“As usual I bet,” Jamie says.
“Always,” she says, and winks.
For some reason, the word “always” causes Jamie to drop his mouth. She smiles at him, collects her paper, then heads out the door.
I flip over the assignment.
F.
I flip it back.
I got an F. I have never gotten an F in my entire life.
It’s official. I’m going to fail out of business school.
Jamie slaps his hand on his head. “I’m such an idiot.”
At least I’m not the only one who screwed up. “You didn’t do well?”
“No, I got a B-plus. I just realized who the girl in the shower was.”
What the hell is he talking about? I ignore him and stuff the stupid assignment into my bag, and head toward the library. Group meeting number seven hundred and twenty. Not that it matters if I attend or not. I don’t say anything, anyway.
F. Failure. Fuck. What a bitch that Gold is. I knew I wouldn’t like female teachers. Not that I’m doing much better in any of my other classes. I’m going to fail everything. I am going into debt for nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. That’s what I am. Nothing. A big fat zero.
That’s one statistic I can count on.
I sit mutely through another boring group meeting until it dawns on me that they couldn’t care less if I’m there or not, so I feign exhaustion and leave. I’m not even in the mood for dinner. I buy a bag of barbecue chips from the vending machine and climb into bed. I turn on my reading lamp and open a GQ.
At eight, someone knocks on the door. “Kimmy? Honey? Are you there?” It’s Jamie. I don’t answer.
At eight-thirty the phone rings, but I don’t answer. It rings again at eight-forty. Jamie, again, I’m sure. How did I get here? Why am I hiding away in a tiny room on a creaky bed? Right. Wayne. I was running from Wayne. I miss Wayne. Where is Wayne? Maybe I should call Wayne.
I know phoning Wayne is a bad idea. But I’m going to do it, anyway. I pick up the phone and dial his number. I’m allowed to call an ex-boyfriend to say hello. Of course I am. It’s not a crazy thing to do. Pathetic, maybe, but not crazy.
One ring. Two. Maybe I should hang up.
“Hello?” a woman says. Cheryl has answered the phone.
I should hang up. But what if he has caller ID? I kick myself for not using star 67. Calling and hanging up when the person has caller ID is worse than calling and saying hello. “Is Wayne there?” I don’t like the name Wayne. Never did. I always picture the obnoxious, fat older brother from The Wonder Years.
“Who is it?” she asks.
You know who it is, you stupid skank. I should hang up. Slam the phone down in her face. I should.
“It’s Kimmy. Who’s this?” Take that, bitch.
“Kimmy…hi.” She slows down the hi as though I’m mentally challenged. “It’s Cheryl.”
“Cheryl. How are you?” I put on my fake high-pitched voice, the one I use when talking to my grandmother’s friends whose names I can never remember.
“I’m well, thanks.” Her tone sounds confused-my question was nice, my enthusiasm high, but she knows I wish she’d be squashed by a falling house. “You?”
“I’m fantastic. I’m in business school now, did you know? I love it. Just love it. Time of my life. And what about you? What are you doing these days?”
She’s working as a waitress at El Condo’s Mexican Restaurant. That’s why I can ask the question. I know what I’m doing is so much better than what she’s doing. As long as she doesn’t toss up an “I’m waitressing but in my spare time I’m modeling for Victoria’s Secret” on me.
“Nothing new.” Ha! She can’t even say it, she’s too embarrassed. “Wayne’s not here right now. And I’m running out. Should I ask him to call you back? Is everything all right?”
“Oh, everything’s fine.” What does that mean he’s not there? Why is she answering the phone? Are they living together? ARE THEY LIVING TOGETHER? “Just calling to say hello. See how the two of you are.” I must find out if they’re living together. How can I find out? Who can I ask? “Well, take care.” Take care not to walk into a passing truck. Which I’ll be driving.
“Oh, you, too.”
Slam. I stare at the phone for the next twenty minutes. She must have left by now. I press the code to block my number and call back.
Her voice is on his damn machine.
“Hi, everyone! You’ve reached Cheryl and Wayne and we can’t come to the phone. If you leave a message, we’ll call you back as soon as we can. Bye!”
They’re living together. How can they already be living together? And in the apartment I helped him fix up! I chose the paint, I shopped for his linen, I picked out the couch-I spent four hours on various furniture Web sites finding that couch. Does she like the couch? Have they had sex on it? What about the comforter? Suddenly I understand why dogs pee to mark their territory. I’ve had sex in that apartment, too, you know. Does she know? Does she know where we’ve had sex in that apartment? Everywhere. We had a lot of sex in that apartment.
I can’t deal. I need to sleep. I turn off my reading light, toss the magazine onto the floor, climb back into bed and, crusty teeth and face be damned, I close my eyes. If I go to sleep, maybe I’ll feel better in the morning.
Did he buy new sheets? I bet he didn’t. Does she think of me naked when she washes those sheets?
I bet she comes every time. Shrieks and spasms and all. I bet she told him about how I faked it every time. Telling her that I thought I was frigid (after we’d polished off a pitcher of margaritas) was my second mistake. I told her about my little orgasm problem only because she’d confessed to being an occasional bulimic, but I realized right away that I’d been shortchanged. After all, she wasn’t telling me anything new. At least twice, I’d seen her puke after gorging herself on five slices of pizza.
I also told her how sweet Wayne was, which was my first mistake.
Never brag to another woman about your boyfriend, because she’ll want him for herself.
What else could I have blabbed? Thank God I didn’t tell her about getting pregnant.
Must sleep. Can’t.
I feel like the time I dropped acid in college, saw spiders on the walls, and thought that one of the girls was plotting to suffocate me. I saw everyone in freeze-frame, like a video in a broken VCR. I tried to sleep, but my brain wouldn’t turn off.
Like it won’t now. Maybe I’ll wash my face. There we go, that will give me something to do. It’s ten o’clock. I don’t even change into my I-look-sexy-even-though-I-happento-be-going-to-the-bathroom-in-the-middle-of-the-night outfit. What’s the point? No one cares. Russ isn’t interested. He has the lovely Sharon back home. Wayne doesn’t care. He’s living with Cheryl. And I’m a Stats failure.
My door creaks open. The hall is empty. Everyone is partying without me. No one is in the bathroom, either. Just me, alone. As usual.
As I lather the cleanser on my face, my eyes sting with tears. I hate when I cry. I’m not one of those sexy, demure criers. My eyes get red and blotchy and squinty, and when I breathe I sound like I have the hiccups. I rinse my face and sob at the same time, and accidentally swallow a mouthful of soapy water. Great. For the grand finale, the glorious conclusion to a truly spectacular day, I will now choke to death.
And that’s when the door to the bathroom opens and I am saved.
layla has a girls’ night in
10:05 p.m.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
Kimmy is standing in front of the sink, bawling her eyes out and coughing. She nods and wipes her eyes. “I’m fine.”
I pat her on the shoulder. “You are not fine. Why don’t you come to my room and we’ll talk?”
Instead of looking at me, she looks at her reflection. “Talk about what?”
“About whatever is bothering you.”
She hesitates, then says, “Okay. Let me clean myself up first.”
“Good idea. And
I’ll just be a sec.” I quickly pee, since that is the reason I came to the bathroom in the first place, and then find Kimmy waiting for me by the door. “I think you need a girls’ night.”
She opens her mouth to say something, changes her mind, then opens it again. “Where’s your room?” she asks as she follows me down the hallway.
“Make a right at the fork.”
We walk in silence. Maybe inviting Kimmy wasn’t a good idea. All I really know about her is that she was in diaper commercials. She seems so lonely. And she appears to be in need of a good girlfriend as much as I am. I snap on the light.
She scans my setup. “Wow. Did you get a decorator in here?”
“Not quite. But I appreciate the compliment. Why don’t you sit?” I gesture to the purple beanbag in the corner. “Just throw the newspapers on the floor.” I have a week of business sections that I’ve forgotten to recycle. “Do you want some tea?”
She sits. “Tea? No thanks.”
“Oh, Come on. I have herbal, and it’s good for you.”
She shrugs. “Okay.” This girl is at the bottom of her emotional barrel.
I plug in the kettle on my night table and then pass Kimmy a chenille blanket and a box of chocolate cookies. She shakes her head. “I’m more of a chips girl.”
“More for me, then,” I say, and sit cross-legged on the bed. I eat a lot of chocolate. Especially when I’m not having sex. I need to get my endorphin fix from something. “So tell me your life story. What’s wrong?”
She opens her mouth and starts to cry.
“Don’t cry, it can’t be that bad.” For the first time since I arrived at school, I feel at home. I miss my girlfriends. I miss my sister. I miss hanging out. I miss drinking tea, eating cookies and talking about everything and nothing.
“It’s that bad, believe me. I got a D in Accounting, another D in Economics and an F on the Stats assignment.”
I inwardly cringe. “Big deal. It’s just one assignment. Or three. And the Accounting assignment was only worth ten percent.” Probably not the time to mention my A’s or the Excellent job! comment I received or that Professor Gold gave me a smiley-face sticker.
“Trust me, Layla, I won’t do better on the next ones. I’ll probably fail out.”
“Fail out! What kind of talk is that? You won’t fail out. You just started. Maybe you’re not working hard enough.” The kettle hums, and I pour the boiling water into two cups stuffed with chamomile tea bags.
“You don’t understand. It doesn’t matter how hard I work, I don’t understand anything. I don’t get it. I’m a moron. I don’t belong here.”
I hand her a cup. I love these cups. They’re from the Calvin Klein mahogany fine-china collection. “You’re being ridiculous. Your group will help you.”
“No, they won’t. I can’t ask them. We’re having some, uh, issues. One of the guys has a crush on me, and I don’t want to encourage him.”
Gossip! I’ve missed gossip. “Yeah? Who?”
“Do you know Jamie Grossman?”
“Oh, yeah. He’s in your group? He’s hilarious. We met in the shower a few weeks ago.” She looks at me with disbelief, and I laugh. “Sounds more sordid than it was. I ran out of conditioner, so I asked the person next to me to lend me some.”
She nods. “So that’s what he was talking about today when he said he realized who was in the shower.”
“Ha! I’m surprised it took him so long. I recognized his voice from class immediately.”
“He doesn’t shut up in class.”
And the point is…? “That doesn’t bother me.”
“You never shut up, either.” She clamps her hand over her mouth. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”
I giggle. “You’re right. I like to talk in class. No reason not to get the participation marks.”
“I never talk in class.”
“You should.”
She shrugs. “I never have anything to say.”
“Neither do half the people in our Block,” I say. “And they still talk.”
She smiles. “I didn’t mean to insult you earlier. You make good points in class. I’m jealous.”
“And I’m jealous of the poetry you get in the bathroom,” I say.
“How embarrassing are those poems!” she shrieks, covering her face with the blanket.
They are a little embarrassing, but definitely sweet. “You could probably just wash them off the walls,” I suggest.
“I know,” Kimmy says, “but I kind of like them.” She laughs. “We got together in orientation.”
“Really? You and Casanova? No wonder he’s writing you poetry. So what happened? He wasn’t any good?” I ask, automatically leaning toward her.
She covers her face with the blanket again.
Girl talk! Girl talk! I need some girl talk. “Come on, tell me!”
“Promise you won’t repeat?”
“Repeat? I would never.” The first rule of girl talk is that one must never repeat. “Spill it!”
“It was terrible. Terrible.” She brings her thumb and index finger about an inch apart.
I shriek with laughter.
“It didn’t even make it inside of me.”
How awful. “No wonder he follows you around. He wants another chance.”
“I know. Do you think a guy knows when he’s not good in bed?”
Now we’re talking. I dip into the box for cookie number three. “I don’t know. Does a woman?”
“I think I would know if I wasn’t good in bed. Which I am.” She smiles. “I have another secret. I have a huge crush on Russ.”
Ew. Puke-boy. I attempt to mask my revulsion. “Yeah?”
“Isn’t he gorgeous?”
I can’t help but picture him with vomit on his chin. “So? What’s the story?”
“There is no story. He has a girlfriend back home. And I have no boyfriend and I’m failing out of school.”
“Maybe I can help you,” I offer.
“Find a boyfriend?”
I’m about to throw a pillow at her, but I’m afraid I’ll end up spilling the tea on my five-hundred-thread-count Ralph Lauren sheets. “I’m talking about getting better grades. We can work on our assignments together.”
“Really? You don’t mind?”
Why would I mind? It’ll be nice having someone to hang out with. “Not at all. It’ll be fun.”
She nods and looks around the room. “Thanks. I appreciate it. If you’re sure. If you change your mind, I’ll understand.”
If I change my mind, she’ll fail. “I’m sure.”
“Is there more hot water?” she asks. She crawls over to my night table and empties the rest of the kettle water into her cup. “Hey, who’s this?” She picks up the printout of Brad.
“Uh…no one.”
“No way, I told you everything about me!”
That’s true. A friendship is based on give and take. “It’s just some guy I’ve been admiring from afar.”
“You know, I’ve noticed Professor Jon has been admiring you from afar. He spends all class staring at you.”
“He’s not for me.”
She shakes her head in disbelief. “Are you nuts? He’s hot and smart and sexy and he seems to want you. I’d go for it. So who is this guy?”
“I read applications for LWBS. And today I processed an application of the guy I want to marry. Is that weird?”
“A little. And this is him?”
I can’t believe I just told her that. “Yeah. But please don’t tell anyone, okay?”
“So are you going to call him?”
“No! I can’t. It’s unethical. His picture will be my sexual fodder for the rest of the year. And who knows? Maybe he’ll come to LWBS in the fall.” He’s already been good to me. I had two orgasms last night, back to back. They weren’t perfect orgasms, but you know what they say: bad sex is better than no sex. That’s my quest, to have the perfect orgasm. I figure I’ll know it when I have it.
; She taps her index finger against Brad’s head. “By next year this one will be taken. If he isn’t already.”
Taken? He could be taken? I can’t fantasize about a man who’s taken.
She laughs. “Don’t look so upset! He might not be. Just call him.”
“He ticked off the single box. He’s not married. Damn applications. I wish they had a Do you have a girlfriend? box. Or Do you live with someone? box.”
“Call him,” she repeats.
“We’ll see.” There’s no way I’m calling him.
I dig into the second row of cookies. Looks like I’ll need to stock up on these endorphins.
kimmy does her patriotic duty
Tuesday, October 14, 10:25 a.m.
I sit next to Layla in Strategy, since it’s the one class where she doesn’t sit in the front row. The spitting bothers her.
“How are you feeling?” she asks.
“Better, thanks.” I can’t believe I spilled all that personal information to her last week. I must be a masochist. I whine about how women screw me over, and then I give someone I barely know the ammunition to stick it to me again. Now I have to be nice to her for the rest of our lives. Or at least until I get kicked out of school.
Russ walks in next and sits in the back.
Martin struts into the room, slams the front door and immediately writes BUSINESS IS WAR! on the blackboard, as he does every day. At least he’s not wearing the army hat he wore on the first day of class.
Jamie opens the door, waves to Martin and sits in the empty seat next to mine. “Hi, gorgeous,” he says, winking.
Layla tries to repress the smile on her face. I definitely should not have spilled the small penis info. Why am I so blessed with verbal diarrhea?
But I have the goods on her, if she turns into a leak, I’m sure the officials at LWBS would be interested to know that she has a photo of an applicant on her night table. For sexual fodder! I can’t believe she was so obvious about…masturbating. I’ve never actually heard a woman admit to masturbating. Guys talk about it all the time, but women? I bet if I’d hung around longer, she would have pulled out her dildos. She’s so…open. Which I guess is kind of cool.
Monkey Business Page 9
