Monkey Business. Sarah Mlynowski

rise to stardom

      kimmy rationalizes her future

      layla streaks

      russ’s depression

      layla sees the truth

      some news for russ

      jamie’s advice

      kimmy’s ejection

      layla’s birthday

      sister kimmy

      jamie’s mom knows best

      russ has a fleeting regret

      layla’s calling

      closure for kimmy

      layla claims her prince

      summer break

       kimmy’s elevator

orientation (primarily academic)

      Monday, September 1, 11:55 p.m.

      kimmy’s big blunder

      He aims, he shoots, he scores—all over my silk duvet.

      “It’s okay. Not a big deal,” I lie.

      “Give me two seconds, Kimmy, and I’ll be ready for round two.”

      “Don’t worry about it,” I lie again.

      And then he rolls over and passes out.

      He’s sleeping, I’m still in my jeans, and my goose-feather duvet—a gift from my father and the only thing I own of any worth—has a puddle on it.

      I can’t believe how gross this is. And to make matters worse, this guy I’ve chosen as my one-night stand—make that five-minute stand—is in my class. I can’t imagine spending the next ten minutes with him, never mind the next two years.

      Besides being incapable of holding it in long enough to make it to the condom, a lesson the girls were supposed to teach him when he was an undergrad, he’s flabby, short and has a unibrow. Also his penis is smaller than my PDA, and that fits in the palm of my hand.

      For the first time ever, my mother was right. I hate that. She nagged me to put a cover on my duvet, one nag among millions, but did I listen? No, not me. My reasoning? I liked the feel of the satin against my skin.

      Apparently so did Jamie.

      He’s comatose on top of my comforter, his jeans and checkerboard boxers bagging around his hairy thighs. His eyes are closed, his mouth slightly open, and a trail of drool leaks onto my pillow. Hasn’t he already soiled enough of my linen?

      The devil-red numbers on the alarm clock beside my single bed say 12:01 a.m. Or is that 1:21? I can’t see too well, as I’m a bit on the dizzy side.

      Okay, I admit it. Drunk dizzy.

      Dread dribbles through my half-dressed body like nausea after one too many beers. From my uncomfortable position (back pressed up against the thin wooden wall, legs straight like a clothespin to avoid making contact with his), I analyze the situation’s gravity. There’s a balding, tire-around-the-middle, quasi-naked man in my bed. Correction, on my bed.

      Oh, God, what did I do?

      My class of two hundred is divided into three Blocks (aka sections), A through C, and all my classes are within the same Block. The way to impress my new classmates probably wasn’t to take one home the first night I’m here. Especially not one in my Block. Block B. It sounds like a prison.

      His bloated lips are slightly open, his breath gentle and wet. This embarrassment will probably sit two rows behind me ten times a week. It’s going to be a long two years.

      Why did I invite Jamie back to my room? Oh, right, I was trying not to think about Wayne. And I thought he could be my replacement boyfriend. I’ll give Jamie cute in a worn, teddy-bear sort of way. He said he was twenty-six, but he looks almost middle-aged. Like a forty-year-old who buys a Corvette and gets an earring to stay hip.

      Spew all over my comforter is not cool. Okay, it’s not all over the comforter; it’s relegated to a one-inch Italy-shaped boot on the right side of the bed. But still, what am I going to do, bring it to the dry cleaner? Wash it in the sink? I don’t even have my own sink. I share three sinks with the thirty other people on my floor. I’m not Linus. I can’t start dragging my comforter around the dorm. I’ll have to wait until the middle of the night to sneak through the halls, covert-operation-like.

      I have to pee. Too much beer. I swing my legs over the comatose body, onto the raggedy red-and-blue throw carpet, which was the first thing I unpacked when I arrived this morning. (I like a warm ground under my feet.) Then I blow out the potted candle on my desk. That was the second item I unpacked. Unfortunately, the wick didn’t get much of a workout tonight. I didn’t get much of a workout tonight, and you can blame that on his wick.

      I open the closet door and disappear inside. The massive space reserved for my wardrobe is the anomaly of my minuscule eight-by-eight-foot room. My bed, desk and chair are squished practically on top of one another, yet my sweaters, jeans and shoes have a huge suite. Go figure. I don’t even like shopping.

      I can’t believe I’m here. In the closet. At business school. At business school. What am I doing at business school? What am I doing in Maplewood, Connecticut? Wayne, jackass Wayne, is the one who wanted to attach the letters MBA to his name. I was more interested in the letters MRS.

      So we studied together for the GMATs, the standardized business school exam. And then I took the test and scored in the eighty-ninth percentile. Wayne only scored a fifty-seven. And then we separately filled out six applications and wrote the obligatory Why I Want to Go to Your School essays (“I want to go to New York University because New York is the financial capital of the world…I want to go to Stanford because San Francisco is the technology capital of the world…I want to go to the University of Miami so I can have a perma-tan…” Kidding about that last one. Sort of).

      I was accepted by four of the six, including LWBS, Winsford University’s business school, one of the top business schools in the country. Wayne didn’t get accepted anywhere.

      Wayne then told me we were getting too serious. He wanted space. I want to take a break, he said. I need to focus on my future, he said. But then I found out that what he really wanted to focus on was my friend Cheryl.

      No, we’re not friends anymore.

      I hope he and Cheryl have a nice, happy, uneducated life together.

      I decided to come to LWBS anyway. Why not? I begged my dad to loan me tuition money. I would find myself a new boyfriend. The ratio of men to women here is three to one. Three to one. I read somewhere that single women should head up to Alaska, but this is a billion times better. And a billion times warmer. Well, not that much warmer; it’s Connecticut, not Florida.

      In the mirror on my closet door I see that the eyeliner around my eyes is smeared, making me look as if I’m auditioning for an anti-smack ad.

      At least my nose is perfect. My father bought me this nose for my eighteenth birthday. I begged him for that, too. In the tenth grade the boys in my class used to rank the girls. I got eight out of ten in personality, seven and a half for body, and five for face. I spent the rest of the day crying in the girl’s rest room.

      If pre-nose job my face was a five, post-nose job, I’m at least an eight. In three to one B-school, where the average woman cares more about a flawless résumé than a flawless complexion, my eight translates into at least an eleven.

      I should clean up in this place.

      I slip on a pair of shorts and look for a sleep shirt. My ripped class-of-2001 college shirt? Nah. That’s best left hidden from the public eye. Instead I squeeze my latest acquisition, a new aqua T-shirt patterned in miniature Playboy Bunnies, over my head. It brings out the blue in my eyes and shows