The Rules of Attraction (22 page)

Vittorio then turns to the bald guy in the armchair and says of the pretentious geek, “And this is Stump, another … yes, very promising poet….”

“We know each other,” Lauren smiles flirtatiously. “You did your thesis with Glickman last term, right? On…” She’s forgotten. Must have made a big impression.

“Yeah,” Stump says. “Hunter S. Thompson.”

“Right,” she says. “This is Sean Bateman.”

“Hi, Stump?” I offer my hand.

“Yeah. Used to be Carcass but changed it.” He salutes instead of taking my hand.

“You … look familiar,” I say, taking a seat.

“Wine? Uh, vodka? Gin?” Vittorio asks, sitting in the chair next to Lauren’s, gesturing at the table we’re all “gathered” around. “You like gin, don’t you … Lauren.”

How the fuck does he know?

“Yeah, gin,” Lauren says. “Do you have any tonic?”

“Oh, of course, of course … I’ll make it,” Vittorio says in his soft, almost faggoty voice, reaching over Lauren’s knees to get to the ice bucket.

“I’ll just have one of those beers,” I say, but when Vittorio makes no move to get one I reach over and take one of the Beck’s.

It’s quiet. Everyone waits for Vittorio to make Lauren’s drink. I sit there, looking at Vittorio’s shaking hands, alarmed at how much gin he’s pouring into Lauren’s glass. When he turns around to hand the glass to her, he seems shocked, taken aback, and as she takes the drink from him he says, “Oh look … look at the sunlight, the sunlight … through your golden … golden hair….” His voice is trembling now. “The sunlight…” he murmurs. “Look how it glows … glows in the sunlight…”

Jesus Christ, this is really making me sick.
She
is making me sick. I grip the beer firmly, tear at the damp label. Then I look at Lauren.

The sun is still up and streaming through the large stained glass window and it
does
make Lauren’s hair glow and she looks very beautiful to me right now. Everyone’s giggling and Vittorio leans over and starts smelling her hair. “Ah, sweet as nectar … nectar,” he says.

I am going to scream. I am going to scream. No I’m not.

“Sweet as nectar…” Vittorio mumbles again, and then pulls away, letting strands of her hair fall back into place.

“Oh, Vittorio,” Lauren says. “Please, stop.”

She loves it, I’m thinking. She fucking loves it.

“Nectar…” Vittorio says once more.

One of the editors, after a long silence, speaks up and says, “Mona was just telling us about some of the projects she was working on.”

Mona is wearing a white see-through blouse and tight faded jeans and cowboy boots, looking pretty sexy, curly blond hair piled up on her head, and a deeply tan face. Rumor has it that she hangs around Dewey offering Sophomore guys pot then screwing them. I try to make eye contact. She takes a big sip of her white wine spritzer before she says anything. “Well, basically, I’m freelancing now. Just finished an interview with two of the V.J.s from MTV.”

“Hah!” Stump exclaims. “MTV! V.J.s! How completely scintillating!”

“Actually it was quite…” Mona tilts her head. “Refreshing.”

“Refreshing,” Trav nods.

“In what way?” Stump wants to know.

“In the way that she really captured the sense of this monolithic corporate superstructure that’s bludgeoning and infecting the quote-unquote innocents of America by mind-fucking them with these … these essentially sexist, fascistic, blatantly bourgeois video films. Video killed the radio star, that type of stuff,” Trav says.

No one says anything for a long time until Mona speaks again.

“Actually, it’s not that … aggressive.” She takes a sip of her drink and tilts her head, looking over at Trav. “That’s more of what your book is about, Trav.”

“Oh yes, Travis,” one of the editors says, adjusting her glasses. “Tell us about the book.”

“He’s been working on it for a long time,” Mona chirps.

“Did you quit the job at Rizzoli’s?” the other editor asks.

“Uh-huh. Yep,” Trav nods. “Gotta get this book done. We left L.A., what?” He turns to Mona, who I think is flirting with me. “Nine months ago? We were in New York for two and now we’re here. But I gotta get this book done.”

“We know someone at St. Martin’s who’s really interested,” Mona says. “But Trav has got to finish it.”

“Yeah babe,” Trav says. “I do.”

“How long have you been working on it?” Stump asks.

“Not that long,” Trav says.

“Thirteen years?” Mona asks. “Not that long?”

“Well, time is subjective,” Trav says.

“What
is
time?” one of the editors asks. “I mean, really?”

I’m looking at Vittorio who’s sipping a glass of red wine and staring at Lauren. Lauren takes a pack of Camels from her purse and Vittorio lights the cigarette for her. I finish the Beck’s quickly and keep staring at Lauren. When she looks over at me, I look away.

Trav’s saying, “But don’t you think rock’n’roll killed off poetry?”

Lauren and Stump and Mona all laugh and I look over at Lauren and she rolls her eyes up. She looks at me and smiles, and I’m pitifully relieved. But I don’t, can’t, smile back with her sitting next to Vittorio, so I watch her inhale deeply on the cigarette Vittorio lit.

“Of course,” Stump practically shouts. “I learned more from Black Flag than I ever did from Stevens or cummings or Yeats or even Lowell, but my God, holy shit, Black Flag
is
poetry man.”

“Black Flag … Black Flag … who is this Black Flag?” Vittorio asks, eyes half-closed.

“I’ll tell you later, Vittorio,” Stump says, amused.

Trav takes in what Stump said and nods as he lights a cigarette.

Stump offers me an Export A. I shake my head and tell him, “I don’t smoke.”

Stump says, “Neither do I,” and lights one.

“Stump is … um, working on a very interesting …
series of poems about…” Vittorio stops. “Oh, how can … how can I say this … um, oh my….”

“Bestiality?” Stump suggests.

I pull out a pack of Parliaments and light one.

“Well my … my, yes … I, suppose, that is it….” Vittorio mumbles, embarrassed.

“Yeah, I’ve been working on this concept that when Man fucks animals, He’s fucking Nature, since He’s become so computerized and all.” Stump stops and takes a swallow from a silver flask he brings out of his pocket and says, “I’m working on the dog section now where this guy ties a dog up and is having intercourse with it because He thinks dog is God. D-O-G … G-O-D. God spelled backwards. Get it? See?”

Everyone is nodding but me. I search the table for another beer. I grab a Beck’s and open it quickly, taking a long, deep swallow. I look at Marie, who, like me, has been silent for the duration of this nightmarish event.

“That’s weird that you mention that,” Lauren says. “I saw two dogs making love in front of my dorm this morning. It was really strange, but it was, admittedly, poetic in terms of erotic imagery.”

I finally have to say something. “Lauren, dogs don’t make love,” I tell her. “They fuck.”

“Well they certainly have no qualms about oral sex,” Mona laughs.

“Dogs don’t make love?” Stump asks me, incredulous. “I’d think about that if I were you.”

“Um, no … no … I do believe that dogs make love … um, yes they make love in the … in the sunlight,” Vittorio says wistfully. “In the golden, golden … sunlight, they make love.”

I excuse myself and get up, go through the kitchen, thinking it leads to the bathroom, then up the stairs and through Vittorio’s room to his bathroom. I wash my hands and look at my reflection in the mirror and tell myself that I’ll go back and tell Lauren that I don’t feel well and that we’d better go back to campus. What will she say? She’ll
probably tell me that we’d only gotten here and that if I want to leave I can, and she’ll meet me back on campus. Did I actually say something about dogs fucking? Forget the coke, I decide, and open Vittorio’s medicine cabinet, more out of boredom than curiosity. Sea Breeze, Vitalis, Topol toothpolish, Ben-Gay, Pepto Bismol, tube of Preparation H, prescription of Librium. How hip. I take the bottle out of the cabinet and open it, pouring the green and black capsules into my hand and then popping one to calm myself, washing it down with a handful of water from the sink. Then I wipe my mouth and hands on a towel hanging over the shower stall and go back down to the living room, already cursing myself for leaving Lauren unattended with Vittorio for so long.

They are all talking about a book I haven’t read. I sit back down on the chair next to Lauren and hear one of the editors say, “Seminal … seminal,” and another one say, “Yes, a landmark.” I open another beer and look back at Lauren who gives me this questioning, pleading look. I tip the bottle back and look over at Mona and her see-through blouse.

“The way she represented like the total earth mother figure was amazing, not to say audacious,” Mona says, nodding her head vigorously.

“But it wasn’t just the way she represented her,” Stump says. “It was the Joycean implications that blew me away.”

“So Joyce, so Joyce,” Mona agrees.

“Should I read this book?” I ask Lauren, hoping she’ll turn and face me; turn away from Vittorio.

“You wouldn’t like it,” she says, not looking at me.

“Why not?” I ask.

“It ‘doesn’t make sense.’” She sips her drink.

“Not only Joyce, but it reminded me a bit of Acker’s work,” Trav is saying. “Has anyone read by the way, Crad Kilodney’s
Lightning Struck My Dick?
It’s amazing, amazing.” He shakes his head.

“What does that mean?” I ask her.

“Figure it out,” she whispers.

I sit back, stifle a yawn, drink more of the beer.

Trav turns to Vittorio. “But Vittorio, let me ask you, don’t you think that the admittedly Bohemian punk outlaw scribblings of these wasted post-Vietnam, post-Watergate, post- … hell, post-everything minstrels, is the product of a literary establishment bombasting a lost generation with worthless propaganda exploiting greed, blase sexual attitudes and mind-corrupting, numbing jejunosity and that’s why works like
Just Another Asshole,
a searing, searing collection of quote-unquote underground writing, become potent fixtures on the minds of this clan of maladjusted, nihilistic, malcontent, self-serving … well, hell, miscarriages, or do you think it’s all…” And now Trav stops, searches for the right word. “… bogus?”

“Oh Tra-av,” Mona says.

“Um … bogus?” Vittorio mumbles. “What is this bogus … you speak of? I have … not read the book … um…” He turns to Lauren. “Bogus? … mmm, did you like the book?”

“Oh yeah,” Lauren nods. “It was really good.”

“I … I have not read this … this book,” Vittorio says shyly, looking down at his drink.

I look over at Vittorio and suddenly sympathize with the man. I want to tell him that I haven’t read the book either, and I can see that Lauren feels the same way too, because she turns to him and says, “Oh Vittorio, I wish you would stay.”

Vittorio blushes and says, “I have to, go back … to my family.”

“What about Marie?” she asks, tender, hand on his wrist.

I look over at Marie, who is talking to Trav about the book.

“Oh,” Vittorio says, looking over at her, then abruptly looking back at Lauren, “I will miss her very much … very much.”

I want to say the same thing to Lauren, but yawn instead and drink more of the Beck’s feeling drowsy, and a little high. It’s over, definitely. I’m about to tell her but Stump
jumps up and puts on a Circle Jerks tape which no one can listen to, and Mona and Trav want to listen to Los Lobos, so everyone compromises and we listen to Yaz. Stump starts to dance in the now darkened room with Mona and Trav and the two editors try to dance to the music also. Stump even urges Marie to come join them but she just smiles and says that she is very tired.

Vittorio’s laughing about the music and making everyone fresh drinks. Marie lights candles. Vittorio leans over and whispers something in Lauren’s ear. Lauren keeps looking over at me. I’m now drinking whiskey from Stump’s flask and on the verge of falling asleep. I can’t hear what the two of them are talking about and I’m grateful. I keep washing the taste of the cheap whiskey from my mouth with the rest of a warm Beck’s. Later everyone makes a toast, wishing Vittorio good luck on his trip, even Marie, who looks sad as she raises her glass and mouths,
“Mi amore,
” to Vittorio, married, father, Vittorio. This is the last thing I remember clearly.

I pass out.

I wake up and find myself sweating on Vittorio’s bed, I get up and look at my watch and see that it’s close to midnight. I stand up carefully, then stagger down the stairs and into the living room. Everyone’s gone except for Lauren and Vittorio who have now moved to the couch talking, candles on the table in front of them still burning. How many beers had I drunk? How much whiskey? Soft Italian Muzak comes from the stereo now. Had I actually tried to dance? Had I actually finished the whiskey from Stump’s flask? I can’t remember.

“Just get up?” she asks.

“What’s going on?” I say, steadying myself as I sit down.

“Drinking,” she says, holding up a glass of—what in the hell is it?
Port?
“Want one?”

I can tell that she’s drunk because of the rigid way she’s sitting on the couch, trying to maintain what’s left of her composure. She sloppily lights a cigarette, and Vittorio pours himself what little red wine is left in the bottle. How
long have they been sitting on the couch like that? I look at my watch.

“No,” I say. I pour myself a glass of tonic water with shaking hands and sip it. “How did I get in Vittorio’s room?”

“You were really drunk,” she says. “Feeling better?”

“No. I don’t.” I rub my forehead. “I was really drunk?”

“Yeah. We decided to let you rest awhile before we left.”

We? What does “We” mean? Who’s “We”? I look around the room and then back at her and notice that her shoes are off. “What are your shoes doing off?”

“What?” she asks. Who me? Little Miss Innocent.

“Your shoes. Why—are—they—off,” I ask, spacing each word out.

“I was dancing,” she says.

“Great.” An image of her slow dancing with Vittorio, his stubby fingers caressing her back, her ass, Lauren sighing, “Oh please,” in that soft way Lauren always sighs. “Oh please Vittorio.” This all flashes through my mind and my headache worsens. I look at her. I don’t know her. She’s nothing.