Chapter 7

Xavier Fisher, better known as Fish to all of his friends, coworkers, and various tavern employees in the greater Cambridge, Massachusetts area, looked around the bar in desperate search of a waitress. If she put his order into the computer before happy hour ended, he would get the half-price discount. If not, he’d have to pay full price. And like almost every other graduate student in Harvard’s Genetics PHD program, Fish needed to save money wherever he could.

He saw his favorite waitress and Philosophy Masters student, Michelle, walking with two beers in each hand and flagged her over.

“Hey, Fish,” she said with a smile. “By yourself or waiting for friends?”

“My friends are late. But they have jobs and can afford to pay full price so, you know what, screw them, I’m not waiting. I’d like to order the Chicken breast with a baked potato, please.”

She checked her watch. Three minutes until the end of happy hour and she still had to deliver the beers without looking like she was in a hurry. “Okay, but if there’s a line at the computer--”

“There’s always a line. Here’s what you do; grab the skinniest waitress and body-slam her. When the other waitresses see what you’ve done, they’ll scatter out of your way. That’s when you move in and enter my order before happy hour ends.”

Michelle couldn’t stifle her giggle. “You’re lucky I’ve been working out.”

“Actually, I’m lucky you’re a beautiful, kind-hearted, woman with a soft spot for broke students… who’s been working out.”

She shook her head at the array of compliments. “Okay, smooth-talker, I’ve gotta go. Cambridge Amber?”

Fish smiled at her. “And of course, there’s your incredible, photographic memory when it comes to my favorite beer. Thank you. I’m gonna grab a table over there.”

She smiled back. “I’ll find you.”

He picked his way through the happy hour crowd toward the far side of the bar. A busboy was wiping a table down a few feet away. Fish stood next to him so no one could take the table and slid in as soon as he turned to leave.

A table at Grendel’s Den during happy hour with his order all but guaranteed in the computer before the seven thirty p.m. cut off. Life was good for Xavier Fisher.

A British accented voice with a Saudi Arabian tinge to it said, “Bloody hell, Fish, what are you doing here?”

Since Fish recognized the man’s voice yelling at him, he didn’t see any reason to turn around.

“Really? You’ll pretend to be deaf as well?” the annoyed voice said getting closer, louder, and even more annoyed. “I would expect a little better from a fellow Harvard man.”

Fish turned around. “Abdul, I’m off the clock.”

Abdul Jasser sat down at Fish’s table without being invited. “You’re not in some bloody union, you git. You’re off the clock when your work is done and not a moment sooner.”

Fish looked at him. He figured the most accurate description of their relationship would be frenemies; but since Fish wasn’t a twelve-year-old girl, he settled on coworkers. “My work was done two hours ago. Then someone came and gave me more work.”

“I only gave you what Dr. Radford gave me to give you. If you have a problem with that, I respectfully suggest you take it up with the man who decides whether or not you get your PHD.”

“Well, so long as you’re respectful about it.”

Abdul looked at Fish, waiting for more of a response. When he saw he wasn’t going to get one, he said, “So?”

“So, what?”

“So, what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to do what I’ve been told to do. But I can’t do it all at once. I have to teach a class tomorrow morning--”

“Teach? You haven’t got time to teach--”

“Abdul, I don’t have some deep longing to teach Biology 101 to freshman whose parents snuck them into Harvard through legacy admissions and legal bribes called endowments. I have to teach a class that meets twice a week this semester. I have to. I’ll get to the other stuff after class tomorrow.”

Abdul knew he had a point. He himself had been held hostage last semester. “All right, I’ll leave you alone.” Abdul got up to leave.

“Wait. How did you know where to find me?”

Abdul smiled. “Fish, its happy hour. Everyone in the department knows where you are. Where else could you be? I’ll see you tomorrow.” He left.

Fish had a moment alone for quiet reflection. Was he really that predictable? He shrugged his shoulders. It didn’t matter. His problem wasn’t his predictability; it was that he didn’t have enough time to do all of the things required of him.

When he’d first thought about going after his PHD, he thought it would simply be a matter of intellectual competence. Since he had always been smart enough to learn whatever it was that he’d chosen to study, Fish had assumed getting the top academic degree in a field he was fascinated with wouldn’t be much of a problem.

But now that he was going down the home stretch, he was coming to the infuriating realization that he wasn’t just doing his own work, he was also doing a lot of the work of his academic advisor.

Fish had picked Dr. Radford because the tenured head of the Genetics department had the best equipment and also the highest stipend. But instead of getting to use that equipment on his own research for his thesis, Fish had to help Radford with his research instead. And on top of all that, Fish had to teach and grade his students.

As he sat there, Fish laughed at himself. He realized any adversity he was facing seemed harder than it actually was because his parents had taken such good care of him and that by any real-world standards, he’d led an extremely spoiled life.

He saw Michelle looking around amongst the happy hour customers.

He gave her a wave and a big smile to go with it.

She smiled back as she brought him his beer. She set it on the table and reached into a pocket to pull out his receipt. “Look at this,” she said pointed to the time near the top of the receipt. “Seven twenty-nine. I made it by a full minute and I didn’t even have to body-slam anyone.”

“Wow. They may not say it as often as they should but I’m sure your coworkers appreciate that.”

Her smile grew to a giggle as she set the receipt on the table. “I’ll bring your food when it’s ready.”

“Thank you.”

She left.

Fish took a pull off his bottle.

“Ey, professah,” said a friendly voice from behind him.

Fish turned toward the sound of the Southie accent. There, wearing a Harvard Sucks t-shirt, jeans, and a smile, stood one of his students, John Ryan.

Whenever it was just the two of them, or when he was around international students who had problems with the thick South Boston accent, John eased up on it. But when he was out in public, he cranked it up loud and proud.

The Engineering major was taking Biology 101 under protest. The truth was he was actually attending Harvard under protest. When his mother saw the scholastic aptitude her baby boy had in junior high school, she put her big Irish-Catholic foot down and made sure he took the right classes and studied too.

From that point on, all of the discrimination and knee-jerk hostility her family and friends had against Harvard students disappeared. Except for her youngest son, John, who took it upon himself to make up the slack for his father, two older brothers, eight cousins, three uncles, and God only knew how many friends and neighbors who were under threats of extreme violence by Mama Ryan to keep a lid on it. Since he was the one actually going to Harvard, his mother gave John a pass.

Making his way through the crowd and catching up to him was his unlikely best friend, at least, best friend in college, Ben Shapiro. The Jewish Accounting major was also attending Harvard out of protest. His grandfather had gone there. His father and two uncles had also gone there. He was a legacy.

But Ben had wanted to be his own man. Ben had wanted to go to Columbia in New York. Ben’s parents said they would only pay tuition for Harvard and that if he wanted to be his own man, he could take out student loans to pay for anything his scholarship didn’t cover. Which was why had Ben wound up attending Harvard. Thankfully, Ben had been able to scrounge up enough money to buy his very own Harvard Sucks t-shirt and was wearing it tonight. “Hey, professor.”

“Gentlemen” Fish said. “Are you two old enough to be here?”

“We’re old enough to be in heah,” John said. “We just can’t buyah beeah.”

“But if someone were to buy us a beer,” Ben said. “We could pay him back and drink them and--”

“Yeah, good luck with that,” Fish said before the freshman could really get going.

Just then, Fish’s phone vibrated. “Excuse me.” He took the phone out of its holster on his belt and read the text. The couple he was supposed to have dinner with couldn’t come because their dog had lost a tooth and they had to take him to the vet-dentist. Fish was on his own for the night.

“Okay, some other time,” Fish texted back and put his phone away.

“Everything all right?” Ben asked.

“Yeah,” Fish said. “The people I was going to have dinner with can’t come.”

“Don’t worry, professor, we’ll eat with you.”

“Yeah, professah, you don’t gottah eat alone,” John said.

“Actually--” Fish stopped talking when the sound of the guys scraping the chairs across the floor to pull them out and sit down in them was louder than the sound of his voice.

After the two vehemently anti-Harvard, Harvard students sat down, Fish said, “Under no circumstances am I buying you any alcohol.”

“No worries, professah.”

Fish looked at his two students. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen them wearing the Harvard Sucks t-shirts but he’d never seen them wearing them together. “So, did you two coordinate your outfits or this this some sort of cosmic coincidence?”

Ben laughed. “You know how it is. We’re at that age where if we don’t rebel against something, people might think we were up to no good.”

“So, you’re rebelling against one of the finest learning institutions in the world?”

John said, “Now, hold on, professah. Have you taken a good look at the wahld? It’s ovahrated.”

Ben said, “Yeah, professor, I mean, with all due respect, the idea that Harvard is somehow pristine or unparalleled or morally superior is a provable fraud. Do you know how many awful people have graduated from here?” He waited for an answer.

“The actual number?” Fish asked. “No, I guess I don’t.”

“Did you know the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, graduated from here?”

“That’s hardly an accurate representation of the caliber of graduates--”

“Jeffrey Skilling, the CEO of Enron. He was convicted of a bunch of felonies when that company went bankrupt. Ever heard of Richard Whitney?”

“No.”

“He was an embezzler in the Great Depression.”

John leaned in. “Don’t forget Lloyd Blankfein.”

“Who’s he?” Fish asked.

“He’s in chargeah Goldman Sachs. You saw that thing on the internet.”

“That thing on the internet?” Fish said not believing he was having this conversation. “No, I might’ve missed it.”

“Goldman Sachs rules the world.”

“You guys know you’re nuts, right?”

Ben leaned in. “Republicans think Barak Obama was the worst president in our country’s history. Democrats say it was George W. Bush. Both of them were Harvard grads. So, either way, you’re covered.”

“To be feah, it’s not just Hahvahd. If you look at all of the CEOs involved in the financial meltdown, a disproportionally high numbah are from the ivy league.”

“Uh, huh,” Fish said. “And I’m sure the two of you have a solution to this problem.”

“Well,” Ben said. “If there were eight places outside the country that had done this much damage to the country, I’m pretty sure the military would’ve bombed them by now.”

“You want to bomb the Ivy League?” Fish said.

“Me personally? No. My parents would kill me.”

“Oh, me neithah.” John said. “I got a speeding ticket when I was seventeen. My parents took the cah for a month. I start blowin’ shit up, they’ll skin me ahlive.”

“So,” Fish said. “Since neither one of you wants to get grounded, how do you propose we ivy leaguers put our Ivy League heads together to fix the messes caused by our fellow brethren and… female brethren. What would that be… sistren?”

Ben and John looked at one another, neither one knowing the answer. Ben shrugged his shoulders. “Beats me, I’m just a freshman.”

The PHD student shook his head and smiled in spite of himself as the two Biology 101 students at his table cracked up.