Hacking Harvard Page 15

  At least, not until I'd fixed it.

  182

  183

  184

  November 17 THE GAME

  Objective: Observation of drunken admissions officer and sycophantic legacies

  November-December THE APPLICATION

  Extracurricular, Personal, and Volunteer Activities

  Educational Data

  Supplementary Material

  Personal Statement

  Objective: Construction of irresistible on-paper persona

  December 31 APPLICATION DEADLINE/NEW YEAR'S EVE

  Objective: Completion, Submission, Celebration, Inebriation

  185

  November 17-THE GAME

  Objective: Observation of drunken Admissions officer and sycophantic legacies

  During the next few days the thoughts of most of us will center on little besides football. . . . Harvard men, both graduates and undergraduates, feel an all-absorbing interest in their team which finds an expression at this season on every occasion that any number of us come together. . . . Such occasions, when entirely spontaneous, are not merely demonstrations over one team: they express in a wider sense the devotion of us all to the University.

  -- editorial attributed to franklin Delano Roosevelt '04,

  "The Devotion of Us All," The Harvarc^Crimson,

  November 18,1903

  ren thousand men of Harvard, want victory today!" Maxwell Sr. slung a meaty arm around his son's shoulders, his morning breath already sour with whiskey. A blond, beefy man on Max's other side joined the human chain.

  "Sing along, Junior!" the guy on the left whispered hoarsely. "All together now."

  186

  They were swaying back and forth as they boomed out the fight song, matching idiot grins beaming from their faces like Girl Scouts in the throes of "kumbaya."

  An endless flood of "buddies" was streaming by the Kim tailgate, dropping in for a drink ("the Crimson Tide"--a whiskey sour with red food dye), homemade rice balls, pork ribs, fried dumplings, French toast sticks, and a mano a mano chat with the boy of the hour.

  "He's a spitting image!" Maxwell Sr.'s buddy from The Crimson said once the men ran out of lyrics. He grasped Max's hand and scattered flecks of saliva across his nose. "The spitting image of your dad. You're gonna love it here!"

  "Got that application in yet?" asked Maxwell Sr.'s buddy from the Owl finals club--one of Harvard's over-privileged, over-inebriated, over-rated versions of a frat. He clapped Max on the back and took another swig of whiskey straight from the bottle. "Not that you need it, from your family. By now they should just let you Kims in automatically!"

  "Where ya been, Junior?" Maxwell Sr.'s buddy from the golf team complained, tugging his knit Harvard cap down on his forehead, careful not to smudge the crimson H's painted on each cheek. "Haven't seen you here in years. You been on the Yale side?"

  The men--a podiatrist, a corporate attorney, and a well-known journalist whose monthly column prophesized the imminent cultural collapse of the Western world--burst into a barrage of cursing and booing, shaking their fists in the general direction of the Yale tailgate zone, two fields and a parking lot away.

  "We'll run them off the field, gentlemen!" one boomed.

  "Send them crawling back to New Haven--"

  187

  In tears!

  "Like the little babies they are!" Max's father concluded triumphantly.

  "Yeah, you'll kick their asses," Max muttered, eyeing their spindly legs and beer bellies.

  "What's that?" Maxwell Sr. wanted to know.

  "We'll kick their asses!" Max shouted with feigned enthusiasm. "Ten thousand men of Harvard, right?"

  It did the trick.

  "Ten thousand men of Harvard, want victory today ..."

  Max faded back from the group as they got swept up in another chorus of the fight song. But his mother caught him before he could escape.

  "Your father really appreciates you coming today," she said, putting a hand on his shoulder.

  Max forced a smile. "Yeah. Well, I figured if it would make him happy . . ." He hadn't attended a Harvard-Yale game since he was nine: old enough to be humiliated by the family tradition and still young enough to throw a temper tantrum to get out of it.

  "Does this mean you've changed your mind about next year?"

  "It's done, Mom." Max grabbed a few French toast sticks, wrapped them in a napkin, and stuffed them in his coat pocket. "I know you guys don't like it, but I'm not changing my mind."

  "We'll talk about it later," she said, patting his shoulder and then turning back to the pot of coffee she'd been stirring. It was untouched. The pitcher of Crimson Tide, on the other hand, was nearly empty. "Today is your father's day. So thank you for giving him the gift of your presence."

  188

  Parents. How was it they always knew exactly the wrong thing to say?

  Max tried to fan the flames of his anger and disgust. Look at him. His father, a grown man, a research chemist, dressed like an overgrown frat boy with war paint smeared across his face. He was squeezed into a fake football jersey ten years too old and two sizes too small, stomping his feet and waving his arms like he'd been infected with the dancing plague. And no one was even giving him a second glance.

  Welcome to the Game, the annual opportunity for Harvard undergraduates to experience what everyday life might have been like at a beer-drenched, football-crazed, Big 10 school, complete with bloody burgers and keg stands. And, more important, the annual opportunity for wealthy alumni to regenerate their school spirit-- and lubricate their wallets--by wallowing in the muddy fields of their youth. The order of priority was less than subtle: The undergraduates roamed like livestock in a penned-in, mud-splattered field, guzzling thermoses of Gatorade-vodka, eating, dancing, hooking up, freezing, and, as the day wore on, pissing behind parked cars and throwing up in the porta-potties.

  The alumni tailgates were more refined, at least at first. Recent alumni hovered by the undergraduate madness, huddling under banners--'03!, '04-'05'., 07!--and taking private joy in being identified by a number once again. They pretended to remember their old friends and like their old enemies; they wandered through the undergraduate hordes, feigning surprise when someone noticed they were no longer twenty-one. By eleven a.m., once the cheap beer had done its work, the surprise was real.

  189

  Further from the center of things lounged the yuppies, alumni in their thirties who'd driven up from Westchester and Park Slope and Greenwich, bringing the shiny new car and shiny new spouse to show off to old friends, along with the standard 2.5 kids, always decked out in Harvard regalia, H bibs and crimson booties, waving tiny Harvard banners and zipped into fuzzy hoodies that read CLASS OF 2028! Max had a box of such crap in the back of his bedroom closet.

  The final set of alumni, the middle-aged, balding, bearded men and Burberry-clad women, hung back on the fringes, where their elegant tailgates would be safe from the masses. There were batterypowered espresso machines, elaborate cocktails in thin-stemmed glasses, fading memories pulled out and polished to a shine, cashmere scarves, embarrassed offspring, camel-hair coats, and Harvard officials wandering through and glad-handing all the alums they could find, as if expecting that next multimillion-dollar donation to be handed off like a tip to the valet. It would begin as sedate as a museum fund-raiser, but by halftime--although watching the game was only a minot component of the Game experience--the only thing distinguishing them from the undergraduates was a better quality of beer.

  It was Maxwell Sr.'s favorite day of the year. And as Max watched his father revel, he reminded himself that he felt nothing but disdain for this kind of thing; for Maxwell Sr., Harvard was a cult, and Max wouldn't be a true man--a true son--until he'd drunk the Kool-Aid.

  Max's father caught his eye, waved, and his smile. ... It looked like pride and unadulterated joy, though more likely, Max reminded himself, it was liquor. That didn't stop him from grinning back, flush

  190
/>
  with an instinctual pleasure that he'd made his father proud with such a small expenditure of effort. Then he remembered why he was really there, and all he felt was guilt.

  Max joined Schwarz and Eric in the empty lobby of the Harvard Athletics front office, which was close enough to be in range but was locked up for the day. As usual, locks weren't a problem.

  "Congratulate me, boys," Max said, sweeping into the lobby. "I--" He froze, staring down at Schwarz. "What the hell are you wearing?"

  Schwarz was kneeling by the wall, a small receiver by his feet.

  Feet that were clad in garish gold and silver sneakers, peering out from beneath a pair of ragged, oversize jeans whose legs were so wide, each would have fit Schwarz's whole head, Jewfro and all. Instead of his usual collared polo shirt, his scrawny arms jutted out from a gray tee emblazoned with a giant green pot leaf.

  "Like it?" Schwarz asked, grinning.

  Max gaped. "Are you on drugs?"

  "Clay took me shopping. He is helping me be my own man," Schwarz said proudly.

  Max turned to Eric, who held up his hands in protest. "Don't look at me. He's a big boy, he can pick out his own clothes."

  "You, of all people, are defending Clay Porter?"

  "Clay did not make me do anything!" Schwarz protested. "I am my own man."

  "Want to explain to me how looking like Weird Al doing a bad Jay-Z impression counts as being your own man?" Max asked.

  "Clay likes it," Schwarz said.

  191

  "Great idea, do whatever Clay tells you," Max said. "Excellent start on the whole standing-up-for-yourself thing."

  "Clay says I have to stop doing everything you say," Schwarz said.

  "Schwarz?" Max said, his tone dangerously sweet.

  "Yes?"

  "Can you do just one more thing I say?"

  "What?"

  "When you go home today, I want you to take off that dumbass T-shirt, roll it up into a tight little ball, and stick it up Clay's--"

  "Can we get back to business?" Eric cut in. "Did you get it done?"

  "Did I get it done? Who do you think you're talking to?" Max knelt down and flicked on the receiver at Schwarz's blinged-out feet. "Listen for yourself."

  A scratchy voice burst through the small speaker, static-y but audible. "So nice to meet you, Mr. Atherton. And this is my son, of course. Jeremy. You've already heard so much about him."

  "Mission accomplished," Max said, taking a deep bow. That was Mr. Atherton, as in Samuel Atherton III, veteran admissions officer and, more important for the day, Harvard College class of '82. Atherton was renowned for his Harvard-Yale game antics; bugging him would not only give them the final, unguarded insight into their prime admissions officer's character, but would offer them another shot to observe the competition. Not that there was much to be gleaned from legacy kids, who were in a completely different admissions category, separate from the hoi polloi. But listening to Atherton react to his petitioners, especially after they'd left and he was alone with his cronies and his gin, could give them just the leg up they needed.

  192

  Besides, it was easy and--for all but Max--painless. Maxwell Sr. had been only too happy to march Max over to the Atherton tent for a hearty introduction. After that, all it took was a stiff handshake, a pat on the back, a six-centimeter bug weighing less than three ounces slipped smoothly into a coat pocket, and they were in business.

  "So nice to meet you, sir." A new voice blared out of the speaker, and this one was familiar. "I brought you something I thought you'd like--single-malt Glenmorangie."

  Eric gaped at the receiver. "Is that Salazar?"

  "My favorite!" Atherton's voice was already slurred.

  "Of course it's his favorite," Max muttered. "We don't supply inaccurate intel."

  "What a coincidence!" Bernard smarmed. "You have incredible taste, sir."

  There was a shuffling sound, and then a distinct spattering of liquid. Two glasses clinked. "To Harvard!" Atherton shouted.

  "To Harvard! The school of kings."

  "Let's have another, young man," Atherton said. "'S great to meet someone with the proper respect for the institution."

  "Oh, I couldn't agree more. So many young people today . . ." Bernard paused to clear his throat. "I don't want to speak ill of my peers, sir, but they just don't embrace proper values, wouldn't you say?

  "What did you say your name was?"

  "Bernard, sir. Bernard Salazar. Here, take my card."

  "This excrement is sickening," Schwarz complained. "Do we really have to listen to this?"

  193

  "Every disgusting minute of it," Eric said. "And you can thank Max."

  "It's not my fault!" Max said. "I had to tell him we were coming today--he demanded to see where his cash is going. What was I supposed to do?"

  "As a wise man once said, tell him to take his cash, roll it up into a tight little ball, and stick it up his--"

  Max twisted the receiver volume up as far as it would go, so that each of Bernard's carefully prepared compliments came through loud and clear. "Look, he's getting the guy drunker, faster, which can only help things along," Max argued. "More to the point: The more time he spends with Atherton, the less he spends with us."

  "This spy shit sucks shit," Bernard complained, leaning back against the wall. He'd ditched his usual style, or lack thereof, for a pair of tapered corduroys, a Harvard polo shirt, and a tweed jacket. "I'm bored."

  The various forms of toadyism and sycophancy were finite, even for a seasoned pro like Bernard, so after a half hour or so of sucking up to the high and mighty, he'd abandoned the cause and, like a pestilent rat with a homing device, sought out his new friends to offer his assistance with their latest subterfuge. Though for Bernard, who was unaccustomed to working on anything but his tan, "assistance" translated loosely to "unwelcome suggestions, nosy questions, and an unending stream of complaints."

  "Feel free to leave at any time," Eric said.

  "Not that you're not needed here," Max added quickly.

  "Right. Of course." Eric rubbed his eyes and began pacing back

  194

  and forth across the empty lobby. They'd been in there for an hour listening to Atherton drinking, boasting, bashing Yale, and drinking some more. So far they'd learned that his first car was a Pontiac, his first wife a "Xanax zombie," and his first sexual experience at age nineteen, with a Wellesley field hockey halfback. It was all potentially useful information, but listening to a bunch of middle-aged assholes reliving rheir glory days made for a long morning.

  And Bernard's presence made it even longer.

  "Uh, guys?" Schwarz was still huddled by the receiver; it was his turn to take notes. "I think you will want to hear this."

  "Sorry I'm late, hon, I couldn't get away." It was Atherton's voice. But the soft, breathy woman that spoke next was--according to Schwarz, expert on all things Atherton--definitely not his wife.

  "I've been waiting for an hour," she--whoever she was-- complained. "I was about to leave."

  "Uh-oh, am I in trouble?" Atherton's voice took on a childish tone. "Have I been bad?"

  "You know it." There was a long silence punctuated by some disgusting squishing noises.

  "And that's my punishment?" Atherton asked. "I should be late more often."

  "Shut up and--" This time, the silence was punctuated by some more squishy smacking, a couple gasps, and a long moan.

  Eric leaned in. Bernard and Max smirked. Schwarz looked like he was about to throw up.

  "What are they doing?" he squeaked.

  Max clapped him on the back. "You see, Schwarz, when a man and a woman love each other very much--"

  195

  "Ohhh," the woman moaned. "I've been waiting all week for this."

  "I tried to get away," Atherton gasped, his words tumbling out all in one breath. "These high school kids are like vultures, they won't let go."

  "Poor baby," she murmured, and then there was silence ag
ain.

  "Did you have any trouble convincing Paul not to come?"

  "Nada. He's stuck at home with the kids. Ashley has the flu-- vomit everywhere."

  "But he let you get away?"

  She put on an artificially sweet wifely voice. "Oh, I'm so sorry, honey, but as a dean, I really have to be there to support my charges. It was almost too easy. I've been feeling guilty all morning, but now here you are ..."

  "And here you are. . . ." The conversation ended, and once again, the porn noises kicked in.

  Max, Eric, Schwarz, and Bernard stared at each other, frozen.

  "A dean?" Max finally whispered, like it was too good to spoil by saying out loud.

  Bernard had no such compunctions. "A fucking dean!" he shouted, jumping to his feet. "He's fucking a dean. Sweet." He flicked the receiver off. "So we're all done, right? We're gold."

  Eric switched it back on, with a don't touch my stuff glare. " Meaning what?"

  "Aren't you supposed to be some kind of genius?" Bernard asked. "He's cheating on his wife. With a dean. And we've got it on tape. the guy will do anything we want now. We're in. Which means I am in.

  "You want to blackmail him?" Eric asked incredulously.

  196

  Schwarz was nibbling at a thumbnail; Max's face was unreadable.

  " Hello? Am I missing something?" Bernard threw up his hands in disgust. "You losers bugged the guy, and now he's handing you the bullets. Shoot the damn gun."

  Max, still on the floor, tilted his head up toward Eric. "He's not completely wrong. . . . One could make the argument that it's too good not to use, don't you think?"

  "No, I don't think! First rule of hacking: Be ethical. Remember?"

  "The first rule of hacking is to get they^ done," Max said.

  "Not by any means possible," Eric countered.

  "If you guys are gonna pussy out on me, I'll handle this myself." Bernard made a lunge for the receiver, but Max snatched it away. "Give us a minute, Bernard"-- and from the expression on his face, it was clear that he would have liked to substitute another term-- "my colleague and I here need to confer."