I Am Charlotte Simmons

“I’m not copping out. I can’t remember.”

“You’re not going to tell me, you little bitch.” Beverly giggled. “You’re not going to tell your own roommate? Come on!”

The fog, closing in thicker: “No…I just have to get some sleep; then I have to go write a paper. I’ll tell you another time.”

Silence. Long pause. Sarcastic sigh with much musical expelling of the breath between the teeth. Finally: “You know what I say to that, Roomie? That blows. Eccccchhhhh. Pardon me while I take my finger out of my throat.”

Beverly departed. She didn’t slam the door, she merely gave it a smart clack.

Charlotte lay there with her eyes closed, trying to dream up better evasions, smoother lies, credible lies, nimble lies, numbing lies, tranquilizing lies, and then she fell into the arms of the Sandman.

The telephone was ringing. It was dark! She felt disoriented. What time was it? It was dark outside and dark in here. No Beverly. The whole thing descended on her. Was it Hoyt? He’s apologizing! She knew inside that was—was—but she rolled off the bed and leaped for the phone. “Hello?”

“Hello-o-o-o-oh!” sang Bettina’s voice. “So-o-o-oh? How was it?”

“Oh, hi,” Charlotte said in a dead, toneless, obviously disengaged fashion.

“What’s wrong with you? If it was anybody but you, I’d say you sound hung over. Was it fun?”

“Yeah, it was fun.”

“You don’t exactly sound excited.”

“Well, I’m just so tired.”

“What happened?”

“You know, I just can’t talk about it right now. I’m in the middle of an English paper.”

“Oh, come on,” pleaded Bettina. “I’m calling from the library. I’m dying to know.”

“Seriously, I’m so late getting to this paper. I can’t talk to you now.”

“Okay. Fine. See you later, I guess.” Bettina hung up, obviously offended.

The phone rang several times that evening, but Charlotte didn’t answer it again. All she wanted to do was sleep and forget Dupont ever existed, or go home to Momma and Daddy and forget Dupont ever existed. Forget? Forget about forgetting in Sparta. The one and only thing everybody in the county would want to talk about would be Dupont. What grand lie could she dream up to explain away Charlotte Simmons’s dusty, scuffling, bungling hangdog retreat from the other side of the mountain, where great things had awaited…Charlotte Simmons’s return to Sparta and the three stoplights…Up her brain stem bubbled Lucien de Rubempre’s ignominious return to Angoulême from Paris on the outside baggage rack of a carriage, hidden beneath a heap of suitcases, carpetbags, and boxes in Lost Illusions…which in turn detonated a startling reminder of the paper she had to hand in tomorrow morning. Susan Sauer’s interpretation of Melanie Nethers…She didn’t agree with the stupid thing in the first place, but the seminar leader, a T.A., meaning not a real teacher but a graduate student, meaning her knowledge of pedagogy was nil—the T.A., the irritable Ms. Zuccotti, regarded Susan Sauer on Melanie Nethers as a piece of critical genius. She had gone so far as to hand out a pamphlet about Susan Sauer on Melanie Nethers. Charlotte had sca

Some hours later—she had no idea how many—she was aware of Beverly returning to the room in the dark…aware, and that was all…This time she didn’t have to feign sleep, and Beverly didn’t contest the matter.

The next day, Monday, Charlotte couldn’t get out of bed. Her alarm clock sounded its grating buzz over and over again, and she kept hitting the snooze button. Beverly? Gone, thank God. What was the point of getting up? What was there to look forward to except a lot of uncomfortable questions from Bettina, assuming she would speak to her again, and Mimi, plus, sooner or later, the inevitable interrogation, inquisition, by Beverly, who had picked up the scent of blood. Between now and the begi

Ohmygod, it was already 9:50—and modern drama started at 10:00! Well—might as well just blow it off. For a moment, she was Self-destruction on a pedestal, smiling at Grief. But cutting a class and sleeping would only make her feel more depressed later on. She jumped out of bed. Her jeans were still on the floor where she had left them last night. Diesel…the jeans she just had to have…She couldn’t abide the sight of them. She pulled her wrinkled old print dress over her head, and over that a heavy old pale blue sweater her aunt Betty had knit for her ages ago, and put on her sandals. She didn’t even have time to brush her hair. She darted toward the door. Wait a minute—the paper. She wheeled about—damn!—she’d never gone to the library and typed it in and printed it out! She retrieved the three loose-leaf sheets from the desk. Once outside, she started to run—sprint—to the library. Damn! Couldn’t run in sandals! So she took them off and put them in her left hand. She had the sheets of paper in the other. Now she ran, she flew, across the courtyard, out onto the sidewalk, across the Great Yard toward the three-story-high majesty of the entrance to Dupont Memorial Library tower. Students laughed at the spectacle as she rushed past, distressed sheets of loose-leaf paper in one hand, a pair of sandals in the other, barefoot, hair wild. O-kaaaaaaaay…She came barreling into the library and sprinted to the computer cluster—sprinted across the grand lobby, beneath the great Gothic-beribbed dome, barefoot. She heard students laughing. A lot. The soulless carcass of Charlotte Simmons, her frantic bones, her pale, pale hide, her bare feet, were a scream, so far as Dupont was concerned.

By the time she finished furiously typing the pages into the computer and printing them out, sweat was ru