The Rules of Attraction

LAUREN I’m dreaming about Victor. It’s a Camden relocation dream. People from school are milling about a salad bar on a beach. Judy is standing by the sea. The sea behind her is sometimes white, sometimes red, sometimes black. When I ask her where Victor is, she says, “Dead.” I wake up. For a long, painful moment, between the point at which I have the nightmare, and the moment at which, hopefully, it is forgotten, I lie there, thinking about Victor. A very common morning.

I look around the room. Franklin is gone. The things around me depress me, seem to define my pitiful existence, everything is so boring: my typewriter — no cartridges; my easel — no canvas; my bookshelf — no books; a check from Dad; an airline ticket to St. Tropez someone crammed in my box; a note about Parents’ Weekend being cancelled; the new poems I’m writing, crumpled by the bed; the new story Franklin has left me called “Saturn Has Eyes”; the half-empty bottle of red wine (Franklin bought it; Jordan, too sweet) we drank last night; the ashtrays; the cigarettes in the ashtrays; the Bob Marley tape unwound — it all depresses me immensely. I attempt to return to the nightmare. I can’t. Look over at the wine bottles standing on the floor, the empty pack of Gauloises (Franklin smokes them; how pretentious). I can’t decide whether to reach for the wine or the cigarettes or turn on the radio. Thoroughly confused I stumble into the hallway, Reggae music coming thump thump from the living room downstairs. It’s supposed to be light out, but then I realize it’s four-thirty in the afternoon.

I’m leaving Franklin. I told him last night, before we went to bed.

“Are you kidding?” he asked.

“I’m not,” I said.

“Are you high?” he asked.

“Beside the point,” I said. Then we had sex.