Monkey Business

layla finds her prince in a haystack

Friday, October 3, 3:10 p.m.

More applications = more losers.

Be nice, I reprimand myself. They’re not losers. They’re just not right for LWBS.

More unacceptable candidates. More wistful looks from Dennis. I keep catching him staring, and it’s making me uncomfortable.

Next one. Bradley Green.

I skim through his file. Undergraduate degree from Harvard. Now that’s fancy. And he’s worked for the Lerner Investment Bank for the past two years. GMATs? Oh, my. Ninety-ninth percentile. That’s pretty brainy. That’s the highest you can get, since you can’t beat a hundred percent of the rest of the people. Although I suppose if you were the only person who got a perfect score, then you would have done better than everyone else. An issue to ponder another time.

“This guy scored in the ninety-ninth percentile on his GMATs,” I say, waving his paper in front of me like a flag.

Dennis shrugs. “I got a ninety-eight.”

“But this is the ninety-ninth.”

I flip through his application and see an article cut out from the New York Times. “Bradley Green III, son of Bradley Green II…” He’s that Bradley Green? As in Bradley Green, one of the wealthiest businessmen on the East Coast? “…CEO of the media conglomerate PAX Technology, has spent the summer building houses for the homeless in Oregon…”

My eyes skip to the picture. A tall, well-built man with light hair, a cleft in his chin, a dimple in his cheek and a serious look on his face is crouching over rubble.

Oh, my. Bradley Green III is gorgeous.

I pull out one of his essays, entitled “What Matters to Me and Why,” and read the first paragraph:

On my fourteenth birthday I was given a fish tank and two bright goldfish. The tank still sits in the corner of my room, flush against the wall. Along that same wall is my bed with a clear view through the side of the tank. When people walk into the room and take the time to admire the fish they always look at the tank head-on, neglecting the alternate view through the side of the tank. I always hold a high regard for the varied viewpoint offered from my bed that serves as a different, enlightening perspective into the lives of my enclosed aqua-friends. The driving force behind the vast majority of choices I have made is the desire to view issues and experience life through a multitude of perspectives. This is why I have volunteered around the country, traveled extensively and chose to work at the Lerner Hong Kong branch for my first year. I have always attempted to see beyond my own biases into other people’s points of views, and I believe that a business degree from LWBS will allow me a challenging new perspective.

He has fish!

Here we go. I’m in love. Again.

Bradley Green III is brilliant, ambitious, gorgeous, well traveled, has perspective, has fish, and builds houses for the homeless. And according to his address, he now lives and works in Manhattan. And he’s applying to LWBS.

If he’s not the perfect man for me, I don’t know who is. If I had the computer program that the guys in the movie Weird Science used to make the perfect woman, I couldn’t have produced a more ideal man.

The perfect man whose phone number is directly in my line of vision.

No, I can’t call him. Extracting information about an applicant for my own purpose would be unethical. I tally up his score. His GMAT translates into a ten out of ten; work experience a nine; college marks-I peek at his transcript-a four point five! He’s better than perfect, and here I thought only high school granted extra credit-I give him a perfect ten (unfortunately, I can’t give him extra credit); references-glowing, but why am I surprised?-five out of five, essays five out of five; and overall impressions I’m giving him another five. That’s a total of forty-four out of forty five. He’s most definitely in.

All right. I’ve done all I can ethically do. If he comes to LWBS, I can introduce myself and let love weave its magic.

But magic aside, why leave anything to chance?

I change his work-experience score to ten. If you’re better than perfect in one area, you should be allowed to let the extra credit spill over to an area that’s lacking.

It’s ten-thirty and I can’t sleep. I have to pee. I do not feel like standing up, slipping on pajamas, finding my slippers and walking all the way down the hall. I will not be able to fall asleep if I have to pee. I’ll just think about something else. Something fun.

I reboot my computer and click onto the New York Times Web site. I search for Bradley Green, and click on his photo.

So hot. Now for some sexy music.

It’s now eleven o’clock and I still have to pee.

I don’t have to pee…I don’t have to pee…I don’t have to pee, I don’t have to pee…

I’m never going to be able to sleep until I go to the bathroom. I sigh and search for my slippers.