The Rules of Attraction
Page 41“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.
“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.
He still stares.
“On … Arlington…”
“I hear you,” the cab driver, an old guy, muttered, shaking his head, turning around.
Then what the f**k 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.”
“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 f**k 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.