The Rules of Attraction (17 page)

After Mrs. Jared asks Richard for the sixteenth time to take his sunglasses off and he refuses, she finally uses the reverse psychology bit and says, “So Richard, tell us about school.”

Richard looks at her and reaches into his pocket pulling out a Marlboro and grabbing the candle from the middle of the table, lights it.

“Oh, don’t smoke,” Mrs. Jared says disapprovingly, as he places the candle back.

I’ve refrained all evening from smoking and am seriously dying of a violent nicotine attack and I eye Richard’s cigarette hungrily. I am trying to rip my napkin in half.

“My name’s not Richard,” Richard reminds her, quietly.

Mrs. Jared looks at my mother and then at Richard and asks, “Then, what is it?”

“Dick,” he says, making it sound like the filthiest name imaginable.

“What?” Mrs. Jared asks.

“Dick. You heard me.” Richard takes a long drag from the Marlboro and blows it across the table at me. I cough and sip my drink.

“No. Your name is Richard,” Mrs. Jared corrects.

“Sorry,” Richard shakes his head. “It’s Dick.”

Mrs. Jared pauses. She’s slipping. She has not eaten much and has been drinking steadily, even before dinner began, and now she calmly asks, “Well, Dick … how
is
school?”

“Sucks cock,” Richard says.

I’m sipping champagne when he says this and burst out laughing, spraying my plate. I quickly place the napkin I’m
trying to rip apart over my mouth, attempt to swallow but start coughing instead, then choking. My eyes water and I breathe in, gasping.

“What are you taking … Dick?” Mrs. Jared asks, looking at me, trying to hold her composure, a stare of reprimand fixed on her face. I wipe my mouth and shrug.

“I don’t know. Gangbanging 111. Freebasing tutorial,” Richard shrugs, laughing, digging his foot even harder against my crotch. I cough again and grab at his foot beneath the table. “You like that?” he asks.

“What else?” Mrs. Jared is clearly trying not to act nonplussed, but her hand trembles as she finishes the rest of her drink.

“Oral Sex Workshop,” Richard says.

“My God,” my mother whispers, and she hasn’t said a word all night.

“What’s that like?” Mrs. Jared asks, still calm. Reverse psychology not working.

“I got a joke,” Richard says, still rubbing his foot against me, puffing on the cigarette. “You all wanna hear it?”

“No,” my mother and Mrs. Jared say at the same time.

“Paul wants to,” he says. “See, Julio Iglesias and Diana Ross meet at this party and they go back to Julio’s place and they fuck—”

“I do not want to hear this,” Mrs. Jared says, waving a passing waiter away after pointing at her empty glass.

“Neither do I,” my mother speaks again.

“Anyway, they fuck,” Richard continues, “and afterwards, Diana Ross, who’s come about fifty times and wants more of Julio’s dick, says—”

“I don’t want to hear this either,” my mother repeats.

“She says,” Richard goes on, getting louder, “‘Julio you gotta fuck my pussy again, I loved it so much’ and Julio says ‘Okay baby, but I need to sleep for a leetle beet—’”

“What has happened to you?” Mrs. Jared asks.

“‘But, you must keep one hand on my cock and the other on my balls’ Julio says, ‘and then after thirty minutes we
fuck again, okay?’” Richard is getting animated and I’m just dying, tearing at the napkin.

“Oh my God,” my mother says, disgusted.

“And Diana says,” and now Richard does a really bad Diana Ross impersonation, “‘Why do I have to keep one hand on your cock and another on your balls, Julio?’”

“What has happened to you?” Mrs. Jared asks, interrupting again.

Richard’s getting pissed off that she’s interrupting and his voice gets louder and I just slump down deeper into the chair, let go of the napkin and light a cigarette. Why not.

“And Julio says, ‘You wanna know why you have to keep one hand on my cock and one hand on my balls?’” He says this with a fierce leer on his face.

“What has happened to you?” Mrs. Jared is shaking her head and I feel sorry for her, sitting in this dining room, being abused by her son, dressed in that ugly outfit she probably got at Loehmann’s.

Richard gets even angrier that she’s interrupting his joke and I know what’s coming and I don’t even care who Sean is fucking tonight, at this moment. I just want the punchline to be over with, and Richard, the asshole, delivers it loud, staring at his mother: “‘Because the last time I fucked a nigger she stole my wallet.’” And then he sits back, drained, but satisfied. The table becomes hushed. I look around the room and smile and nod at one of the old ladies at the table across from ours. She nods approvingly and smiles back.

“What has happened to you?” Mrs. Jared asks for the fourth time.

“What do you mean,
what has happened to me?
What do you think?” Richard asks, followed by a gruff snort of contempt.

“I can see what that school has done to you,” she says.

Great, I’m thinking. It’s taken her three years to find this out? Actually Richard was always a rude jerk. I don’t understand what the big surprise is now. I look down at my
lap as the foot disappears. I finish my drink and suck on an ice cube, leaving the cigarette burning, unsmoked in the ashtray.

“That’s really too bad, huh?” Richard sneers.

“Obviously I can see we should never have sent you there,” Mrs. Jared says, and as much of an asshole as Richard’s being, she’s still a bitch.

“Obviously,” Richard says, mimicking her.

“Do you want to leave the table?” she asks him.

“Why?” Richard asks, his voice rising, getting more defensive.

“Will you please leave the table,” she says.

“No,” Richard says, getting hysterical. “I will not leave the table.”

“I am asking you to leave the table
now
,” Mrs. Jared says, her voice getting quieter but more intense.

My mother watches this exchange in silent horror.

“No no no,” Richard says, shaking his head. “I will not leave the table.”

“Leave the table.” Mrs. Jared is turning crimson with fury.

“Fuck you!” Richard screams.

The pianist stops playing and whatever quiet din of conversation there was in the dining room is killed. Richard pauses, then takes a last drag from his Marlboro, finishes his Kir, and gets up, bows and walks slowly out of the dining room, one of his feet shoeless. The maitre d’ and the head waiter rush over to our table and ask if anything is wrong; if perhaps we want the check.

“Everything is fine now,” Mrs. Jared says and actually musters a faint smile. “I’m really terribly sorry.”

“Are you sure?” The maitre d’ looks me over suspiciously as if I were Richard’s twin.

“Positive,” Mrs. Jared says. “My son is not feeling well. He has a lot of pressures … you know, with … with mid-terms coming up.”

Mid-terms at Sarah Lawrence? I look over at my mother, who’s staring off into space.

The waiter and the maitre d’ look at each other for a moment as if they’re not quite sure how to proceed, and when they look back at Mrs. Jared she says, “I would like another vodka Collins. Eve, would you like anything?”

“Yes,” my mother says, stunned, shaking her head slowly, still horrified by Richard’s exit. I wonder if I’ll sleep with him tonight. “I mean … no,” she says. “Well … yes.” My mother is still confused and looks at me—for what? Help?

“Get her another one.” I shrug.

The maitre d’ nods and walks away, conferring with the waiter. The pianist resumes playing, slowly, unsure. Some of the people who were staring finally look away. I notice when I look down at my lap that I have almost succeeded in ripping my napkin in two.

After a while my mother says, “I think I want the next car to be blue. A dark blue.”

No one says anything until the drinks arrive.

“What do you think, Paul?” she asks.

I close my eyes and say, “Blue.”

SEAN
Lauren Hynde was standing with friends on the stairs. She was holding a cup of grain alcohol punch that was being served from a trashcan by this fat girl who was almost naked. Lauren was wearing a toga also (probably
because I had mentioned it this afternoon) and it was cut low and her shoulders were brown and smooth and I got a rush, it knocked me out, from seeing that much skin. Suddenly, I wondered if she was a dyke. Standing there with Tony, watching her, her back, her legs, her face, hair, she was talking to some girls—ugly, undistinguished compared to her. Tony kept talking to me about his new sculpture and had no idea I was staring at this girl. He was only wearing underwear and had a mattress strapped to his back. I kept looking up at her and she knew it—she wouldn’t look back, even though I was standing at the bottom of the staircase, directly below her. Centerfolds from porno magazines were glued to the walls everywhere and there was a movie being projected on the ceiling in the living room above the dance floor, but the girls in it were fat and too pale and it wasn’t sexy or anything.

We ended up meeting in the bathroom. Getch was there leaning against the sink, on Ecstasy, and I think she was on it too, and Getch introduced us but we said we already knew each other, but only “sort of” she added. I got her some more punch even though I hated leaving her in the bathroom alone with Getch (but maybe Getch was gay, I was thinking) and I came back and Getch was gone and she was looking at herself in the mirror and I looked too, until she turned around and smiled at me. We talked and I told her I liked her paintings I saw in Gallery 1 last term (I was guessing) and she said “That’s nice,” (even though I really hadn’t seen the paintings, but what the hell—I wanted to get laid) and then we went to the living room and she wanted to dance, but I couldn’t dance very well, so I watched her dance to some song called “Love of the Common People” but then I got nervous that some jerk would start to dance with her if I didn’t step in, so when “Love Will Tear Us Apart” by Joy Division came on, I moved in. But it wasn’t the Joy Division version, it was someone else and it was popped-up and ruined, but I danced to it anyway since we were flirting like mad and she was so insanely beautiful that I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t fucked her before. I
was getting too excited to stay at the party, and couldn’t think of a way to slip out. But with perfect timing some dramafag started to go crazy and did this wild solo dance in his underwear when “Dancing with Myself” came on, dominating the entire dance floor. I watched Lauren watch him—she was clapping and drunk and sweating and I gave her a cigarette when Tim and Tony told me they pissed in a Heineken bottle and wanted to give it to Deidre to drink since she was so drunk. I gave them the brush-off after they waved the bottle in front of my face. I couldn’t tell if Lauren had heard them since she was still watching the scrawny little geek jump all over the room, lip-synching—the whole party on the sides screaming and clapping and dancing, someone even threw him a banana and that was when I grabbed her arm and ran, heading out the door, onto the cool dark lawn, leaving the party behind.

EVE
Mimi had two more vodka Collins and when the three of us left the dining room and were taking the elevator upstairs, she fell against the elevator attendant and almost passed out. I walked her back to the room where she took a Valium and went to sleep. Paul went into the other room. I sat on the bed watching Eve sleep for quite some time before I decided to tell him. I went into his room. He had undressed already and was in bed, reading. Richard
wasn’t there. The television was on. He looked up when I opened the door. Was he angry? Had he not wanted to come to Boston? Had he not wanted to come and see me? I felt very old at that moment and sorry for myself. What I had to tell him couldn’t be said in a hotel room and finally I spoke, “Why don’t you get dressed?”

“Why?” he asked.

“I thought maybe we’d go downstairs for a drink,” I suggested, casually.

“What for?” he asked.

“I want to talk to you about something,” I told him.

He looked panicked and asked, “Why not here?”

“Let’s go downstairs,” I told him and went to get my purse.

He put on a pair of jeans and a gray sweater and a ripped black tweed coat that I didn’t recognize, that I had not bought for him. He met me in the hall.

We went downstairs to the bar and the host came up to us and looked Paul over. “Yes, there are two of us,” I said.

“I’m afraid there’s a dress code,” the host smiled.

“Yes? …” I waited.

“This young man is not following it,” the host said, still smiling.

“Where does it say there’s a dress code?” I asked.

The host glared, still smiling and then walked over to a white board and pointed to the bright blue lettering, first to, “No Jeans,” and then, “Tie Must Be Worn.” I was getting a headache and I felt very tired.

“Forget it, Mom,” Paul said. “We’ll go somewhere else.”

I said, “We are guests in this hotel.”

“Yes, I realize that,” the host explained, officiously I thought. “But this applies to everyone.”

I opened my purse.

“Would you like me to make reservations for later?” the host asked.

“My son is dressed fine,” I said, handing the host a twenty dollar bill. “Just sit us in the back,” I said wearily.

The host took the bill quickly and said, “Yes, there might be a table over in the corner, in the dark.”

“In the corner, in the dark,” I said.

He sat us down at a terribly small, dimly lit table in back, away from the large crowded bar, but I was too tired to complain and simply ordered two champagne Kirs. Paul tried to light a cigarette inconspicuously and all at once he looked so handsome sitting there, the light playing off his features, his hair blond and thick and combed back, his face lean, the nose regal and thin, that I wanted to hug him, make contact of some kind, but “Darling, I wish you wouldn’t smoke” was all I could say.

“Mother, I’m sorry,” he said. “But I need a cigarette. Badly.”

I let it pass and the waiter brought the Kirs. I focused all my attention on the way the waiter quickly, nimbly opened each small bottle of Taittinger and poured them into the tall thin glasses. And how very beautiful it looked when the champagne slowly dissolved the reddish purple cassis on the bottom of each glass. Paul crossed his legs and tried to look at me once the waiter left.