The Rules of Attraction (Page 89)

I fell asleep. We left the next morning.

PAUL Just another night. December and in Commons watching TV before it’s light out on Saturday morning, still slightly drunk and shrooming with Gerald. There had been nothing to do last night. The movie was The Barefoot Doctors of Rural China or something and the party seemed hopelessly lame.

Victor Johnson was there and even though I found it disgusting that Rupert Guest and him had given Tim’s Secret Santa a vial of se**n and a douchebag and were getting a kick out of seeing Gerri Robinson crying in the bathroom after she opened it, I still couldn’t help flirt with Victor and we shared a joint and he kept asking me where Jaime Fields was. I had heard from Raymond that Victor had been institutionalized, which meant I had a better than fifty-fifty chance of getting him into bed. When he offered me a bottled beer, I thanked him and asked, “So what’s going on with you?”

He said, “Fantastic.”

I asked him, “Where have you been?”

“Europe,” he said.

“How was it?” I asked.

“Cool,” he said and then with less enthusiasm, “Actually it was just okay.”

“Do you like being back?” I asked.

“I like America.” He winked. “But only from a distance.”

Oh please. Gerald had been watching the scene from a corner of the room and before he could come over and ruin it, I traded an REM ticket for a bag of mushrooms.

Now the familiar words—Hanna Barbera—flash on every so often and remind me of a time I used to want to wake up early on Saturday mornings to watch cartoons. The party’s still happening at McCullough, and Gerald’s talking about old boyfriends, GQ models, members of some unnamed crew team, lying shamelessly. I kiss him to shut him up. Then turn my attention back to the TV screen. An especially loud New Order song comes from the open windows at McCullough, “Your Silent Face.” Sean liked this song, so did Mitchell in fact. Gerald says, “Jesus, I really hate this song.” I kiss him once more. It turns out to be the last song of the party. It fades out, nothing replaces it.

Watching TV nothing makes sense. An Acutrim commercial is followed by a Snickers commercial followed by a Kinks video followed by In The News. My mom likes the new Kinks video. That depresses me even more than Gerald does.

“You bummed?” he asks.

I look at him. “He likes him. He likes her. I think she likes someone else, probably me. That’s all. No logic.”

“Hmmmmm,” Gerald says, checking his pockets. He brings out the napkin he had the mushroom in. There’s nothing left, just mushroom crumbs.

“No one ever likes the right person,” I say.

“That’s not true,” he says. “I like you.”

That’s not exactly what I meant or wanted to hear, but I ask him earnestly, “Do you?”

There’s a pause. “Sure. Why not?” he says.

There’s nothing worse than being drunk and disproven.

LAUREN The next week (or maybe it was a couple of days) seemed like a blur. Motel rooms, driving all night, getting stoned as his friend’s MG raced through the snowy roads. Everything seemed speeded up, time moved faster. There was no conversation, we didn’t speak to each other those days on the road. We had reached a point where there was simply nothing to talk about. We had passed even the most elementary stages of conversation. There were not even polite “How are you’s” in the morning; simple questions like “Can we stop at that gas station?” were discarded. Nothing was said. Neither of us spoke.

Though there were moments that week, even as we sat silently in that car zooming around, when I actually believed something was on his mind. He would slow the car down if we passed anything that even remotely resembled a chapel, or a church, and stare at it, the motor still running. Then he’d speed off again and wouldn’t stop until he found a suitable motel somewhere. And it was in these motel rooms where we started doing the cocaine he was carrying, and because of the cocaine the days, short already, seemed even shorter, and he’d drive faster, more recklessly, trying to get to some unknown destination. We would stay up all night in motels, the TV on, inhaling the cocaine, and if we needed something to eat later to keep us going, to fill our stomachs so we could do more coke without getting cramps, he’d leave the motel room and come back with cigarettes, cheeseburgers, and candy which he had bought with someone’s American Express card since he carried no cash.

The cocaine, oddly enough, made neither one of us talkative. We would do a few lines and instead of babbling away insincerely, we’d watch the television set and smoke, never confronting each other, just sitting there, or in the MG, or in coffee shops, almost embarrassed. He got thinner, more gaunt, as the amount of cocaine he was carrying dwindled down. More motels, more gas stations, another diner somewhere.