Flotsam

Still no news. I thought about calling The Dean Of The Program, but I haven’t been able to decide whether that would be a wise idea. I am feeling a bit edgy because if her answer is “Yes,” I am down to two weeks to prepare an application, or else I must wait for the next admission cycle in September. I have prepared for getting a “No,”–I am ready with plans B and C–but have somehow neglected to prepare for a favorable outcome. Perhaps this is because I have such a clear view in my head of the scene in TDOTP’s office…

{THE SCENE: Dean’s office—Creative Writing department, Psuedonymous University. THE DEAN OF THE PROGRAM sits with her feet resting upon an expansive mahogany desk. A raven twitters in a standing birdcage in one corner of the office. In another corner is a chair facing a window, its back facing the room. There is someone in the chair, but we see only a plume of rising cigarette smoke. Manuscripts and application files teeter in stacks on the desk, on the floor, and on the windowsills. One stack is being used to prop up the short leg of a table, another as a makeshift door jamb. A MINION enters.}
MINION: Some people to see you, Ma’am.
THE DEAN OF THE PROGRAM: Ah, yes. Send them in.
{ENTER: ASSISTANT DEAN, THE BA-LESS MFA CANDIDATE, MS. CAVIN, and EX-BOYFRIENDs 1 and 2.}
TDOTP: Delightful to see you all! May I get you something to drink? Manhattans all around? {She swings her legs down from the desk and moves to a bar-cart to prepare refreshments.}
ASSISTANT DEAN: So, Deanie, any news? Have you written a response?
TDOTP: {Laughing} Oh, no. Let her sweat it out a bit longer!
EX-BOYFRIEND1: {confused (as usual)}A response to what?
ASSISTANT DEAN: My dear, haven’t you heard? Alexa asked for permission to apply to The Program! Without an undergraduate degree! Purely on the strength of her “writing” and {giggles} “life experience.”
{LAUGHTER ALL AROUND}
MS. CAVIN: I had Alexa for seventh grade English, and if her vocabulary exercises are any indication, “the strength of her writing” isn’t going to get her very far. And her handwriting is horrible. Of course I can’t speak to her “life experience.”
EX-BOYFRIEND1: Well I can. When I dated her, she wasn’t very experienced at all. You should have seen her try to give a blow job.
EX-BOYFRIEND2: {darkly} I wish I had. Anyway, I think she must have had a lot of “life experience” by the time we got together—she looked really old in the mornings before she put her makeup on. Old and haggard and ugly. That was probably from all the “life experience.”
TDOTP: {passes around Manhattans and returns to her desk} Oh, I guess she did some things—she ran a magazine, or something. I can’t remember now. {A bit of her Manhattan sloshes onto the desk and she idly mops it up with a student manuscript.} Anyway, we have standards, here at PU. We can’t just go around admitting people.
THE BA-LESS MFA CANDIDATE: Of course you did admit me.
ASSISTANT DEAN: But you were different, my dear! A toast to you!
{ALL raise their glasses to THE BA-LESS MFA CANDIDATE, who blushes prettily.}
MS. CAVIN: But back to Alexa—can we hear part of her writing sample? I haven’t had a really satisfying laugh since last week when I saw a puppy get run over in the street outside my apartment. I used the pelt to make this lovely stole I’m wearing.
{ASSISTANT DEAN reaches over to stroke MS. CAVIN’s stole.}
TDOTP: {rummaging through piles of manuscripts} Hmmm. I know I had it here somewhere…
{A hand emerges from the chair in the corner, holding a manuscript. We still cannot see the chair’s occupant.}
TDOTP: Ah, yes, there it is. {She hands Alexa’s writing sample to THE BA-LESS MFA CANDIDATE.} Would you read a bit of it to us?
{THE BA-LESS MFA CANDIDATE begins to read. As she does, EX-BOYFRIEND1 pages through a dictionary looking up the words he doesn’t understand. Everyone else laughs—tittering politely at first, then bursting into explosive guffaws at some of the more pathetic and poorly-written sentences. TDOTP collapses upon her desk, gasping with mirth, unable to contain herself. When THE BA-LESS MFA CANDIDATE comes to the end of the manuscript, TDOTP gets up from her desk, wiping tears of glee from her eyes. She takes Alexa’s writing sample over to the birdcage, where she stands, absentmindedly tearing the manuscript into strips and sliding them through the bars to cover the cage’s excrement-encrusted floor.}
TDOTP: So. I have to write her back eventually, I suppose. But whatever shall I say?
ASSISTANT DEAN: Tell her that The Program isn’t a charity organization.
THE BA-LESS MFA CANDIDATE: Tell her that if she were half the writer she thinks she is, she still wouldn’t be clever enough to lick my very expensive boots.
EX-BOYFRIEND2: Tell her that when I laughed at her jokes, it was mostly out of pity.
EX-BOYFRIEND1: And ask her what she meant by “puerile” or whatever it was she said after I dumped her. Is it like “virile?”
MS. CAVIN: Tell her that all those times I said she wasn’t living up to her potential, I was wrong. That her potential is so miniscule, it is fulfilled simply by the act of failing. Oh, and that she misused a semi-colon in the second paragraph of her writing sample.
VOICE FROM THE CHAIR IN THE CORNER: Tell her… {the chair revolves to reveal it’s occupant. It is MISS ROTHSCHILD.}
MISS ROTHSCHILD: Tell her that what she lacks in natural talent, she more than makes up for in lack of skill.
ALL: Bwahahaha! BWAhahahaha! BWAHAHAHAHA!