The Rules of Attraction

LAUREN We went to New York to stay with friends of mine who had graduated when I was a Sophomore. They were now married and had a loft apartment on Sixth Avenue in the Village. Sean and I drove down in his friend’s MG and they put us up there in an extra room in the back. We stayed at their place since Sean didn’t have enough money to stay in a hotel. But it worked out just as well. It was a big space, and there was plenty of privacy and room, and in the end it didn’t matter since I was still vaguely excited about the prospect of actually getting married, of actually going through the ceremony, of even becoming a mother. But after two days with Scott and Ann, I became more hesitant and the future seemed more distant and less clear than it had that day at the Winter Carnival. My doubts grew.

Scott worked at an advertising agency and Ann opened restaurants with her father’s money. They had adopted a Vietnamese child, a boy of thirteen, the year after they married and named him Scott, Jr., and promptly sent him off to Exeter where Scott had gone to school. I would wander dumbly around their loft while they were both at work, drinking Evian water, watching Sean sleep, touching things in Scott, Jr.’s room, realizing how fast the time was going by, that the term was nearly over. Maybe I had reacted too quickly to Sean’s proposal, I would think to myself, while in Ann’s luxurious, sunken tub. But I’d push the thought out of my mind and tell myself I was doing the right thing. I didn’t tell Ann I was pregnant or that I was going to marry Sean for I was sure she would call up my mother and have this confirmed, and I badly wanted my mother to be surprised. I watched television. They had a cat named Cappuccino.

The four of us went to a restaurant on Columbus the second night we were in New York: Talk centered around John Irving’s new book, restaurant critics, the soundtrack from Amadeus and a new Thai restaurant that opened uptown. I watched Scott and Ann very closely that night.

“It’s called California Cuisine,” Ann told Sean, leaning next to him.

“Why don’t we take them to Indochine tomorrow?” Scott suggested. He was wearing an oversized Ralph Lauren sweater and expensive, baggy corduroys. He was wearing a Swatch.

“That’s a good idea. I like it,” Ann said, placing her menu face down. She knew already what she wanted. She was dressed almost exactly like Scott.

A waiter came over and took our drink orders.

“Scotch. Straight,” Sean said.

I ordered a champagne on the rocks.

“Oh,” Ann said, deliberating. “I’ll just have a Diet Coke.”

Scott looked up, concerned. “You’re not drinking tonight?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Ann said, relenting. “I’ll be daring and have a rum and Diet Coke.”

The waiter left. Ann asked us if we had seen the recent Alex Katz exhibit. We said we hadn’t. She asked about Victor.

Scott asked, “Who’s Victor?”

Ann told him, “Her boyfriend, right?” She looked at me.

“Well,” I said, could not bring myself to say “ex.” “I’ve talked to him a couple of times. He’s in Europe.”

Sean downed his drink as soon as it came and waved to the waiter for another one.

I kept trying to talk to Ann but felt utterly lost. While she was telling me about the advantages of low-sodium rice cakes and new age music, something flashed in me and pierced. Sean and I in four years. I looked across the table at Sean. He and Scott were talking about Scott’s new compact disc player.

“You’ve got to listen to it,” he told Sean. “The sound,” he paused, closed his eyes in ecstasy, “… is fantastic.”

Sean wasn’t looking at me but knew I was looking at him. “Yeah?” he nodded.

“Yeah,” Scott went on. “Bought the new Phil Collins today.”

“You should hear how great ‘Sussudio’ sounds on it,” Ann agreed. The two of them had been big Genesis fans at Camden, and had forced me to listen to “Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” one night when the three of us were on coke my Freshman term. But what can you do?

Sean sat there impassive, his face falling slightly. And though it was at that moment I realized I did not love him and never had, and that I was acting on some bizarre impulse, I was still hoping he was thinking the same thing I was: I don’t want to end up like this.

Later that night I dreamed of our new married world. The world Sean and I would live in. Mid-dream Sean was replaced by Victor, but we were still smart and young and drove BMW’s and the fact that Sean had been replaced didn’t alter the dream’s significance to me. Not only did we vote in this dream but we voted for the same person our parents voted for. We drank Evian water and ate kiwi fruit and chomped on bran muffins; I turned into Ann. Sean who had become Victor was now Scott. It was unpleasant but not unbearable and in some indefinable way I felt safe.

The next morning over a breakfast of bran muffins and kiwi and Evian water and wheatgrass juice, Ann mentioned something about buying a BMW and I had to hold back a scream. It was clear that this had not been my best term; it was clear that I was losing it.

At night Sean would lay beside me and I’d be thinking about the baby, something Sean would never mention. He would complain bitterly about how pathetic Ann and Scott were and I would get strange, unexplained urges to call my mother or my sister at R.I.S.D.; to call and explain to them what was going on. But this, like my questioning of my relationship with Sean, vanished.

The last night we were in the loft he turned to me and said, “I can remember the first time we…” He stopped and I knew he wanted to say fucked, went to bed, did it, fucked on the floor, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it without extreme embarrassment, so he said quietly, “… met.”

I looked at him sharply, “So do I.”

He was sweaty and his hair was sticking to his forehead. I was smoking one of his cigarettes, our faces blue because of the television set. The sheet was pulled down, just enough so that I could see the hair below his waist. I was wearing a T-shirt.

“That night at the party,” he said.

His face got sad, or did it? Then the expression left. When he touched me, my whisper was deadly and clear and all I said was, “I’m sorry.”

And he asked me, “Why didn’t you tell me you were in love with this guy?”

“Who?” I asked. “You mean Victor?”

“Yes.”

“Because I was afraid,” I said, and maybe at one point somewhere I was.

“Of what?” he asked.

I sighed and didn’t want to be there and without looking at him spoke. “I was afraid that you’d leave me.”

“You want him to like me?” he asked, confused. “Is that what you said?”

I didn’t bother to correct him, or repeat myself, so I said, “Yeah. He likes you.”

“He doesn’t even know me,” he said.

“But he knows of you,” I lied.

“Great,” he mumbled.

“Yes,” I said, thinking of Victor, thinking how can one know yet still hope? I closed my eyes, tried to sleep.

“How do you know it’s not … his?” he finally asked, nervous, suspicious.

“Because it’s not,” I told him.

This was probably our last real conversation. He turned the TV off. The room went dark. I lay there holding my stomach, then running my fingers up, then down, over my belly.

“They have the Sex Pistols on C.D.,” he said. The statement hung there, accusing me of something.

I fell asleep. We left the next morning.