The Rules of Attraction (14 page)

The bus pulled out of Camden and started up Route 9. I was glad that there was no one else on the bus today going to Boston. It would be a nice, calm trip. Opening the book, I stared out the window, and got the feeling that maybe this weekend in Boston wouldn’t be too awful. Richard would be there, after all. I was even a little interested in what my mother wanted to talk to me about. Her stolen Cadillac? It was probably a company car anyway. Easy to replace, nothing to worry about. It certainly didn’t merit a visit to Massachusetts though. I took off the sunglasses since it was overcast and lit a fresh cigarette, tried to read. But it was too nice out not to stare past the window at the mid-October countryside, still signs of fall everywhere. Reds and dark greens and oranges and yellows all passed by. I read some more of the book, smoked some more cigarettes, wished that I’d brought my Walkman.

After about an hour the bus pulled into some town and made a stop at a small station where an old couple got on and sat near the front. The bus pulled out of the station and continued back on the highway for a mile or so and then stopped in front of a huge group of people, kids from the college nearby, standing in front of two green benches. I tensed up and realized as the bus slowed down and pulled close to the curb that these students were actually going to board the bus. I panicked for a moment and quickly moved to an aisle seat.

When the kids from the college got on, I took my sunglasses off and then put them on again and looked down at the book, hoping that they wouldn’t realize I was a student
from Camden. Fifty or sixty of these kids piled into the bus and it got unbearably loud. Most of them were girls dressed in pinks and blues, Esprit and Benetton sweatshirts, snapping sugarless gum, Walkmans on, holding cans of caffeine-free Diet Coke, clutching issues of
Vogue
and
Glamour,
looking like they stepped out of a Starburst commercial. The guys, eight or nine of them, were mostly good-looking and they sat in the back, near me, in the smoking section. One was carrying a big Sony cassette player, the new Talking Heads blasting from it, issues of
Rolling Stone
and
Business Week
being passed back and forth. Even after all these Pepsi rejects got on, there was still no one sitting next to me. I started feeling completely self-conscious and thought, god I must look pretentious, sitting in the back, Wayfarers on, black tweed coat ripped at the shoulder, chain-smoking, faded copy of
The Fountainhead
in my lap. I must scream “Camden!” But I was still grateful that no one sat next to me.

But just as the bus pulled away I noticed The Boy, looking exactly like Sean, looking very out of place, standing near the front of the bus, trying to make his way to the back. He had tangled longish hair and a week’s growth of beard. He was wearing a Billy Squier T-shirt (oh my god) and holding a bulging pillow sack. I couldn’t get over the resemblance and my heart stopped, then skipped a little before it resumed its normal beat. I looked around the bus and got the awful feeling that this Sean look-alike, who also had grease-stained hands, holding a wrinkled copy of
Motor Trend
(did this guy go to Hampshire?) was going to have to sit next to me. The boy passed the empty seat I was sitting next to and looked around the back of the bus. One of the college boys, wearing a Members Only jacket and leafing through a
Sports Illustrated,
Hi-Tops kicked up on the seat in front of him, talking about how he lost his Walkman in Freshman Econ class, shut up, and when he did that all the guys looked over at The Sean Boy and snorted derisively rolling their eyes. I was thinking please don’t sit next to me…. He looked so much like Sean.

He knew the college boys were making fun of him and he moved over to me.

“Is that seat taken?” he asked.

And for a minute I wanted to say yes, but of course that would have been ridiculous, so I shook my head and swallowed hard and stood up to let The Boy sit down. The seats were close together and I had to move over to the edge of mine to accommodate us. He had the same color hair on his head and arms and he also had one eyebrow and tight ripped jeans. It was hard to deal with.

The bus pulled away from the curb before everyone was seated and hurled back onto the highway. I tried to read the book but couldn’t. It started to rain, the sound of the Talking Heads coming from the gleaming cassette player, the girls passing Diet Pepsi and nachos back and forth and trying to flirt with me, the incessant yapping from the college boys in back, smoking clove cigarettes, an occasional joint, talking about how some slut named Ursula was fucked by some guy named Phil in the back of some guy’s Toyota Nissan named Mark and how Ursula lied to Phil and said it wasn’t his baby but he paid for the abortion anyway and it was all so irritating I couldn’t even concentrate on anything. And by the time we were near Boston I was so angry with my mother for asking me to come that I just kept staring over at The Sean Boy, who, in turn, stared out the window, smoothing the creases out of his ticket with his grease-stained hands, his Swatch ticking loudly.

SEAN
I get another note in my box today from Lauren Hynde. It says “I will meet you tonite—once the sun sets—E-L-O-V will no longer be spelled this way….” I can’t wait until the party, until “the sun sets” so I try to talk to Lauren at lunch. She’s standing, smoking a cigarette, by the desserts, with Judy Holleran (who I screwed last term and who I occasionally score for; she’s also really fucked-up, she’s been in psychological counseling forever) and I come up behind them slowly, and suddenly I want to touch Lauren, I’m about to touch her, gently, on the neck, but the Frog roommate, who I haven’t seen in days, excuses himself and reaches for a croissant or something and lingers. He notices me and says “Ca va.” I say “Ca va.” Lauren says “Hi” to him and she blushes and looks at Judy and Judy smiles too. He keeps looking at Lauren and then goes away. Lauren’s telling Judy how she lost her I.D.

“What’s going on?” I ask Judy, picking up a plate of melon.

“Hi, Sean. Nothing,” she says.

Lauren’s looking over the cookies, playing hard to get. It’s so obvious I’m embarrassed.

“Going to the party tonight?” I ask. “Once the sun sets?”

“Totally psyched,” Judy says, sarcastic as hell.

Lauren laughs, like she agrees. I bet, I’m thinking.

The geek from L.A. grabs an orange from the fruit tray and Lauren looks down, at what? His legs? They’re really tan and I’ve never seen him with his sunglasses off, big deal. He lifts his eyebrows in recognition. I do the same. I look back at Lauren and I’m struck by how great-looking she is. And standing here, even if it’s only for something like a millisecond, I overload on how great-looking this girl is. I’m amazed at how her legs affect me, the breasts, braless, beneath a “We Are the World” T-shirt, thighs. She looks over at me in what seems like slow motion. I can’t meet her blue-eyed gaze back. She’s
too
gorgeous. Her perfect, full lips locked in on this sexy uncaring smile. She’s constructed perfectly. She smiles when she notices me staring and I smile back. I’m thinking, I want to
know
this girl.

“I think it’s supposed to be a toga party too,” I say.

“Toga? Jesus,” she says. “What does this place think it is? Williams?”

“Where’s the party?” Judy asks.

“Wooley,” I tell her. She can’t even fucking look at me.

“I thought we already had one,” she says, and inspects a cookie. Her fingers are long and delicate. The nails have clear polish on them. Her hand, small and clean, scratches at her perfect, small nose, while the other hand runs through her blond, short hair and then back over her neck. I try to smell her.

“We did,” I say.

“A
toga
party,” she says. “You’ve got to be kidding. Who’s on Rec Committee anyway?”

“I am,” I say, looking directly at her.

Judy pockets an oatmeal cookie and takes a drag off her, Lauren’s, cigarette.

“Well, Getch and Tony are gonna steal some sheets. There’s a keg. I don’t know,” I say, laughing a little. “It’s not really a
toga
party,”

“Well, it sounds really happening,” she says.

She leaves abruptly, taking a cookie, and asks Judy, “I’m going into town with Beanhead, wanna come?”

Judy says, “Plath paper. Can’t.”

Lauren leaves without saying anything to me. Obviously embarrassed, flustered, by my presence.

Tonight, I think. I go back to the table.

“The weight room opened today,” Tony says.

“Rock’n’roll,” I say.

“You’re an idiot,” he says.

Once the sun sets, I’m thinking.

PAUL
I got off the bus with the other college students and the blind man and the fat woman with the blond kid and got lost amid the flotsam in the large terminal in Boston. Then I was outside and it was rush hour and overcast and I looked around for a cab. There was a sudden tap on my shoulder and when I turned around I was confronted by The Boy Who Looks Like Sean.

“Yeah?” I lowered my sunglasses. I was experiencing an adrenaline rush.

“Man, I was wondering if I could borrow five bucks,” he asked.

I got dizzy and wanted to say no but he looked so much like Sean that I fumbled for my wallet, couldn’t find a five and ended up giving him a ten.

“Thanks man,” he says, slinging the pillow case over his shoulder, nodding to himself, walking away.

I nodded too, an involuntary reaction, and started to get a headache. “I am going to kill her,” I whispered to myself as I finally wave down a cab.

“Where to?” the driver asked.

“Ritz-Carlton. It’s on Arlington,” I told him, sitting back in the seat, exhausted.

The driver turned his neck and looked at me, saying nothing.

“The Ritz-Carlton,” I tell him again, getting uneasy.

He still stares.

“On … Arlington…”

“I hear you,” the cab driver, an old guy, muttered, shaking his head, turning around.

Then what the fuck are you staring at? I wanted to scream.

I rubbed my eyes. My hands smelled awful and I opened a package of Chuckles I bought at the bus station in Camden. I ate one. The cab moved slowly through the traffic. It started raining. The cab driver kept looking at me in the rearview mirror, shaking his head, mumbling things I couldn’t hear. I stopped chewing the Chuckle. The cab had barely made it down one block, then turned and pulled
over to the curb. I panicked and thought, Oh Jesus, what now? Was he going to kick me out for eating a goddamn Chuckle? I put the Chuckles away.

“Why have we stopped?” I asked.

“Because we’re here,” the driver sighed.

“We’re here?” I looked out the window. “Oh.”

“Yeah, that’ll be one forty,” he grumbled. He was right.

“I guess I forgot it was … so, um, close,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” the driver says. “Whatever.”

“I hurt my foot. Sorry,” I pushed two singles at him and tripped in the rain getting out of the cab and I just know Sean’s going to fuck someone at the party tonight and I’m in the lobby now, soaked, and this just better be good.

He doesn’t know it but I had seen Him over the summer. Last summer. I spent my summer vacation on Long Island,
in
the Hamptons with my poor drunken father. Southampton, Easthampton, Hampton Bays—wandering the island with other Gucci-clad nomads. I stayed with my brother one night and visited a recently widowed aunt on Shelter Island and I stayed in tons of motels, motels that were pink and gray and green and that glowed in the Hamptons light. I stayed in these havens of shelter since I could not bear anymore to look at my father’s new girlfriends. But that is another story.

I saw Him first at Coast Grill on the South Shore and then at this oh-so-trendy Bar-B-Que place whose delightful name eludes me at the moment. He was eating undercooked chicken and trying not to sneeze. He was with a female (a wench, definitely) who looked anorexic. Fag bartenders stood around them, looking bored, and I would order Slow Comfortable Screws to bother and tease them. “That’s made with rum?” they’d lisp, and I’d lisp back Yes because you can’t lisp No. Mouth-breathing waitresses came on to You, You, who were bronzed like a God, a
GQ
man, Your hair slicked back. I heard Your name called—a phone call. Bateman. They’d mispronounce it—Dateman. I was sitting, shrouded in darkness at the long sleek bar and I had just found out oh-so-discreetly that I had failed three out of four classes last term. Unfortunately I had forgotten to hand in, to even complete, the prerequisite “Some Papers,” before I left for Arizona and hit the Hamptons. And there You sat. The last time I had seen You was at a Midnight Breakfast; You hurled a balled-up pancake at a table of Drama majors. Now You lit a cigarette. You did not bother to light the wench’s. I followed You to the phone booth.

“Hey dude, like, didn’t you speak to the dean and like, uh, tell them how unwrapped I am?
”

I assumed it was Your psychiatrist.

You yawned and said, “I
am
concerned.
”

There was an indefinite pause and then You said, “Just refill the Librium.
”

Another pause. You looked around, didn’t recognize me from school. Me, sunburned and stiff and trying to drink but oh-so-sober. “I’m all set,” You said.

You hung up. I watched as You nonchalantly threw bills on the table and walked out of the restaurant before the wench. The door closed on her, but she followed you anyway. You both sped away in a bright red Alfa Romeo and I got drunk and waited for Tonight.

Tonight. I’ve spent all afternoon in a bath full of scented water, preparing, cleansing, soaping, shaving, oiling myself for You. I have not eaten in two days. I wait. I am good at
that. I listen to old soon-to-be-forgotten songs and wait for Tonight and for You. Wait for that final moment. A moment so filled with such expectance and longing that I almost do not want to witness its occurrence. But I’m ready. One fine day you’ll want me for your girl, my radio cries. That’s right. Tonight.