Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz Page A

brat to buy
     his or her way into our elitist institution, and we’re all such greedy shits that we’re willing to serve up the very principles
     of higher education, not to mention the American dream, just so some blue-blooded prep school boy can be the tenth generation
     of Princeton men in his family.”
    John sat back in his seat, hands folded. He was waiting for her to finish.
    “Or let’s say the rejected applicant is, God forbid, the first poor soul in ten generations of Princeton men to be denied
     admission. Obviously that proves the university is enslaved by affirmative action, and we feel free to discriminate against
     applicants who happen to be white, which is a disgrace for which I am personally responsible, because after all, I only do
     this job because I like putting people down, and everyone knows that people who get their kicks out of rejecting other people
     are the worst kind of failures themselves.”
    She ran out of breath. Literally. And reached for her water glass, wishing fleetingly that she’d asked for that wine. She
     was thoroughly ashamed of herself, not because she’d revealed any secret thing about her work—she hadn’t, she told herself
     quickly, or nothing important—but because, with that final thought, she’d revealed some potent thing about herself. Which
     she now profoundly regretted.
    “Well, that’s quite a speech,” John said mildly.
    “I’m sorry!” She was feeling the heat in her cheeks. Intense, tear-threatening heat. “I’m sorry. I don’t think you deserved
     that. It just kind of builds up, you know?”
    “Well, I know now.”
    “Look,” she heard herself say, “it was nice of you to call. I’m really sorry, but I think I’d better go upstairs.”
    “Portia,” he said. He looked at her. He wasn’t angry. Or even baffled, she saw. Something else, though not quite clear. Or
     quite clear, she realized suddenly. Only silent.
    “No, I… You know, I have a ton of work upstairs, and I have to be at Northfield at ten, so I probably shouldn’t even have come
     down.” She was speaking so quickly, she nearly missed the clipped tones of her own mortification. There was only this race
     with herself, to the elevator and then her room. “But it was really nice to see you again.”
    “Please don’t do that. Let’s order some coffee. Let’s talk more.”
    But I don’t want to talk
, she nearly said. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I need to leave.”
    “Wait,” he said. It was a caution, calm and low, but utterly serious. He got deliberately to his feet. He reached slowly,
     pointedly, into an inside pocket of his corduroy jacket and took out a wallet, never looking away. He removed two twenties
     and put them on the table. Portia’s eye lingered on the bills. There was something vaguely sordid about them, as if the money
     were for something else, though that was not logical. But the two of them, they looked as if they were in a rush, didn’t they?
     Even though they weren’t going anywhere. They weren’t. So much for her stupid wish list. So much for this pointless, pathetic
     distraction. She looked back in the direction of the kitchen. The waitress, at least, was nowhere to be seen.
    “Let me walk you to the elevator,” John said.
    She let him, and she made herself walk. She was aware of her own footfalls on the smooth, hard floor of the lobby. The woman
     at the desk, not the woman who had checked her in, another woman, looked up at them. She wouldn’t know, Portia thought, that
     John wasn’t with her. She wouldn’t stop them. No one, she realized suddenly, was going to stop them.
    It was night now, and the place seemed oddly inert. Even the Muzak was barely there. She strained to hear it, was suddenly,
     disproportionately, afraid of what it meant that she couldn’t hear it, but she could pick up only its faintest imprint, as
     if she had suddenly, rapidly, ascended a steep mountain, and her ears were thick, but not so thick that she