpowering height and muscles and to register the fact that
here,
even if they didn't happen to recognize him, was a Dupont athlete.
And if they didn't know it then, they certainly got it just a few minutes later when Celeste summoned him into Coach's office ahead of them.
And there he was: Coachâreared back grandly in a modernistic leather-upholstered swivel chair before a gigantic slab of mahoganyâhis deskâin the bay created by the great curved wall of glass at his corner of the building. He had his fingers interlaced behind his head and his elbows winged out on either side. Still vain about his once-athletic body, he had tensed his biceps, which in this posture protruded from the short sleeves of his polo shirt, and inflated his chest to create a mighty shelf above his gathering paunch. The room was not big in square feet, but with the sweeping curve of glass, the high ceiling a-dazzle with downlighters, the mahogany, the startlingly white walls, and stainless-steel furniture upholstered in tobacco-brown leather, it was dramatic.
“Come in, Jojo,” he saidâquietly, for him.
Then he gave Jojo a look every player on the team was familiar with. He lowered his head slightly, looked upward into Jojo's eyes with his teeth touching and his lips parted in a slight smile. It made Jojo feel as if Coach had just MRI'd his innards and found all his secrets, including the ones he didn't even know about.
“Soâto what do I owe this pleasant surprise, Jojo?” said Coach. “Celeste calls you the man of mystery.”
Jojo just stood there, beginning to feel extremely awkward. He realized he had never thought out, in so many words, what he wanted to say. “Well, I guess I shouldâI mean, I really appreciate you taking the timeâ”
Coach interrupted: “Go ahead, have a seat, Jojo.” He motioned toward a semicircular chair of stuffed brown leather in a stainless-steel frame. So Jojo sat downâand couldn't get comfortable in the damned thing. The back was at a right angle to the seat, and the seat was too low. He felt like his head was a foot lower than Coach's.
Buster Roth gave Jojo a kindly smile. “You don't look one hundred percent yourself, Jojo. What's up? Anything wrong?”
“Well ⦔ Jojo began rubbing the backs of his hands with his palms. “I wouldn't say âwrong,' exactly.”
“Okay, then ⦠what, Jojo?”
“It's about academics, Coach.”
Coach's voice turned a bit stern. “What
about
academics, Jojo? What class? I've told you guys a hundred times, you don't let things
develop
. The first sign of some issue, you come to one of us. You don't let these damned things just drift along.”
“It's nothing like that, Coach.” Jojo was rubbing his hands so hard, Coach glanced at them. “It'sâI guessâwhat I want to say isâI guess I just don't feel I'm getting enough out of it, that's all.”
“Out of
what
, Jojo?” Coach had pulled his eyebrows together over his nose. Obviously he hadn't a clue as to what Jojo was trying to say.
“Out of the academics, Coach, out of my classes.”
“What
classes? You're not having any trouble passing, are you? You had a two-point-two grade point average last time I heard anything about it. So what's the problem, Jojo?”
“Well ⦔ said Jojo, strugglingâhe now had the fingers of both hands intertwined and thrust deep down between his thighs, which caused his whole upper torso to hunch overâ“like ⦠like I'm taking this upper level French course for my language requirements?”
“Yeah ⦔
“And we read the books in English instead of French, that kind of thing.”
“Mr. Lewin, right?”
Jojo nodded yes.
“He's terrific. He's a real friend of the program, Jojo. He understands the importance of athletics in higher education. Most professors at Dupont are fine people. But every now and then, as you know, you run into some prick who's got a hard-on for athletes. Lewin's not like that. He's a stand-up guy.”
“But we do all our reading in English, Coach. I'm not really learning any French.”
“So what? Whattaya wanna be, a language scholar? Jesus Christ. Besides, that's not true. You learn plenty of French in that class, plenty of French literature. Plenty of our guys have taken that course. They all tell me
he's a great lecturer. They learn all about the great French writersâyou know, like Proust ⦔ Coach was obviously rummaging through his memory bank for more names and coming up short. “And you actually learn
more
⦠about more great writers, because Lewin don't make you do all this translating. I had to take a foreign language when I was in college, too, you know. All that translating does for you is eat up time and break your balls. Don't forget, this is Dupont, Jojo. You couldn't be taking a better French course anywhere in this country. Jesus Christ, count your blessings. Lewin is great.”
So Jojo gave up on From Flaubert to Houellebecq. “Well ⦠that's not the only thing, Coach. The other day I'm talking to this student, and she says something about Socrates. I don't mean something like ⦠complicated or anything. She wasn't trying to show off. She just assumed everybody would understand that much about Socrates. I mean, I knew the
name
, Coach, but that was all, and like Socrates is the foundation of philosophy.”
“The foundation of philosophy, hunh? Who told you that, Jojo?”
“This girl.”
“This girl,” said Coach. “Well, I can tell you about Socrates, Jojo. He committed suicide. He drank a glass of hemlock. You know what hemlock is?”
“Like a tree?”
“Very good,” said Coach, although Jojo wasn't sure about the look on his face. Was he making fun of him? “In this case,” said Coach, “it's a poison made from the leaves. Socrates was a man of great principle, Jojo. He committed suicide rather than ⦠Well, anyway, it all had to do with his principles. And you know what, Jojo? That's all you're gonna need to know about Socrates for the rest of your life. That's all
anybody
needs to know. You're still too young to understand this, but you'll get by fine as long as you have some vague idea of who these characters are when their names come up. Nobody you meet's gonna know any more than that, either, except for a few learned nerds, and they can't do anything about anything anyway.”
“I know, Coach, but shouldn't I learn some of this stuff, all the same? I mean, here I am, and like you say, this is Dupont, and maybe while I'm here, shouldn't IâI mean, as long as I'm here and there are all these courses you can take instead ofâlike this econ course I'm taking?”
A weary note slipped into Coach's voice. “
What
econ course, Jojo?”
“It's called Fundamentals of Market Fluctuation. Mr. Baggers.”
“I know him well. Great guy. Great teacher, too.”
“I guess so, Coach, but it's also sort of econ for dummies.”
Tersely: “Yeah? Which means
what
?”
“The other students call it Stocks for Jocks.”
“Oh? Maybe you got a better idea.”
“There's this philosophy course, Coach. Somebody told me about it.”
“âThis girl,' I suppose.”
“Well ⦠yeah. But it sounds like a great course. It's called the Age of Socrates.”
Coach stared at Jojo for what seemed an eternity with the kind of astounded, malevolent look a father might give a teenager who has just walked in and told him he totaled the old man's Lamborghini in a drag race. Then he pressed an intercom button. “Celeste, get me the course catalog ⦠Right. For Dupont College ⦔
Then he resumed the stare, saying nothing. Jojo felt as if he were being shriveled and shrunk by some sort of ray.
In no time, Celeste popped in and gave Jojo a flirtatious, almost leering smile
âhunhhh?â
and handed the course catalog to Coach. Coach swiveled in his chair so that his back was to Jojo as he opened the catalog to a certain place and began running down the pages with his forefinger; then he swiveled back to face Jojo.
Tonelessly: “Could this be the one, Jojo?” He read from the catalog: “âPhilosophy 308. The Age of Socrates: Rationalism, Irrationality, and Animistic Magic in Early Greek Thought. Mr. Margolies.'”
“Yeah, that's it,” said Jojo, brightening. “I remember there was this part about animalistic magic!”
Coach rolled his eyes but made no comment. Pause ⦠Then: “Philosophy 308. You know what the 308 means, Jojo?”
Jojo shook his head no.
“It means it's the highest level. The three hundreds are the hardest courses they got. You ever had a three hundred course before?”
Jojo shook his head no.
Coach looked at the catalog again. “You know what Rationalism, Irrationality, and Animistic Magic mean?”