The Rules of Attraction

“Yeah? Who is this?” I asked, wondering if it was Jaime, pissed off that she hadn’t been in Manhattan when I got back.



“Victor,” the girl laughed. “It’s me.”



“Oh yeah,” I said. “You.”



Rupert was on the floor trying to glue a beer bong he’d made back together, but he was wasted and kept cracking up instead. I started cracking up too, watching him and said to the voice on the phone, “Well, how are you?”



“Victor, why haven’t you called me? Where are you?” she asked. Either that or I was seriously tripping.



“I’m in New York City where the girls are pretty and life is kinda shitty and the birds are itty bitty—” I laughed, then noticed movement on Rupert’s part. He jumped up and put Run D.M.C. on the stereo and started rapping along with them, singing into the Kirin bong.



“Give it to me,” I said, reaching for the bong.



“I’ve been…” the voice stalled.



“You’ve been what, honey?” I asked.



“I’ve missed you badly,” she said.



“Hey honey. Well, I’ve missed you too.” This girl was looney-tunes and I started cracking up again, trying to light the bong, but the pot kept falling out.



“It doesn’t sound like you’re in New York,” the voice said.



“Well maybe I’m not,” I said.



The voice stopped talking after that and just breathed heavily into the phone. I waited a minute and then handed the phone over to Rupert, who made pig noises into it, then turned on the VCR all the while rapping to “You Talk Too Much.” He bent down and said, “You never shut up,” into the receiver, then “Sit on my face if you please.” I had to put my hand over the receiver to keep this girl from hearing me laugh. I pushed Rupert away.



He mouthed, “Who is it?”



I mouthed back, “I don’t know.”



I get a hold on myself and then finally asked this girl what I called for in the first place, “Listen, is Jaime Fields in? Room 19, I think.” The bong dropped against the table. I picked it up before it rolled off the table and shattered.



“You shithead! Be careful,” Rupert screamed, laughing.



The girl on the phone wasn’t saying anything.



“Hello? Anyone there?” I tapped the phone against the floor. “I’d like to buy a vowel, please.”



The girl finally said my name, really whispered it, and then hung the phone up, disconnecting me.



LAUREN Drunk. Blur. His room. I wake up. Music blasting from upstairs. Stumble into hallway. Susie tried to kill herself earlier. Slit her wrist. Blood all over the door across the hall. Guy she likes. Use the bathroom, wearing his shirt, black space, can’t find a light, it’s freezing. My face so puffed from sobbing that I can barely open my eyes. Wash face. Try to throw up. Walk back to his room. Crying sound coming from phone booth. Probably Susie back from hospital. Walk by phone. Not Susie, but Sean. Kneeling, crying into the phone “fuck you f**k you f**k you.” Go back to his room. Fall back on bed. Later he comes in, wiping his face sniffing loudly. Pretend to sleep while he packs, shoves some shirts into an old leather satchel and grabs his police jacket and leaves the door open. Expect him to come back. He doesn’t. French guy who told me he loved me comes into the room drunk. Looks down at me lying on his roommate’s bed. He laughs and falls on the bed next to me. “Je savais toujours que tu viendrais,” he says and passes out.



SEAN The last time I saw my father had been in March when I met him in New York for a long weekend to celebrate my twenty-first birthday. I remember the entire trip quite clearly which surprises me considering how drunk I was most of the time. I remember the look of the morning at an airport in New Hampshire, playing gin with some guy from Dartmouth, a rude stewardess. There was a meal at The Four Seasons, there was the afternoon we lost the limousine, the hours spent shopping at Barney’s, then Gucci. There was my father, already noticeably dying: his face yellowish, his fingers as thin as cigarettes, eyes that were wide and always staring at me, almost in disbelief. I would stare back, finding it impossible to imagine someone that thin. But he acted as if this wasn’t happening to him. He still held a certain degree of normalcy about him. He didn’t appear scared, and for someone apparently quite ill had enormous amounts of stamina. We still saw a couple of lame musicals on Broadway, and we still had drinks in the bar at The Carlyle, and we still would go to P.J. Clarke’s, where I played songs on the jukebox I knew he’d like though I don’t remember why exactly this rush of generosity occurred, what brought it on.