The Rules of Attraction (19 page)

… he had to kiss her quickly on the lips and … he got hard almost immediately after she started kissing back, still crying, her face slick, and he started to pull her toga
off but there was an interruption that he was oddly grateful for. Tim came in without knocking and asked if he had a razor blade and he gave him one and Tim didn’t apologize for interrupting since he was so coked-out and he made sure the door was locked after he left. But he was still strangely not excited. He turned back to her, and turned off the amp, then got on the bed.

She had already started taking her toga off and except for her panties she had nothing on beneath it. She had the body of a much younger girl. Her breasts were small but full, yet the nipples weren’t hard, not even after he touched them, then kissed and licked them. He helped her remove the panties, saw how small her cunt was too, the pubic hair light and sparse yet when he squeezed it, hard then soft, slid a finger in, he didn’t feel anything. She wasn’t getting wet even though she was making soft little moans. He was semi-stiff, but still not excited. Something was missing…. There was a problem somewhere, a mistake. He didn’t know what. Confused, he started to fuck her, and before he came, it hit him: he can’t remember the last time he had sex sober….

PAUL
I sit alone in my room, in a chair, in front of the TV, drinking beer I ordered up from room service, watching Friday night videos. Video of Huey Lewis and the
News comes on. Huey Lewis walks into a party looking confused. Huey Lewis reminds me of Sean. Huey Lewis also reminds me of my ninth-grade gym teacher. Sean doesn’t remind me of my ninth-grade gym teacher. Richard opens the door, still in the tuxedo he was wearing at dinner and he sits down on one of the beds and all he says is, “Lost my sunglasses.”

I keep watching Huey Lewis, who can’t find his way out of the party. He’s holding hands with some blond bubblehead and they can’t find their way out. They keep opening doors and none of them contain an exit. One contains a train hurtling at them, another has a vampire hidden behind it, but none offer a way out. How symbolic.

“Do you have any coke?” Richard asks:

A surge of irritation makes me grip the Heineken bottle tighter. I don’t say anything.

“There’s a lot of coke at Sarah Lawrence,” he says.

The video ends and another one comes on, but it’s not a video, it’s a commercial for soap and I look over at him.

“What’s going on?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “What’s going on?”

“With me?” he asks.

“I guess,” I say. “Who else, idiot?”

“I don’t know,” Richard says. “I went out.”

“You went out,” I repeat.

“To a bar,” he sighs.

“Get lucky?” I ask.

“Would I be here with you if I had?” he says.

His crude attempt at the cutdown, if it was a cutdown, irritates me more than if he had come up with a real … what? scorcher?

“Are you drunk?” I ask, vaguely hoping that he is.

“I wish,” he moans.

“Do you?” I ask.

“Yes. I do,” he moans again, laying back on the bed.

“Quite a little scene you made at dinner,” I mention.

We watch another video or maybe it’s another commercial, I can’t tell, and then he says, “Fuck off. I don’t
care.” After a moment’s thoughtful silence, he then asks, “Are they both asleep?” looking over at the wall that separates the rooms from each other.

“Yes.” I nod.

“I went to a movie,” he admits.

“I don’t care,” I say.

“It sucked,” he says.

He gets up and walks over to the cassette player and puts a tape in; hard punk music blasts out of the box and I jump up, completely startled and he makes a face and turns the volume down, then he starts to giggle mischievously and sits in the chair next to mine.

“What are you watching?” he asks. He’s holding the bottle of J.D. which somehow has magically reappeared and offers it to me as he unscrews the top. I shake my head and push it away. “Videos,” I say.

He looks at me, then gets up and stares out the window; he’s got that restless pre-fucking state about him; expectant nervous energy. “I came back because it started to rain.” I can hear him lighting a cigarette, start to smell the smoke. I close my eyes and lean against the chair, and remember a rainy afternoon sitting in Commons with Sean, both of us hungover, sharing a plate of French fries we got at the snack bar since we missed lunch. We were always missing lunch. It was always raining.

“Do you remember those weekends at Saugatuck and Mackinac Island?” he asks.

“No, I don’t. I only remember hellish weekends at Lake Winnebago. In fact I’ve never been to Mackinaw Island,” I say calmly.

“Mackinac,” he says.

“Naw,” I say.

“You’re being difficult, Paul,” he says sweetly.

“Shoot me.”

“Well, anyway, do you remember the Thomases would always come too?” he asks. “Remember Brad Thomas? Good-looking but a mega geek?”

“Mega geek?” I ask. “Brad? Brad from Latin?”

“No, Brad from Fenwick,” he says.

“I don’t remember Brad Thomas,” I say, even though I went to Fenwick with Brad and Richard. I had a crush on Brad in fact. Or was that Bill?

“Remember that Fourth of July when my father got you and Kirk and me so drunk on the boat and my mother had a fit? We were listening to the Top 100 countdown on the radio and someone fell off, right?” he says. “Remember that?”

“Fourth of July? On a boat?” I ask. I suddenly wonder where my father is tonight, and I’m mildly surprised that it doesn’t depress me because I sort of do remember my father’s boat, and I remember wanting badly to see Brad naked, but I can’t remember if anyone fell off a boat, and I’m too tired to even make a move toward Richard so I slump back in the chair and tell him, “I do remember. Get on with it. What’s the point?”

“I miss those days,” Richard says simply.

“You’re a jerk,” I say.

“What happened?” he asks, turning away from the window.

Well, let’s see, your father left your mother for another woman and Mr. Thomas if I remember correctly died of a heart attack playing polo and you became a drug addict and went to college and I became one too for a little while and went to Camden where I wasn’t a drug addict anymore in comparison and I mean what do you want to hear, Richard? Since I have to say something I just say, “You’re a jerk,” again, instead.

“I guess we grew up,” he says sadly.

“Grew up,” I say. “Profound.”

He sits back next to me in the other chair. “I hate college.”

“Isn’t it a little too late to complain?” I ask.

He ignores me. “I hate it.”

“Well, the first couple of years are bad,” I say.

“How about the rest?” He looks over at me, seriously awaiting my answer.

“You get used to it,” I say, after a while.

We stare at the TV. More commercials that look like videos. More videos.

“I want to fuck Billy Idol,” he says absently.

“Yeah?” I yawn.

“I want to fuck you too,” he says in the same absent voice.

“Guess I’m in good company.” His comments make me want to take a swig from the bottle of Jack Daniel’s. I do. It tastes good. I hand him back the bottle.

“Stop flirting,” he says, laughing. “You’re a bad flirt.”

“No, I’m not,” I say, offended that he thinks I’m coming on to him.

He grabs my wrist playfully and says “You always were.”

“Richard, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, pulling my wrist away from his hold, looking at him quizzically, then turning back to the TV.

Another video changes into a commercial and then a loud clap of thunder quiets us.

“It’s really raining hard,” he says.

“Yes, it’s raining hard,” I say.

“Are you seeing anyone there?” he asks. “I mean, at school.”

“Some Sophomore from the South who rides a motorcycle. I can’t explain it,” I say and then realize that it’s a pretty accurate description of Sean and it makes him look a lot less glamorous than he once seemed. Because, what else is there to say about him? There’s a minute here where I cannot remember his name, can’t even picture features, a face, any sort of shape. “What about you?” I choke, dreading the answer.

“What about me?” he asks. What a finely honed sense of humor.

“Have you ‘met’ anyone?” I rephrase the question.

“‘Met’ anyone?” he asks coyly.

“Who are you fucking? Is that better? I mean, I don’t really want to know. I’m just making conversation.”

“Oh God,” he sighs. “Some guy from Brown. He studies Semiotics. I think it’s the study of laundry or something. Anyway, he’s on the crew team. I see him weekends, you know.”

“Who else?” I ask. “How about at school?”

“Oh this guy from California, from Encino, named Jaime. Transfer from U.C.L.A. Blond, Jewish. He’s on the crew team also.”

“That is such a
lie
,” I have to blurt out.

“What?” He gets embarrassed, looks shocked. “What do you mean?”

“You always say you’re seeing someone on the ‘crew’ team. And you never are. What is a ‘crew’ team?” I ask and I notice that we have been whispering the entire conversation. “There’s not a crew team at Sarah Lawrence, you nitwit. You think you’re going to get away with lying to me?”

“Oh shut up, you’re completely crazy,” he says, disgusted with me, waving me away.

We watch some more TV and listen to the music coming from the cassette player at the same time and finish off the J.D. After we’ve smoked all the cigarettes in the room, he finally asks, “How is yours going?”

I say, “It’s not.”

He leans over and looks out the window. Richard has a really nice body.

I pick up the bottle and cough as I swallow the last drops.

Richard says, “You know it’s bad when you can see the rain at night.”

We’re quiet for a minute and he looks at me and I start to laugh at him.

“What’s so funny?” he asks, smiling.

“‘You know it’s bad when you can see the rain at night?’ What is that? A fucking Bonnie Tyler song?”

The liquor has made me feel good and he leans up close, laughing also, and I can smell the warm scotch on his breath and he kisses me too hard at first and I push him back a little and I can feel the line where stubble and lip meet
and I think I hear a door open and close somewhere and I don’t care whether it’s Mrs. Jared or my mother, drunk, in lieu of divorce, asleep by Seconal, in a nightgown from Marshall Fields, and though I don’t want to, we undress each other and I go to bed with Richard. Afterwards, early in the morning, pre-dawn, without saying goodbye to anyone, I pack quietly and walk to the bus station in the rain and take the first bus back to Camden.

I’m lying, in warm water, in a bathtub, in Sawtell. I’m doing this because I know I’ll never have Him. I drag the razor firmly across the hot skin underwater and the flesh peels back quickly, blood jetting out, literally jetting out, from the bottom of my arm. I drag it cross the other wrist jaggedly, up and down, and the water turns pink. When I lift my arm up, above water, blood gushes powerfully high and I have to place my wrist back under so I’m not splattered with it. I sit up, only slash at one ankle because the weakness drenches me and I lay back, the water turning impossibly red and then I start to dream, and I keep dreaming and it’s then that I’m not sure if this is really the thing to do. I can hear music coming from another house someplace and maybe I try to sing along with it, but, as usual, I find myself trying to get to the ending before it actually happens. Maybe I should have tried another
route. The one that little man at the gas station in Phoenix advised, or shall I say, urged me on
to or oww—
Guess what? No time. God jesus christ our my nothing savior

LAUREN
And it’s quiet now, and over. I’m standing by Sean’s window. It’s almost morning, but still dark. It’s weird and maybe it’s my imagination but I’m positive I can hear the aria from
La Wally
coming from somewhere, not across the lawn since the party is over, but it might be somewhere in this house perhaps. I have my toga wrapped around me and occasionally I’ll look over and watch him sleep in the glow of his blue digital alarm clock light. I’m not tired anymore. I smoke a cigarette. A silhouette moves in another window, in another house across from this one. Somewhere a bottle breaks. The aria continues, building, followed by shouts and a window shattering, faintly. Then it’s quiet again. But it’s soon broken by laughter next door, friends of Sean’s doing drugs. I’m surprisingly calm, peaceful in the strange limbo between sobriety and sheer blottoness. There’s a mist covering the campus tonight lit by a high, full moon. The silhouette is still standing by the window. Another one joins in. The first one leaves. Then I see Paul’s room, that is, if he’s still living in Leigh. The room is dark and I wonder who he’s with tonight. I touch my breast, then ashamed, burning, move my hand away. Wonder
what went wrong with that one. What happened the last time we were together? I can’t even remember. Last term, sometime. But no… that night in September. Beginning of this term. Last term you knew it was over though. He left for three days with Mitchell to Mitchell’s parents’ place on Cape Cod, but he told you it was to see his parents in New York—but then, who told you that? It was Roxanne, because hadn’t she been seeing Mitchell? Maybe it was someone else’s lie. But I was still dying with longing for his happy return; what an asshole he was. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he was tender, maybe you were greedy. I put the cigarette out on the edge of the window-sill and look back at Sean who has now rolled over, who’s dreaming. He’s put the covers over his head.

PAUL
My lack of trust in him amazes me but I can’t help it:
I don’t like Sean.
There’s no one else on the bus when we pull out of Boston, and not too many people get on at the various stops along the way. Just me and an old couple up front for most of the way there. I idly wonder what Mom will say about this abrupt departure. Will she pop a Seconal? Will she cry? Stay? Flirt with bellhops? Richard will probably be relieved, though he’ll still look for a date on Saturday night, and Mrs. Jared won’t care-why do I even care what she thinks? I try to sleep as the
bus lumbers on some nameless route (7? 9? 89? 119?) toward Camden. And it stops raining somewhere near Lawrence, and the sun comes up, full and rising, at Bellows.