The DMAT
At least two of them. Not the same two who had brought
him here, though. The room: cold, dank, windowless. Reeking.
Mildew, disinfectant. Something acrid, like after an
electrical fire. The wet rumble of plumbing, probably a
toilet flushing upstairs.
“You’re lying.” The soft-spoken one
again, on the right. The one who seemed to be in charge.
Close, maybe just a couple of feet. Tobacco breath. Bad
cologne. “We know you’re lying,” the voice went on quietly.
“Tell us again, but tell us the truth this time. All of it.
Tell us how this . . . what, this little game of
yours works. Did somebody put you up to this? Is somebody
paying you? Nobody does this for fun.”
The detainee fidgeted, unable to settle
himself on whatever it was they had sat him on, maybe an
overturned wastebasket, with a sharp metal lip that bit into
his pelvis. He tried to speak, but the words emerged in a
strangled squeak. “You have no right —”
From the left a piggish snort, an
inhaled guffaw. The other one. The one the boss called
Lenny. Some kind of flunky. Back in a far corner, it sounded
like. All hard surfaces in here.
The detainee cleared his throat, tried
to swallow. “No right to keep me here,” he said, almost
whispering. Even to himself he sounded feverish. “None. I
haven’t done anything —”
From the far corner a dismissive
raspberry.
“ — illegal,” the detainee continued,
clamping his eyes shut against the halogen glare that
enclosed him. “I know the laws about this. It’s just a test,
an — assessment instrument. I paid the fee, I followed
every instruction, I used a sharp, number-two pencil, I —”
“Stop wasting our time.” The boss
again. “We know about the pencil.”
The detainee felt droplets of spittle
hit his face.
“But we’re not here to talk about
pencils. Are we here to talk about pencils,
Lenny?”
From the corner a stifled giggle.
“No,” continued the boss, a little less
softly, “we’re not here to talk about pencils. Or the
law. We’re not cops. We’re not lawyers.
We’re . . . educational aptitude testing
professionals. And We. Are. On. To. You. Savvy?”
Another quick salvo of suppressed
titters from the corner, then silence, then plumbing. The
toilet. Upstairs.
His shoes — the detainee wanted his
shoes back. The floor was cold. It felt like linoleum
through his thin socks. His scalp was hot, though, just
inches from the lamp. How he yearned for his water bottle!
But it was upstairs, probably still on the table, right
there by his pencil and his extra pencil and his sharpener,
right there by his answer sheet stippled with perfectly
penciled answer bubbles — each one perfectly opaque, perfectly
contained. A dull shine, like lead. No wonder they call the
graphite “lead.”
They. The other testees. They were
probably on the Logic Section by now — at least the best of
them were. He winced. Home free, he always told himself when
he got to the Logic Section. Always aced the Logic Section.
“Oh, we’re onto you, all right.”
The bright flare of a match, a
momentary glimpse of a thin, deeply creased face sucking the
flame into a cigarette. Then gone. Sulfur.
“We first got suspicious,” the voice
went on, “when you nailed the GRE in Scranton. ’Thomas Henry
Jones.’ That was cute. It was. Subtle. We have to give you
that. But Scranton? See, already you were getting
careless. And that MCAT in Poughkeepsie. When you were
’Tristram Lawrence Shandy’ — we spotted that one right
away. And of course the SAT in Piscataway — did you really
think, ’Roderick Tobias Random,’ that no one would notice a
bald guy with five-o’clock shadow trying to pass himself off
as a teenager?”
“Sixteen hundred,” murmured the
detainee, feeling dizzy, a little sick. “Perfect. And not
bald. Balding.”
“What’s that?” responded the low voice.
“Did you say something, Mr. Random? Did you think the
computers wouldn’t pick up on a perfect score being sent to
Raritan Valley Community College? Geez, the SAT. That is so
. . . high school. Kid stuff. What are you, a
child who got left behind? You should be ashamed of
yourself, is what. ’Perfect,’ geez. We almost got you right
there in the room that time — you have no idea how close we
were. Oh yeah, by then we knew you, oh yeah. We had your
m.o. We see these all the time now.”
The detainee exhaled with a sharp puff,
scratched his nose, squirmed to center his fleshless
buttocks in the hard, narrow pan of the wastebasket.
“And now here you are, ’Barry William
Lyndon.’ At last. At long, long last. Here with us. Your new
best friends. Let’s . . . make peace.”
From the corner a sharp yip of laughter, immediately squelched. Nearby, a long insuck of breath, a pause, and then a stream of cigarette smoke jetted into the detainee’s face. He twisted away, coughing.
The voice went on: “Do you know what a sting is,
Mister Lyndon? Is that on your vocab list? Well, this is a
sting, and, as we like to say, you done got stung. Did you
even pause to consider that maybe you’d never actually heard
of the DMAT before? Hmm? Did you like our little DMAT
brochure, all that blahblahblah about all the leading
b-schools requiring the Decision Management Aptitude Test?
And did you notice the picture of the guy at the blackboard,
pointing at an equation? With a stick? Well that, my friend
. . . was me.”
From the left an unrestrained squeal.
Distinctly porcine.
“Oh, shut up, Lenny,” said the
boss, barking at the corner. And then, softly again, “Did
you really think we’d let you get to the Logic Section?”
© Michael Fleming
New York City
September, 2003
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