The Rules of Attraction

LAUREN And it’s quiet now, and over. I’m standing by Sean’s window. It’s almost morning, but still dark. It’s weird and maybe it’s my imagination but I’m positive I can hear the aria from La Wally coming from somewhere, not across the lawn since the party is over, but it might be somewhere in this house perhaps. I have my toga wrapped around me and occasionally I’ll look over and watch him sleep in the glow of his blue digital alarm clock light. I’m not tired anymore. I smoke a cigarette. A silhouette moves in another window, in another house across from this one. Somewhere a bottle breaks. The aria continues, building, followed by shouts and a window shattering, faintly. Then it’s quiet again. But it’s soon broken by laughter next door, friends of Sean’s doing drugs. I’m surprisingly calm, peaceful in the strange limbo between sobriety and sheer blottoness. There’s a mist covering the campus tonight lit by a high, full moon. The silhouette is still standing by the window. Another one joins in. The first one leaves. Then I see Paul’s room, that is, if he’s still living in Leigh. The room is dark and I wonder who he’s with tonight. I touch my breast, then ashamed, burning, move my hand away. Wonder what went wrong with that one. What happened the last time we were together? I can’t even remember. Last term, sometime. But no… that night in September. Beginning of this term. Last term you knew it was over though. He left for three days with Mitchell to Mitchell’s parents’ place on Cape Cod, but he told you it was to see his parents in New York — but then, who told you that? It was Roxanne, because hadn’t she been seeing Mitchell? Maybe it was someone else’s lie. But I was still dying with longing for his happy return; what an asshole he was. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he was tender, maybe you were greedy. I put the cigarette out on the edge of the window-sill and look back at Sean who has now rolled over, who’s dreaming. He’s put the covers over his head.