The Rules of Attraction

PAUL It was a Friday morning and I was waiting by Sean’s bike in the student parking lot. It was only ten-thirty and the bus station in town was maybe a five minute drive from campus but I wanted to get there early. When I was sixteen I was supposed to meet my parents in Mexico. They had flown down the week before and told me that if I wanted to come I could get a ticket and meet them down in Las Cruces. When I got to O’Hare to catch the flight down to Mexico City I found out I missed it. When I went back to my car I found a parking ticket on the windshield. I stayed home and had a party and ruined the couch from Sloane’s and saw eleven movies and skipped school all that week. And that’s probably why I get so paranoid before going on a trip. Ever since then, I arrive at airports and train stations and bus terminals much earlier than needed. Even though it was ten-forty and I knew I’d probably make the bus to Boston, I still couldn’t concentrate on the copy of The Fountainhead I was reading or anything else. Last summer Mitchell told me I was an illiterate and that I should read more. So he gave me a copy of The Fountainhead and I began it, rather reluctantly. When I told Mitchell one day at some cafe that I didn’t like Howard Roark, he said he had to go to the restroom, and he never came back. I paid the check. I remember that my parents bought me a stuffed iguana and smuggled it through customs for me. Why?

Sean arrived and noticed that I’d shaved, flirting, like a bastard. His bike wouldn’t start, so I decided to take a cab to the bus station. He was nice about it and I felt sorry for him that his bike wouldn’t start, and he looked like he was really going to miss me and I decided that I would call him when I got to Boston. Then I remembered The Dressed To Get Screwed party and knew that he was going to get laid; that everyone does. By the time the cab brought me to the bus station I was chain-smoking and bending my copy of The Fountainhead so hard that it became permanently creased. But the bus was late anyway when it arrived at eleven-forty-five, so I had nothing to worry about in terms of making it. Myself, some young fat lady with a blue jacket with dice on the back of it and her blond dirty-faced little boy, and a well-dressed blind man were the only people getting on at Camden. Since there was no one else on the bus I took a seat in the smoking section, near the back. The fat woman got on with her son and they sat up front. It took a while for the blind man to get on and the driver helped guide him slowly to a seat. I hoped that the blind man wouldn’t sit next to me. He didn’t. I was relieved.

The bus pulled out of Camden and started up Route 9. I was glad that there was no one else on the bus today going to Boston. It would be a nice, calm trip. Opening the book, I stared out the window, and got the feeling that maybe this weekend in Boston wouldn’t be too awful. Richard would be there, after all. I was even a little interested in what my mother wanted to talk to me about. Her stolen Cadillac? It was probably a company car anyway. Easy to replace, nothing to worry about. It certainly didn’t merit a visit to Massachusetts though. I took off the sunglasses since it was overcast and lit a fresh cigarette, tried to read. But it was too nice out not to stare past the window at the mid-October countryside, still signs of fall everywhere. Reds and dark greens and oranges and yellows all passed by. I read some more of the book, smoked some more cigarettes, wished that I’d brought my Walkman.

After about an hour the bus pulled into some town and made a stop at a small station where an old couple got on and sat near the front. The bus pulled out of the station and continued back on the highway for a mile or so and then stopped in front of a huge group of people, kids from the college nearby, standing in front of two green benches. I tensed up and realized as the bus slowed down and pulled close to the curb that these students were actually going to board the bus. I panicked for a moment and quickly moved to an aisle seat.

When the kids from the college got on, I took my sunglasses off and then put them on again and looked down at the book, hoping that they wouldn’t realize I was a student from Camden. Fifty or sixty of these kids piled into the bus and it got unbearably loud. Most of them were girls dressed in pinks and blues, Esprit and Benetton sweatshirts, snapping sugarless gum, Walkmans on, holding cans of caffeine-free Diet Coke, clutching issues of Vogue and Glamour, looking like they stepped out of a Starburst commercial. The guys, eight or nine of them, were mostly good-looking and they sat in the back, near me, in the smoking section. One was carrying a big Sony cassette player, the new Talking Heads blasting from it, issues of Rolling Stone and Business Week being passed back and forth. Even after all these Pepsi rejects got on, there was still no one sitting next to me. I started feeling completely self-conscious and thought, god I must look pretentious, sitting in the back, Wayfarers on, black tweed coat ripped at the shoulder, chain-smoking, faded copy of The Fountainhead in my lap. I must scream “Camden!” But I was still grateful that no one sat next to me.

But just as the bus pulled away I noticed The Boy, looking exactly like Sean, looking very out of place, standing near the front of the bus, trying to make his way to the back. He had tangled longish hair and a week’s growth of beard. He was wearing a Billy Squier T-shirt (oh my god) and holding a bulging pillow sack. I couldn’t get over the resemblance and my heart stopped, then skipped a little before it resumed its normal beat. I looked around the bus and got the awful feeling that this Sean look-alike, who also had grease-stained hands, holding a wrinkled copy of Motor Trend (did this guy go to Hampshire?) was going to have to sit next to me. The boy passed the empty seat I was sitting next to and looked around the back of the bus. One of the college boys, wearing a Members Only jacket and leafing through a Sports Illustrated, Hi-Tops kicked up on the seat in front of him, talking about how he lost his Walkman in Freshman Econ class, shut up, and when he did that all the guys looked over at The Sean Boy and snorted derisively rolling their eyes. I was thinking please don’t sit next to me…. He looked so much like Sean.

He knew the college boys were making fun of him and he moved over to me.

“Is that seat taken?” he asked.

And for a minute I wanted to say yes, but of course that would have been ridiculous, so I shook my head and swallowed hard and stood up to let The Boy sit down. The seats were close together and I had to move over to the edge of mine to accommodate us. He had the same color hair on his head and arms and he also had one eyebrow and tight ripped jeans. It was hard to deal with.

The bus pulled away from the curb before everyone was seated and hurled back onto the highway. I tried to read the book but couldn’t. It started to rain, the sound of the Talking Heads coming from the gleaming cassette player, the girls passing Diet Pepsi and nachos back and forth and trying to flirt with me, the incessant yapping from the college boys in back, smoking clove cigarettes, an occasional joint, talking about how some slut named Ursula was fucked by some guy named Phil in the back of some guy’s Toyota Nissan named Mark and how Ursula lied to Phil and said it wasn’t his baby but he paid for the abortion anyway and it was all so irritating I couldn’t even concentrate on anything. And by the time we were near Boston I was so angry with my mother for asking me to come that I just kept staring over at The Sean Boy, who, in turn, stared out the window, smoothing the creases out of his ticket with his grease-stained hands, his Swatch ticking loudly.