The Rules of Attraction (29 page)

PAUL
I pretend to look at old notes from last week’s Student Council meeting, which are crumpled and muddied on the floor in the backseat of Lizzie’s car. Gerald’s sitting next to me, trying to give me a hand-job, both of us crammed in the back. Somehow Sean got dragged into the huge Buick, and he’s up front with about five other people, eleven of us piled into the car altogether. Everyone is drunk, no one knows where we’re going, vague idea about a road trip. Gerald keeps rubbing my thighs. It’s freezing. We are lost.

The last time I saw Sean he had stopped by my room sometime in mid-November. I was sitting at my desk doing nothing and I heard a knock on the door. “Come in,” I said. There was a silence followed by another knock, this one louder. “Come in,” I stood up. The door opened. He walked in. I sat back down. I sat there looking at him and then I got up very slowly.

“Hi, Sean,” I said.

“Hi, Dent,” he said.

Dent? Had he ever called me that? I wondered about his as we drove into town, had dinner, came back to campus. He parked in front of Booth. We went upstairs to his room. His room looked bigger and emptier than I remembered it. The narrow bed on the floor, the desk, a chair, a chest of drawers, a broken stereo, no posters, no photos, a lot of records leaning against a wall in the corner. And I woke up the next morning laying on the small mattress. He was already up, sitting in his armchair, staring out the window at the morning’s snowfall. He needed a shave, his hair was sticking up. I dressed quietly. It was hot in the room. He wasn’t saying anything. He just sat in the chair and smoked Parliaments. I went up behind the chair to tell him I was leaving. I stood so close that I could have touched the side of his face, his neck, but I didn’t do this. I just left. Then I stood in the hallway and heard him lock the door….

Gerald realizes I’m not interested but keeps trying. I look out the window of the car, at the snow, wondering how I got forced into this. I don’t know half the people in the
car: heroin addicts, a Freshman, a couple who lives off-campus, someone who works behind the snack bar, Lizzie, Gerald, Sean and me, and this Korean guy.

I have my eye on the Korean boy, some Asian Art major punk I think I made out with last term who only paints self-portraits of his penis. He’s sitting on my other side, tripping and he keeps repeating the word “wow.” Lizzie keeps driving and circling Main Street, then she’s on the highway leaving Camden, looking for a place that’s open where we can get beer. A joint is passed around, then another. We get lost again. The Smiths are singing and someone says “Turn that gay angst music off.” The Replacements replace them singing “Unsatisfied.” No one has I.D. is the consensus so we can’t get beer since Camden kids are almost always asked. We almost get stopped by the police. Lizzie almost drives us into a lake. The Korean boy keeps screaming, “Let’s call this art,” and I keep whispering to him in his calmer moments, “Come to my room.” But by the time we get back to campus and I wait in my room for him, Gerald comes by instead and takes his clothes off which means, I guess, for me to take mine off too.

While in bed, later, we hear someone knocking on the door.

Gerald goes, “Sssshhhh.”

I get up and pull my jeans on and a sweater. I open the door. It’s Sean, not the Korean. He’s holding a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a box with The Smiths playing. “Can I come in?” he whispers.

“Wait.” It’s dark behind me. He can’t see anything. “I’ll come out,” I say.

I close the door and put my boots on, grabbing my coat, any coat, from the darkness of the closet. Gerald asks, “Who in the hell is it?”

“I’ll be back in a minute,” I tell him.

He says, “You better.”

Sean and I end up walking through the woods near campus. It’s snowing lightly and not too cold, the moon is high and full and makes the ground glow white. The Smiths
are singing “Reel Around the Fountain.” He hands me the bottle. I tell him, “I find myself talking to you when you’re not around. Just talking. Carrying on conversations.” I really don’t, but it just seems like the thing to say and he’s really so much better-looking than Gerald.

“I wish you wouldn’t tell me shit like that,” he says. “It’s creepy. It weirds me out.”

Later, we make love in the snow. Afterwards I tell him I have tickets for the REM concert in Hanover next week. He covers his face with his hands.

“Listen,” he says, getting up. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I say. “Things like this happen.”

“I don’t want to go with you.”

“I don’t want things to turn out this way,” I warn him.

“I don’t want you to be hurt.”

“Yeah? Well, is there…” I stop. “Can you do anything about it?”

He pauses, then, “No, I guess I can’t. Not anymore.”

I tell him, “But I want to know you. I want to know who you are.”

He flinches and turns to me and says, raising his voice at first and then letting it drop softer, “No one will ever know anyone. We just have to deal with each other. You’re not ever gonna
know
me.”

“What in the hell does that mean?” I ask.

“It just means you’re not ever gonna
know
me,” he says. “Figure it out. Deal with it.”

It’s quiet, it stops snowing. From where we lay we can see the campus, lit, postcard-perfect, through the trees. The tape clicks off, and then automatically turns itself over. He finishes the Jack Daniel’s and walks away. I walk back to my room, alone. Gerald has left, leaving me a long note, describing how much of an asshole I am. But it doesn’t matter because there was something fun about tonight, in the snow, drunk, not with the Korean guy.

LAUREN
It happens quite suddenly, while we’re at the Winter Carnival in town.

Earlier we had a half-hearted attempt at a snowfight on Commons lawn (actually I threw a snowball at his head; he didn’t have enough energy to make one, let alone throw one at me), then we drove in the friend’s MG to town and had brunch. After making out on the ferris wheel and smoking pot in the funhouse, I tell him. I tell him while we’re waiting for fried dough. I could have told him the truth, or I could have broken it off with him, or I could have gone back to Franklin. But none of those options seemed likely in the end, and there was a good chance none of them would have worked out. I stare at him. He’s stoned and holding a Def Leppard cocaine mirror that he won by throwing baseballs at tin milk bottles. He smiles as he pays for the fried dough.

S: What do you want to do when we get back?

Me: I don’t know.

S: Should we buy the eighth or rent a movie or what?

Me: I don’t know.

S: What is it? What’s your problem?

Me: I’m pregnant.

S: Really?

Me: Yes.

S: Is it mine?

Me: Yes.

S: Is it really mine?

Me: Listen, I’m going to … “deal with it” so don’t worry.

S: No. Don’t. You’re not.

Me: What? Why not?

S: Listen, I have an idea.

Me:
You
have an idea?

S: Let’s get married.

Me: What are you talking about?

S: Marry me. Let’s get married.

Me (unsaid): It could be Franklin’s and there’s always the possibility it could actually be Sean’s. But I was very
late and had been carrying for a long time and I cannot remember when it was Sean and I met. It could also be Noel’s, though that’s unlikely and it could also be the Freshman Steve’s, but that’s even unlikelier. It could also be Paul’s. Those are the only people I’ve been with this term.

S: Well?

Me: Okay.

SEAN
Lauren and I decided not to go to brunch today since there were bound to be too many eyes, too many people wandering around trying to figure out who left with who from the party last night, the dining room would be cold and dark in the late morning, people finally realizing who they spent the night with staring at their soggy French toast with regret; there would be too many people we knew. So we went to The Brasserie on the edge of town to have brunch instead.

Roxanne was at The Brasserie but not with Rupert. Susan Greenberg was there with that asshole Justin. Paul Denton was sitting in a corner with that dyke Elizabeth Seelan from the Drama Division and some guy I didn’t even think went to Camden. A teacher who I was sure I owed at least four papers to was sitting in back. A townie who I dealt for was by the jukebox. Paranoia fulfilled.

Lauren and I looked at each other after we sat down and
then cracked up. Over bloody Marys, I understood how much I did want to marry her, how much I wanted her to marry me. And after another drink, how much I wanted her to have my son. After a third drink it simply seemed like a fun idea and not a hard promise to keep. She looked really pretty that day. We had smoked pot earlier and we were high and starving. She kept looking at me with these eyes that were wildly in love and couldn’t help it and I was feeling good staring back and we ate a lot and I leaned over and kissed her neck but stopped when I noticed someone looking over at our table.

“Let’s go somewhere,” I told her, as she paid the check. “Let’s leave campus. We can go somewhere and do this.”

She said, “Okay.”

LAUREN
We went to New York to stay with friends of mine who had graduated when I was a Sophomore. They were now married and had a loft apartment on Sixth Avenue in the Village. Sean and I drove down in his friend’s MG and they put us up there in an extra room in the back. We stayed at their place since Sean didn’t have enough money to stay in a hotel. But it worked out just as well. It was a big space, and there was plenty of privacy and room, and in the end it didn’t matter since I was still vaguely excited about the prospect of actually getting married, of actually going through the ceremony, of even becoming a
mother. But after two days with Scott and Ann, I became more hesitant and the future seemed more distant and less clear than it had that day at the Winter Carnival. My doubts grew.

Scott worked at an advertising agency and Ann opened restaurants with her father’s money. They had adopted a Vietnamese child, a boy of thirteen, the year after they married and named him Scott, Jr., and promptly sent him off to Exeter where Scott had gone to school. I would wander dumbly around their loft while they were both at work, drinking Evian water, watching Sean sleep, touching things in Scott, Jr.’s room, realizing how fast the time was going by, that the term was nearly over. Maybe I had reacted too quickly to Sean’s proposal, I would think to myself, while in Ann’s luxurious, sunken tub. But I’d push the thought out of my mind and tell myself I was doing the right thing. I didn’t tell Ann I was pregnant or that I was going to marry Sean for I was sure she would call up my mother and have this confirmed, and I badly wanted my mother to be surprised. I watched television. They had a cat named Cappuccino.

The four of us went to a restaurant on Columbus the second night we were in New York: Talk centered around John Irving’s new book, restaurant critics, the soundtrack from
Amadeus
and a new Thai restaurant that opened uptown. I watched Scott and Ann very closely that night.

“It’s called California Cuisine,” Ann told Sean, leaning next to him.

“Why don’t we take them to Indochine tomorrow?” Scott suggested. He was wearing an oversized Ralph Lauren sweater and expensive, baggy corduroys. He was wearing a Swatch.

“That’s a good idea. I like it,” Ann said, placing her menu face down. She knew already what she wanted. She was dressed almost exactly like Scott.

A waiter came over and took our drink orders.

“Scotch. Straight,” Sean said.

I ordered a champagne on the rocks.

“Oh,” Ann said, deliberating. “I’ll just have a Diet Coke.”

Scott looked up, concerned. “You’re not drinking tonight?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Ann said, relenting. “I’ll be daring and have a rum and Diet Coke.”

The waiter left. Ann asked us if we had seen the recent Alex Katz exhibit. We said we hadn’t. She asked about Victor.

Scott asked, “Who’s Victor?”

Ann told him, “Her boyfriend, right?” She looked at me.

“Well,” I said, could not bring myself to say “ex.” “I’ve talked to him a couple of times. He’s in Europe.”

Sean downed his drink as soon as it came and waved to the waiter for another one.

I kept trying to talk to Ann but felt utterly lost. While she was telling me about the advantages of low-sodium rice cakes and new age music, something flashed in me and pierced. Sean and I in four years. I looked across the table at Sean. He and Scott were talking about Scott’s new compact disc player.

“You’ve got to listen to it,” he told Sean. “The sound,” he paused, closed his eyes in ecstasy, “… is fantastic.”

Sean wasn’t looking at me but knew I was looking at him. “Yeah?” he nodded.

“Yeah,” Scott went on. “Bought the new Phil Collins today.”

“You should hear how great ‘Sussudio’ sounds on it,” Ann agreed. The two of them had been big Genesis fans at Camden, and had forced me to listen to “Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” one night when the three of us were on coke my Freshman term. But what can you do?

Sean sat there impassive, his face falling slightly. And though it was at that moment I realized I did not love him and never had, and that I was acting on some bizarre impulse, I was still hoping he was thinking the same thing I was: I don’t want to end up like this.

Later that night I dreamed of our new married world. The world Sean and I would live in. Mid-dream Sean was
replaced by Victor, but we were still smart and young and drove BMW’s and the fact that Sean had been replaced didn’t alter the dream’s significance to me. Not only did we vote in this dream but we voted for the same person our parents voted for. We drank Evian water and ate kiwi fruit and chomped on bran muffins; I turned into Ann. Sean who had become Victor was now Scott. It was unpleasant but not unbearable and in some indefinable way I felt safe.

The next morning over a breakfast of bran muffins and kiwi and Evian water and wheatgrass juice, Ann mentioned something about buying a BMW and I had to hold back a scream. It was clear that this had not been my best term; it was clear that I was losing it.