Fourth Comings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [65]
“I’d totally pay to have my brain scanned at iLoveULab,” Bethany was saying. “And Grant’s, too! That Dr. Kate is a genius!”
“What?” I interrupted. “The iLoveULab doctor was on TV?”
“Yes! Dr. Kate!”
Lest this sound too coincidental, it should be noted that Bethany had been chatting for well over an hour already, narrating the moment-by-moment details of an afternoon spent flitting around the brownstone to keep a watchful eye on the housekeeper.
“Dr. Kate?” I asked.
“Dr. Kate! The one who devised the Signs…”
So it’s a fact that Bethany had discussed Dr. Kate’s brilliance in my presence many times before, but my brain had never been trained to pick up on the name Dr. Kate until I got her e-mail.
“Oh Christ, again with the Signs,” I rebuffed. “I don’t want to hear about the Signs….”
But my sister had already moved on. “She doesn’t believe in Dr. Kate,” she said to the MILF on the phone, shaking her head with pity. Then to me: “Dr. Kate just wrote a new book all about brain chemicals and love.”
“Dr. Katherine Seamon?” I asked, still refusing to believe that we could possibly be talking about the same person.
“Yes, that’s her,” Bethany replied. “Dr. Kate is a real scientist, you know. She’s just opened up these labs where couples can get their brains scanned for compatibility, or singles can get scanned to be matched up with their ideal partners….”
“I think she wants to hire me for one of those labs.” Then I explained the e-mail.
Needless to say, Bethany (and the MILF on the line) freaked out. “Dr. Kate is OTB, Jess! OTB!”
“Why would she e-mail me? You think she’d have someone else do the hiring for her.”
“Oh! She’s famous for her micromanagerial skills,” Bethany said, then paused to hear what the phone MILF was saying. “Um-hm. Right! She never delegates what she can do herself.”
Later, I’d find out that Dr. Kate was quite the go-getter. Like me, she was a psychology major at Columbia. Unlike me, she got a doctorate in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. And then also unlike me, she went on to Wharton business school to learn how she could make tons of money off all her neuroscientific knowledge. And somehow, when not stockpiling these impressive credentials, she managed to find time to wed, divorce, and remarry, all before the age of thirty. Of all these experiences, the termination of her starter marriage was the most crucial to the development of iLoveULab.
Three summers ago, I listened to nearly five hundred New Yorkers who were lured by a simple sandwich board urging them to TELL US A STORY. Day in and day out I listened. To kinetic, coked-up i-bankers sniffing and riffing on their multiorgasmic sexual conquests. To wrinkly, humpbacked old biddies waxing rhapsodic about VJ Day. To label-obsessed, overdressed foreign tourists complaining about the fat and stupid Americans who had the audacity to crash their vacations. To pouty-lipped, liquid-limbed thirteen-year-olds. To aromatic cabbies. To hipsters who looked homeless, and vice versa. To the hundreds of unique but ordinary everyday citizens who believed their stories were stories that needed to be told. And more important, needed to be heard.
I had taken the job because it earned me three credits toward my major, offered free room and board, and provided the scintillating promise of sweating with and for my hot, married Spanish grad student partner for eight hours at a stretch. (A lust that fizzled as soon as I discovered that the hot, married Spanish grad student partner had no problemo engaging in adulterous behavior with yours truly.) I don’t know what historians hope to learn from these tapes about urban life shortly after the turn of the new century, but working for the CU Storytellers Project confirmed my suspicions that narcissism comes in all shapes, sizes, colors, sexual orientations, and footwear. But never, never did I believe that this experience would lead to a job as a professional matchmaker with a television