She didn't realize what a fool she was making of herself until Vance said that I.P. had a date for the formal and that she was very hot, believe it or not, a girl named Gloria.
“Holy shit!” said Julian. “Does that mean he's cheating on his hand?”
That broke everybody up, Crissy and Nicole included. But when Charlotte, who hadn't the faintest notion what I.P.'s “cheating on his hand” meant, joined in with her own wail of laughterâthe others abruptly went silent. She turned about, and they were all casting
significant
glances at one another. Obviously, the “hilarious” phrase was some sort of inside joke. An outsider pretending to understand it was merely revealing how frantically, how fawningly, she wanted to be one of the gang.
It was all too shaming. By now all of them thought of her as a wretched little misfit. To make it worse, Hoyt felt like he had to lean over and pay attention to her periodically, to reassure her that she actually still
existed
in their Cool company, and then he'd rejoin the fun. So many idiotic stories ⦠so much idiotic gossip ⦠so much enthusiasm for such smutty humor and vulgar language ⦠from rich girls who obviously spent hundreds of dollars on a jeans outfit, and rich boys, pampered boys, wearing black ghetto do-rags because the incongruity, the irony of it is so ⦠smart and deliciousâ
âbut how could she possibly quit! She had been so visibly proud of this “triumph”âbeing invited by a senior, an indisputably cool senior, to his fraternity formal. Mimi and Bettina had been impressed to a degree that was well beyond envy, because it was in a realm they couldn't begin to qualify for. They could only wonder. And of course they had made her promise to tell them everything afterward â¦
The rest of the trip fell into a regular pattern. The frat boys and the sorority girls sang songsâall of them seemed to know all the words to everythingâthey shared gossipâthe two bitches were superb at filleting people's reputations while seeming to be merely adding little detailsâthey turned whatever they could into sexual innuendoâthey indulged their predilection for Shit Patois. Charlotte had been aware of Fuck Patois from the day she arrived at Dupont, but it was not until spending hour after hour after hour cooped up in this SUV that she realized how cool it apparently was to use
shit
in every way possible: to mean possessions (“Where's your shit?”), lies or misleading explanations (“Are you shitting me?” “We need a shit detector”), drunk (“shit-faced”), trouble (“in deep shit”), ineptitude (“couldn't play point guard for shit”), care about (“give a shit”), rude, thoughtless, disloyal
(“really shitty thing to do”), not kidding (“no shit?”), obnoxiously unpleasant (“he's a real shit”), mindless conversation (“talking shit,” “shooting the shit”), confusing story (“or some such shit”), drugs (“you bring the shit?”), to egest (“take a shit”), to fart in such a way that it becomes partly egestion (“shart”), a trivial matter (“a piece a shit”), unpleasantly surprised (“he about shit a brick”), ignorance (“he don't know shit”), pompous man (“the big shit,” “that shitcake”), hopeless situation (“up Shit Creek”), disappointment (“oh, shit!”), startling (“holy shit!”), unacceptable, inedible (“shit on a shingle”), strategy (“oh,
that
shit again”), feces, literally (“shit”), slum (“some shithook neighborhood”), meaningless (“that don't mean shit”), et cetera (“and massages and shit”), self-important (“he thinks he's
some shit
”), predictably (“sure as shit”), very (“mean as shit”), verbal abuse (“gave me shit”), violence (“before the shit came down” or “hit the fan,” “don't start no shit,” “won't be no shit”). Still, they didn't neglect Fuck Patois, and they talked some more about how many shots they had at the after-party after the party at the Deke House (Delta Kappa Epsilon), and they philosophized about how you shouldn't party much past four a.m. because you risked getting the dread afternoon hangover. Hoyt was as absorbed in all this as the rest of them. He'd be looking straight ahead to keep his eyes on the road, but Charlotte could practically see his brain rotating 180 degrees so he could be in back with them. Periodically he would turn toward her and put his right hand on her left forearm and smile and look oh so deeply into her eyes, as if there were something ⦠profound ⦠going on between them. All of this took ten seconds at most. She tried to work it out in her mind that this was his way of saying that no matter whatever else might be claiming his attention, he was always thinking of her. Sometimes he would lean toward her and sing a line or two of a song in her ear, a song he and the other four were having such a merry time singing, which she obviously didn't know. A couple of times he put his arm around her and leaned over so far that their heads touched, and a couple of times he placed his hand gently on the midpoint of her inner left thigh. Ordinarily she would have pushed it away, since Vance, Julian, and the two Douche girls might be able to see it, but Hoyt's affection was the only thing that included her in the trip at all, any chance of social redemption for her Sparta rat-tat-tat at Crissy. That gaffe hung in the foul air of the Suburban like an odor. Hoyt's attentions were like maintenance. He had to feed the pet periodically to keep it calm until they got to Washington.
She ransacked her brain for conversational gambits ⦠and invariably
wished she hadn't tried. Vance happened to mention that it was no use trying to talk to the president of the Deke House unless you brought along your shit detector. So Charlotte piped up, “They actually have such a thing in neuroscience now. You attachâI think it's about a dozenâelectrodes to somebody's scalp? And you start asking questions? And a certain part of the person's brain lights up on this screen they have if they're not telling the truth. It has nothing to do with emotions and nervousness and all that, the way an ordinary lie detector does. It's called a PET reporter gene slash reporter probeâ”
By the time she got that far, she could read the numb, torpid expression on everybody's face, and her voice trailed off feebly: “I know that's kind of a long name, PET ⦠reporter ⦠gene ⦔ She tried to smile to indicate that she realized it all sounded kind of ⦠nerdy ⦠and that that was what made it funny â¦
Vance's response to this conversational nugget was a single “Hmmmh,” whereupon he turned to Julian and said, “So yesterday I ask this big shitbird, I ask himâ”
Once more Charlotte crashed and burned.
They came around a big bend ⦠and there it was ⦠the Potomac ⦠and on the other side, Washington ⦠The nation's capital!âand she, Charlotte Simmons, from Alleghany County, North Carolina, was arriving as one of the hundred best high school students in the nation, a Presidential Scholarâto be honored, to meet the President, to have made public what she already knew inside: Charlotte Simmons, emerging from the hollows on the other side of the mountain, was destined for great things. The nation's capital! She made Miss Pennington drive her around the circle past the Lincoln Memorial four, maybe five times so she could get a look at Daniel Chester French's statue of Lincoln, which
stirred
her as he looked down from way up there in his majestic chair in a way that not all the photographs or films in the world could have prepared her for. And now she approached that same great city in a barren gray gloaming, with a frat boy named Hoyt Thorpe at the wheel and four sarcastic, foulmouthed strangers who had no interest whatsoever in her presenceâin fact resented it and made fun of itâand what was it that stirred her now? At best, anxiety; at worst, dread.
Traffic on the bridge was heavy, and when they were about two hundred yards from the Lincoln Memorial, a galaxy of red taillights lit up in front of them, and traffic came to a dead halt. Charlotte felt an overwhelming urge to get out of the carâto just open the door without a word, get out, give
them all a little wave good-bye, and disappear. She hadâwhat?âthirty seconds? twenty seconds? before the traffic started moving again. But she had only twenty dollars. How could she possibly get back? Never mind that! There's the Lincoln Memorial! You
know
that grand figure! It is wonder, ambition, honesty, purity of purpose made manifest in marble! Go! Literally sit at his feet! The rest will take care of itself! Yes ⦠but how could she just come trooping back to Little Yard and announce that she had aborted her big triumph â¦
I am Charlotte Simmons, she who is willing to face risks ⦠and take risks! For I am not like the others â¦
Too late. The traffic started moving again. The Vietnam Memorialâcouldn't see it from here; too dark out, in any case. The Washington Monumentâa vague silhouette in the distance ⦠not stirring ⦠dim, dying, shaming ⦠Did
any
of this mean
any
thing to
anyone
else in this car? They were on Connecticut Avenue, crossing Pennsylvania Avenue, meaning the White House was only a couple of hundred yards ⦠that way. She had been there! She had shaken hands with the President of our nation! Charlotte Simmons! A Presidential Scholar! Miss Pennington, one of her inevitably all-wrong print dresses covering her stout form, honored as her mentor! All thatâjust seven months ago! What is tonightâ
Now the lights of commerce on lower Connecticut Avenue were the firmament. They came to Dupont Circleâwhat grim irony â¦
Dupont
Circleâand took Massachusetts Avenue to the northwestâand Charlotte could see it in her mind's eyeâand there it
was
âthe British embassy!âsuch a grand Georgian palace!âthe Scholars had been given a special tourâthe amazing breakfront with a palm motif from the palace at Brighton Beachâa world was opening up! The memory tempted her, but somehow she knew it would end up like the PET reporter gene/reporter probe, so she said nothing, and if anybody else knew that they were passing one of the great architectural gems of our nation's capitalâor even
thought
of this city as “our” anything other than the location of our hotelâthey certainly contained their excitement successfully.
The hotel, called the Hyatt Ambassador, looked new. It was a tower with an absolutely sheer face, absolutely identical ribbons of anything-but-grand windows up above, and a spectacular parabolic arch of concrete serving as a porte cochere over the entrance.
As they drove up, Crissy startled Charlotte by saying in a loud voice, close to the puncture wound in the back of her head, “Char
lunngh
Ӊshe
completely vagued out the second syllable againâ“please tell Heeshawn there to take that stupid thing off his head.” She looked at Vance. “You, too, Veeshawn. I wish you could like see how lame you look. Your little goldilocks creeping out from under that
thing
⦔
Nicole, sitting next to Julian in the back row, said, “Right on, sister.” Then to Julian, “How about it, Jushawn?”
Hoyt turned around to look at Vance, and then all three boys looked at one another. Hoyt glanced out the window at the bellman ⦠a young black guy, not big, but with the kind of sunken eyes and sunken cheeks that look ⦠hotheaded ⦠wearing a short-sleeved military tunic of tan and palm green, like a Caribbean colonel's, pulling a tall baggage cart with a lot of shiny brass tubing. Hoyt did a little dismissive shrug and took his do-rag off, and Vance and Julian followed suit.
Then Hoyt, still looking back at the others, nodded toward the bellman and said, “Fuck
him
.”
The overt meaning was, “We don't need to use this guy and give him a tip.” But Charlotte realized that the real meaning was “I didn't remove my do-rag because I was intimidated by the presence of this mean-looking black kid” ⦠although she bet anything he had â¦
Crissy and Nicole went inside, into the lobby, and Charlotte, not knowing what else to do, followed them while the boys, who had waved the bellman off, unpacked the car. Why didn't they hurry up? Charlotte already felt awkward and incompetent and superfluous. Crissy and Nicole ignored her and fell into conversation about what they were going to wear to dinner.
Charlotte had a burning desire to be somewhere else, so she walked away from them and strolled across the lobby, as if to take an idle look around. Soon it became not so idle, this look-about. She had never seen such a lobby in her life. She walked perhaps forty feetâand the lobby had no more ceiling. Her eyes swept upward. The entire core of the building was a vast empty space, circular, bounded by rings of balconies and windows, reaching all the way to the topâshe couldn't even imagine how many stories highâwhere there was an enormous skylight dome. One level below the lobby, at the base of the enormous cylinder, was an enclosed interior courtyard. Charlotte could see its terra-cotta-colored tile floor between the foliage of tropical trees and shrubsâenormous trees and shrubs, considering the fact that they were planted in ceramic tubs. Somewhere down there ⦠a piano, bass, and drums playing Latin music amplified to overcome the rushing sound of a waterfall and the pings and clatters of silverware
and dishes. Now she could make out, beneath the trees, tables and walkways and little bridges and tiled stairs that led up to the lobby in leisurely, meandering segments, with big tiled landings where they turned.
She had never seen a building like this. She and Miss Pennington, like most of the scholars and their mentors, had stayed at a hotel on N Street called the Grosvenor, paid for by the government. They had shared a small room with twin beds, and Miss Pennington snored all night. All the same, it had been exciting. She had never spent a night in a hotel before. For breakfast they had wafflesâshe had never had waffles before, either, not with real maple syrup instead of artificially flavored Karo. But that was nothing ⦠compared to this! She had an idea. Crissy and Nicole hadn't seen what she had just discovered.