Monkey Business (7 page)

Thursday, September 18, 6:15 p.m.

M
ost men would have taken the hint. I am not most men.

“I can't tonight,” Kimmy says, “I'm going to a beer blast.” She's standing in her doorway, brushing out her hair. I wonder what it must feel like to brush one's hair. I don't even touch mine, for fear of inadvertently encouraging strands to fall out.

“But you have to eat. You shouldn't go beer blasting on an empty stomach.”

She grins but shakes her head. “I can't. I want to get some reading done first. Maybe another time?”

Aha! An opening. “Tomorrow night?”

I know I'm sounding desperate, but the over-the-top-style adoration technique usually works for me. I had to send my last girlfriend, Shoshanna, roses with corresponding poems for two weeks straight before she agreed to go out with me. Let's face it, I'm not going to pick up women with my hot bod and balding head. I need to showcase glitz, romance and the potential for a lot of laughs.

Unfortunately, Kimmy is not taking the bait. Which
poses a problem. Because there aren't so many women at LWBS to begin with, never mind hot Jewish women, I might have to start hanging out in the undergraduate dorms, which would look suspicious. I might be taken for a perv.

I need something to entertain me at this institution. To distract me from the fact that I don't know why I'm here. What a farce. What a lie.

For now my distraction is Kimmy. I wonder if it's the hair. Does she not like the balding? Maybe I should try to grow a comb-over. Oy.

“Maybe. We'll see,” she says. “I need to work on that Stats assignment for Monday.”

“Stats? I'll give you a stat. A hundred percent you should have dinner with me tonight.”

“Funny. But no. Not tonight, anyway.”

A maybe is better than a no. I guess I'll go to beer blast tonight. Might as well watch the morons make fools of themselves.

I decide to call my bubbe before getting ready. I feel a twinge of guilt for not calling since I've been at school.

She drops the phone twice before picking up. “Hello?”

“Hi, Bubbe!”

“Hello?”

“Bubbe, it's me, Jamie.”

“Jamie? Oh, Jamie! I'm so happy you called.” The sentence sounds more like, I'm so heppy you cult. She has a thick Yiddish accent. We speak for only a few minutes. We never have that much to talk about, but she sounds like she's in good spirits, as usual. It always amazes me how someone who has been through so much—she's a Holocaust survivor who lost her entire family, including her first husband, in the war, and then her second husband, my mother's father, to cancer, and then a grandchild, the sister I never met, to crib death—can still keep smiling. Which she does. She may not have too
many of her own teeth behind that smile, but she's still smiling. Unlike my mother, who's never happy with anything.

“When I gonna see you?” she asks.

I tell her that I can't come home for Rosh Hashannah, the Jewish New Year, which is in a week and a half, but I'll be back for Thanksgiving.

“Good, good. You focus on school.”

“Love you, Bubbe.”

“I love you. So much.”

I change into my terry-cloth navy bathrobe, grab my bucket of products and stroll to the showers, not caring that I don't look macho.

I step into the second shower, because the first one's in use. I wonder by whom. Maybe it's Kimmy. All wet, and hot, and soapy. And then just like we're in a movie, there's a knock on the shower divider. Wow. Maybe it
is
Kimmy and she can read my mind. Just like in a movie, we were meant to be.

“Yes, darlin'?” I say.

“Darlin'? How did you know I was a woman?” It isn't Kimmy, but whoever it is, she sounds sexy.

Me: It was a feminine knock.

Sexy Stranger: Do you have any conditioner? I'm out.

Me: Who wants to know? (I need a name!)

SS: It's…Darlin'.

Me: Playing mysterious, are you?

SS: Always.

Me: My personal conditioner, occasionally referred to as cream rinse, is for extrafine hair. Is that acceptable?

SS: Preferable, actually.

Me: (A clue?) So you have thin hair?

SS: No, I mean I prefer my men with thin hair. (She doesn't actually say the part after “no.”)

Me: (While contemplating standing on my bucket and peering over the wall.) Shall I come over to hand you the bottle?

SS: Why don't you throw it?

Me: What if it spills?

SS: Close it properly and it won't.

Me: (Laughing.) All right. Ready? One, two, three. (I don't throw it.)

SS: I'm waiting.

Me: That was a test. Now I'm really going to throw it. Are you ready? I need to know if you're ready.

SS:
Always
.

Me: Are you sure? This is serious stuff.

SS: I'm pruning here.

Me: Don't get cranky. Here we go. One, two, three. (Toss bottle over dividing wall.)

(Clunk. Laughter.)

SS: Oops.

Me: You dropped it, didn't you?

SS: It didn't spill. Much. There's some left. I think.

Me: (While rinsing the shampoo from my head.) I'm going to need it back now.

SS: Why didn't you take some before you passed it?

Me: Why? It wasn't time for the cream rinse yet.

SS: Don't you need a second shampoo?

Me: Real men don't do two shampoos. (Real mean are men like me without much hair and are afraid to wear it out.)

SS: All right. Ready? One, two, three.

(Nothing comes.)

Me: You didn't throw it.

SS: Just testing. Now for real. One, two, three. (Bottle flies in arc over wall, I catch it.)

SS: Impressive.

Me: You should see me juggle.

SSE: (Turns off her water.) One day.

Me: You're leaving me already?

SS: It gets cold standing here with no water.

Me: (While imagining cold naked body and telltale nipples.) Desert me, see if I care. (Bathroom door closes. Sigh. I open bottle of conditioner. Empty.)

(End of Scene)

Friday, September 26, 3:30 p.m.

T
om Price is far too sloppy to be accepted into LWBS. I feel bad, but what can I do? You'd think with a last name like Price, he'd be more market-savvy.

I read his opening statement again: “I think Stern Business School is the perfect place for me to grow as a professional…”

It's Leiser Weiss Business School, not Stern Business School. Stern is New York University's business school. Tom's entire application focuses on what an incredible place Manhattan is. NYU probably got his application to LWBS.

Final score? His GMAT translated into a nine out of ten, work experience is a seven, undergrad marks an eight. For references, I gave him four out of five, essays three, and for overall impressions I'm giving him a zero. That makes a total of thirty-one out of forty-five. Reject file. He was sloppy, case closed.

I feel a tad guilty, but someone has to make the tough decisions.

My favorite is the “overall impression” category, because it can be anything we want it to be. That's where we can give
a high score if we think the candidate will add something exceptional to the business school experience. Like if she does Broadway plays in her spare time.

“How'd he do?” asks Dennis, the student sitting to my left. He's young, twenty-four, and looks like a miniature, handsomer Bill Gates, despite the massive round glasses covering most of his face. Not so shockingly, he did in fact work for Microsoft, and wants to go back to Seattle once he finishes his MBA.

Six of us are in the conference room, shuffling applications from the new pile to the first-round pile to the rejection pile. Dorothy gave us brief instructions at the beginning: be fair, try not to be biased, everything we read remains confidential, every application has to be looked at by two of us. The two scores are averaged, and then the applications are put in numerical order.

“Not great,” I answer him. “I don't think he'll be joining our ranks next year.”

Next. Emily Beckman. Essays…pretty good. Four out of five. Work experience. Good. Seven out of ten. GMATs…not fantastic. Four out of ten. Not terrible, but not as good as Tom Price. References, four out of five. College marks, eight out of ten. But since this is the first female applicant I've come across in nine submissions, I'm giving her five out of five for overall impressions. LWBS is trying to increase its female quota from thirty-two to forty percent. I'm therefore being extremely generous in the general comments section, supporting my sisters.

Emily's total is thirty-three. I write a note on her file: solid female applicant. Please interview.

Two hours later, my eyes are starting to blur, as if I spilled a glass of water over the applications. I've read twenty-two. I'm officially shocked at the overall incompetence of most of the hopefuls. One guy used his father-in-law as a reference. Another had blatant discrepancies between his résumé and essays. Others should have spent more time proofreading.

Their résumés are so linear. Went to college, went to work, want to go to B-school, blah, blah, blah. Bor-ing. I like my candidates to be more well-rounded. Where are the business-minded people who are concert pianists/avid travelers/documentary filmmakers in their spare time?

Perhaps I should hire myself out as an application consultant. Now that would look good on my résumé.

Only two readers are left in the room. Dennis and me. Everyone else has taken off for the weekend. “Are you finished yet?” he asks me.

“Just about,” I say, smiling.

“Do you want to grab something for dinner? With me?”

Didn't see that one coming. I give myself whiplash when I look back at the applications, away from him. “I can't, unfortunately. I think I'm going to pick up a pizza and hit the books.”

He blushes and says, “Um…okay.”

Whilst it may be lovely to have dinner with someone new, and he seems nice, and is kind of cute, I don't think it would be a good idea to date someone I work so closely with. And Dennis isn't my type. First of all, he's too short. I like my men lean and brawny. I'm five foot nine and full figured, and I like to look a man in the eye. Plus he wants to live in Seattle, which is across the country from Manhattan, where I intend to live. And I'm in no rush to date just anyone. My career has to come first. I have to come first. I don't have time to get involved and then realize what a mistake I made.

Like in high school, I fell in love with Darryl McDonald, the best-looking guy at the all-boys school down the street. I had a habit of hanging out at Central Park whenever he played football. And following him home. And calling and hanging up. Finally he asked me out. We started making out in the park. And I discovered he had the IQ of a turtle.

I wave goodbye and pack up my belongings. Maybe I
need therapy for my tendency to obsess. About school. About my career. About ideal men. I've always wanted to have a therapist. All my sorority sisters had therapists, but my parents thought it was a waste of time and money. Work harder, that was their motto. Instead of therapists, I had nannies. Many, many nannies. Most of them blur together into one face. For a while a Brazilian woman took care of me, but when I started talking with a Brazilian accent, my parents became alarmed and fired her. So on to the next. I remember a long blond braid being flicked over a tall woman's shoulder. I remember sitting on a hard park bench while someone explained who I was according to Chinese astrology. Her name was funny sounding, like an amphibian. She told me I was born in the Year of the Dragon. Or maybe it was my sister who was the dragon. Maybe I was the pig.

I remember sitting on the grass in Central Park, refusing to put on my sneakers, being told I was stubborn. Just because I hate being told what to do doesn't make me stubborn. I remember standing in the doorway while one of my nannies disengaged my arms from around my mother's legs. I was begging my mom not to go to China while my father was in Italy. She kissed me on the head and told me to make sure to do my homework, and then she left. She just
left
. From the penthouse window, I watched the black car whisk her away, and thought, At least I have my sister. And my homework. I wanted to score perfect marks on everything so I would make my parents proud, and over time perfection became my ultimate goal. I began to loathe the red marks highlighting my mistakes on my assignments. Loathe the unmade bed. Loathe the dirt on the floor.

Everything had to be just so.

I became a princess watching over my tower.

Maybe I should have demanded therapy, because I'm still that princess, and the prince I'm looking for doesn't exist—
someone smart, gorgeous, ambitious, tall, who intends to build his castle in Manhattan. Unfortunately, no one in B-school seems to fit that description.

None of the students, anyway.

Professor Rothman seems to have a thing for me. He always makes a point of saying hello to me whenever he walks into class.

I think that's a little creepy. He's not married or anything (no ring), but I don't think professors should be flirting with their students. We're here to learn.

I lock the door behind me and set off for the dorm. I wasn't lying to Dennis—I do have a lot of work. I stop at the pharmacy on the way, to pick up antibacterial wipes. Who knows what's on those applications? I also pick up another conditioner. I go through one a week, which I know is absurd.

I shake some fish food into Martha's bowl, then study until ten-thirty when I call my friends back home to say good-night. I should do laundry, but the idea of using those revolting machines in the basement makes me cringe. I tried to find someplace where I can send out wash the way we do in the city (I love the way my underwear comes back folded in cubes), but I learned quickly that Connecticut is not Manhattan.

I head to the bathroom to get ready for bed. Reminiscing about those high-school nights has put me in the mood. Okay, fine, I'm
always
in the mood. Getting off to Darryl could be just the medicine I need to help me fall asleep. And with a smile on my face, to boot.

Jamie and Russ walk in as I'm brushing my teeth. Russ's head is rolling behind him. Someone's had too much to drink.

“Someone got too friendly with Mr. Daniels,” Jamie says, his arm around Russ's shoulder. “Need to get to a stall. Care to help?”

Jamie is funny, in a ha-ha way. He was really funny last
week in the shower when he didn't know who I was, but at the moment I am not amused. I spit my toothpaste suds into the sink as Russ spits up on the floor. It splashes onto my leg. I am definitely going to need a shower.

Jamie continues leading Russ toward the toilet. “Stall, Russ, stall. Did I say floor? I did not say floor.”

I think I'm going to be sick. The smell of his stomach contents is overbearing. I tiptoe back to my room, seize my shower pail and dash down to the hopefully vomitless second-floor bathroom.

Talk about inappropriate behavior. B-school boys seem to think they're still in high school. But why waste time obsessing over children? Darryl awaits.