The Rules of Attraction Read Online Free Page A

him.
    In a cab heading toward my apartment, late, almost five, and I can’t even remember what we did tonight. I pay the driver and give him too big a tip. Mitchell holds the elevator door open, impatient. We get to my apartment and he takes off his clothes and gets stoned in the bathroom and then we watch TV, some HBO, for a little while … and then we went to sleep as soon as the sun started rising, and I remembered a party we were at back in school when Mitchell drunk and angry tried to set fire to Booth Housein the early morning…. We look straight at each other right now, both breathing evenly. It’s morning now and we’re not sleeping and everything is pure and bright and clear and I fall asleep…. When I woke up, later that afternoon, Mitchell was gone, left for New Hampshire. But the ashtray by the bed was full. It was empty before. Had he watched me sleep during that time? Had he?

 
    SEAN “It was the Kennedys, man…” Marc’s telling me while he’s shooting up in his room in Noyes. “The Kennedys, man, screwed it … up…. Actually it was J … F … K … John F. Kennedy did it…. He screwed it up … all up, you see….” He licks his lips now, continues, “There was this … our mothers were pregnant with us when we … I mean, he … was blown away in ’64 and that whole incident … screwedthings-up….” He stops, then goes on. “… in a really heavy duty way…” Special emphasis on “heavy” and “duty.” “And … in turn … you see, it jolted us in a really heavy duty way when we … were … in…” He stops again, looks at his arm and then at me. “Whatchmacallit…” Looks back at his arm and then at me, then at the arm again, concentrating as he pulls the needle out, then at me, still confused. “Their … um, primordial wombs, and, so, that is why we are … me, you, the narc acrossthe hall, the sister in Booth, all the way we are…. Do you … understand? … Is this clear?” He squints up at me. “Jesus … think if you had a brother who was born in ’69 or something … They’d be … fucking bonkers….”
    He’s saying this all real slowly (a lot of it I can’t even listen to) as he puts the eyedropper next to his new computer that’s humming, his friend Resin, who’s visiting from Ann Arbor, leaning up against the table, sitting on the floor, humming with it. Marc sits back, smiling. I thought Kennedy bit it a couple of years earlier but wasn’t sure and I don’t correct him. I’m kind of wired but still could use some sleep, since it’s late, sometime around four, but I like the familiarity of Marc’s room, the details I’m used to, the ripped Bob Dylan poster for
Don’t Look Back,
the stills from
Easy Rider,
“Born To Be Wild” always coming from the stereo (or Hendrix or Eric Burdon and The Animals or Iron Butterfly or Zep), the empty pizza boxes on the floor, the copy of an old Pablo Neruda book on top of the pizza boxes, the constant smell of incense, the yoga manuals, the band upstairs that’s always rehearsing old Spencer Davis songs all night (they suck). But Marc’s leaving soon, any day now, can’t stand the scene, Ann Arbor is where it’s at, Resin told him.
    After I fucked Didi I came back to my room, where Susan was, alone, crying. I guess the Frog was in New York. I couldn’t deal with her so I told her to get out, then I drove to the Burger King in town and ate it on the way to Roxanne’s and had to deal with her new boyfriend, this big mean townie pusher named Rupert. That whole scene was a total joke. She was so stoned she actually lent me forty bucks and told me that The Carousel (where Rupert also bartends) is closing down due to shitty business, and that depressed me. I picked up the stuff from Rupert, who was cleaning his gun case, so coked up he actually smiled and let me do a line, and brought it back to campus. The drive was a cold, long drag, my bike almost kicking out near the college gates, and barely making it