Swim

S WIM

    T he girl’s name was Caitlyn. That fall, it seemed like they were all Caitlyn, or some oddly spelled variation of the name. Judging from the way she kept crossing and recrossing her long, denim-clad legs and flipping her silver cell phone open to check the time, she wanted to be anywhere but in the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf on Beverly and Robertson, sharing a table for two with my laptop and me.
    “So in terms of a major? I’m thinking international relations? I want to be a diplomat?”
    I nodded and typed it in. Every sentence out of her sparkly pink seventeen-year-old lips came out sounding like a question. I could just imagine her sitting across the table from some third-world potentate and toying with the silver ring through the cartilage of her left ear. We’d like you to give up your weapons? Because biological warfare? Is bad?
    Patience, Ruth, I told myself. “Extracurriculars?” I asked, fingers hovering over the keyboard as the woman at the table next to mine, with bristly eyebrows and a bitter twist to her mouth, gave me a nasty look. I ignored her. Each Saturday I got to the coffee shop at seven o’clock, early enough to claim a prime corner table next to the big window, across the room from the blenders and the bathrooms,right near the store’s single power outlet. The people who’d show up later—screenwriters or screenwriter-wannabes, most of them—were forced to play musical tables, inching closer and closer to my corner, stomping across the wide-planked hardwood floors or lingering ostentatiously beside the cream and sugar, their glares growing fiercer as their batteries slowly died. For six hours every Saturday, I would meet with my teenage clients, the ones who went to pricey private schools and whose parents had given them one more leg up on life by hiring an application consultant to help them get into college.
    Caitlyn let go of her earring and tugged at a lock of glossy brown hair. She smelled intensely of coconuts—her shampoo, I figured—and the cloying, fruity scent emanating from the wad of Pepto-pink gum I glimpsed whenever she opened her mouth. I made a note to tell her not to chew gum at her interviews.
    “Um, tennis?”
    “You’re on the tennis team?” I asked. Please, I thought. Something. Anything. So far her extracurricular page was completely blank.
    “Um, no? I just like to play? Or I used to?”
    I typed tennis. “How about clubs? Musical instruments?” I stared at her hopefully. She gave me a blank look back. “Piano lessons?”
    Caitlyn made a face, pink lips wincing above her sweetly rounded chin. “When I was, like, six?”
    “Volunteer work?” Yeah, right, I told myself. Caitlyn stopped smacking her gum, flipped her phone shut, and straightened in her chair.
    “I have this friend? She’s having surgery?” She lowered her voice. “A breast reduction? And I’m going to be taking care of her dog while she, you know, recuperates.”
    Jesus wept. I typed it in anyhow.
    “Well, not, you know, technically. They’ve got a dog walker? But I’ll be coming over to, you know, play with him?” She tugged the piece of hair down to her lips and started chewing it. “Or her?”
    I made a note to remind her not to chew her hair during the interview, right beneath my note about gum. Then I saved her file, closed my laptop, took a gulp of the drink I’d ordered before this ordeal began, and gave her what I hoped was a friendly smile. She was all gangly limbs in tight jeans and a tiny pink T-shirt, with parents who’d happily agreed to my five-thousand-dollar fee. This guaranteed young Caitlyn three months’ worth of my services, an hour-long videotaped interview coaching session, and a full review of up to five essays. We’d be in this for the long haul. I might as well try to find something to like about her.
    “Well!” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic. “This is plenty for me to start with!”
    She fiddled with her paper coffee cup, wiping sparkly pink lipstick off the rim with her pinkie. “Where’d you go to college?” she asked.
    “In Connecticut. A small liberal arts college called Grant. You’ve probably never heard of it.” Caitlyn’s parents had told me that she wasn’t considering any schools outside of California, and she had her heart set on Berkeley. It was a long shot, given her B average and solidly middle-of-the-pack test scores. Then again, Mom and Dad were both alums and, judging from the sleek gold Lexus their