Paulina & Fran (2 page)

Paulina had never given this girl much thought when she saw her sashaying across the cafeteria or sleeping through artist talks, but now she saw that the girl’s face was beautiful. Her nose wasn’t simple. Paulina contemplated the bones of it. Fran’s green eyes looked lost. Light, curly hair whipped against her forehead. There was something innovative in the layout of her face, but her expression showed no understanding of this.

Fran was absorbed in her jagged reflection. She wore a short dress with tiny hearts on it, and a man’s flannel. Paulina stared, realizing Fran was friends with one of Paulina’s enemies. Paulina couldn’t remember which girl. Her idea of Fran darkened. She wanted to be her, or be with her, or destroy her. She watched Fran’s breasts bounce in her dress. No one in the room seemed connected to her. Her cheeks concealed things.

Paulina felt dizzy and stopped dancing. She felt her own curls, now puffy and disorganized.
She’s cool,
a voice said in Paulina’s head. “If brain-dead, naïve Valley girls are cool,” Paulina said out loud, stalled in place.

“Hey, I’m from the Valley!” Sadie whined.

Paulina mentally pushed beyond Sadie and Allison.
Away
with the fools that flock my sides
, she thought, in a semiconscious daze. Fran danced in a corner seducing the wall.
Fran,
said a voice inside Paulina. For a brief, exhilarating moment, Paulina forgot the name of the boy snoring in her bed. The Venus Flytrap joined Fran and they danced like their hair was on fire.

“What a glutton for attention,” Paulina said, turning back to the crowded room.

“There you are,” said the boy with glasses. Paulina looked away. “Where have you been?” the boy said, leaning toward her.

“I have a boyfriend,” Paulina said dispassionately.

“The other night—” the boy began.

“That was then, this is now,” she said with exasperation. The boy’s eyes squinted as if in pain, then he turned and left. Sadie and Allison immediately filled his place. Sadie put her hand behind Paulina’s back and they danced very close together. Paulina silently forgave Sadie for the boots. She liked the way Allison danced, like a toy with dying batteries.

Apollo pulled his bandanna over his eyes and danced recklessly around the Venus Flytrap, humping air. A joint was passed around, burning those who danced into it. The forgotten eighties song came on again, the synthesizer stirring up feelings, and everyone screamed the sound of youth loving youth. Everyone was inside the same big mood.

Suddenly Tim was on the dance floor and Paulina saw only him. She pushed through people until she reached him. They danced entangled for a few songs—his hands on her breasts. The song sang to her. The semester had been slow, excruciating foreplay. Paulina pushed Tim against a wall. Everyone cheered and danced while she knelt before him, unzipping his fly.

It felt wrong to watch, but Fran watched. “That’s the girl who slept with Gretchen’s boyfriend,” Angel told Fran. “She’s going on the Norway trip.” A police car drove past, and Tim’s erection shone in the light, then it went dark again. Sadie and Allison fell into each other laughing.

The dancing became more flamboyant. Girls draped themselves on each other, and shook each other off. Straight boys danced carelessly with the Color Club boys. Then Cassie broke through the crowd and dragged Tim away. Her face was red from crying. Paulina stood flushed, wavering, then strode out the front door. She listened excitedly while Cassie told off Tim in the middle of the street. Cassie wouldn’t accept his apology. She spit on his shoes and ran back to the party.

Paulina and Tim walked down the street, but Tim kicked rocks and wouldn’t look at her. “Let’s just go to your place and finish this,” Paulina said, annoyed.

“We can’t go to my place. I live with her. Let’s go to your place,” he said and looked at her with a sort of hatred. All her
feelings of affection for him melted away and were replaced by stronger feelings of desperation and lust. She thought of Julian, asleep in her bed.

“Fuck it, how about here?” she said, motioning to an alley full of trash bins.

“Can’t we use your place? I won’t stay over or anything.” They were almost to her place anyway. They walked without looking at each other. Paulina matched her steps to his, then consciously unmatched them. Once or twice she’d kissed someone at a party while Julian was in the other room, but she’d never had another guy in the apartment while he slept.

“Yeah, okay,” she said. “My place.”

He nodded. She tried to picture how it could work.

“That mopey dude won’t be there, right?”

“He’s a heavy sleeper,” she said, her cruel laugh echoing through the night, surprising her.

In the laundry room of her apartment building, a half-finished painting leaned against the wall, depicting one of the girls upstairs with a mermaid tail. Tim nudged the painting toward him, revealing a smaller canvas behind it—a fish with peace-sign eyes. “With art like this, who needs art?” Paulina said, throwing her coat on the floor. Tim just looked at it. They kissed clumsily, stubbornly remembering what they had wanted before.

There was a barren feel to the basement, like it hadn’t been
made by humans. Paulina pulled her neighbor’s laundry from the dryer and threw them on top of her coat. “I thought they’d be warm,” Tim said as they climbed on the cold pile of sheets. His body held none of the qualities she’d expected of it. His torso had no drama. Languidly, without purpose, and then quicker once their bodies caught on, they worked on and finished what she had begun to think of as her Degree Project. Her orgasm was like a shooting star one pretends to have seen after a friend ecstatically points it out.

T
here were twelve students on the ten-day trip, along with an expert on Nordic history; Sampson Harris, the head of the Painting Department; and Nils, the painting grad who hung by Sampson’s side. Tim’s name on the signup list had been Paulina’s incentive to sign her own, so she was wounded when she couldn’t find him in the airport van. Paulina glumly surveyed those around her: Illustration majors and others whose majors were meaningless to guess. She spoke only once on the ride to the airport, loudly interrupting a discussion about a blind illustration teacher. “There is another van, correct?”

“Yessir,” said Sampson Harris (late forties, portly, and beaming). Paulina disliked him. When Sampson gave a crit, his forehead wrinkled in thought, his eyes twinkled with self-love. His bravado and pride were typical of male painters. Male painters weren’t self-deprecating like male illustrators. God, did she hate anything self-deprecating. Male painters
weren’t neat like male architects—but then neatness also annoyed her. And male sculptors thought themselves sensual (if clay) or brave (if metal).

Her opinion of Tim had worsened the night of the party, but in the days since then it had buoyed back up. All semester she’d clung to the idea of him. The laundry room was the only time they’d ever had sex, but this event had been christened and bedazzled in her memory until it bore little resemblance to what had taken place. Tim is in the other van, she told herself and sat back, letting the talk fade around her while she imagined herself and Tim, naked in a hotel suite, stoned, glamorous, inseparable.

But the airport was Tim-less. “His girlfriend made him cancel,” an illustration major told her with unconcealed enjoyment. Paulina examined the others at the airport, people who didn’t go to the art school. Stubby little families huddled near the TV monitors. Brain-dead teens wandered in toxic groups of two. Forgotten children sat like sentinels on top of mounds of luggage.

Paulina stood in despair, scrutinizing the pattern on the carpet, which stretched for miles. An unstable mind had created the pattern; Paulina assumed the designer had or would soon end his or her life. Paulina ran her boarding pass over her lips. She eyed a swarm of graphic designers and illustration
majors, fearing they would try and befriend her. One of them, Marissa, was either the clueless graphic designer Paulina had met the week before or a girl so similarly flawed that the two might as well have teamed up and become one. Paulina noticed a gay freak from the Textiles Department whom she’d never felt akin to. Nervously, she took the little gray piece of cloth she carried in her bra and rubbed it against her lips. Her breasts were sweating in a tight shirt from eBay that didn’t fit her.

When Paulina awoke that morning, she’d felt her life was an invitation to an even better life—she saw her name in wondrous script—but now she found herself in a social nightmare of unending duration. She decided to take a taxi back to school and surprise Sadie and Allison at Thai Dream or wherever they were spending break. She gathered her things. She would just tell Sampson and leave.

The college town seemed suddenly like the most boring, lacking place she’d ever been. She turned and saw Fran. A hive broke out on Paulina’s neck. She clutched the scrap of blanket. She could entertain herself with Fran, even if she didn’t befriend her, even though Paulina knew Fran was friends with a distraught design major who regularly shunned Paulina before Paulina had a chance to shun her first. She could hang out near Fran, and the others would assume they were friends and stay away from her.

Paulina found herself walking toward Fran, who was sitting on a bulky piece of luggage, her nail-bitten fingers skating over the stickers on her old Discman. She took off her headphones when Paulina approached her. Tiny voices sang from the headphones. A mindless beat beat on unhindered. After an unnecessary introduction, Paulina was entertained to hear Fran had a slight lisp. Paulina waited for Fran to draw her out in conversation, but Fran just smiled. Paulina stood paralyzed, snapping and unsnapping her hair clip. She looked for Nils, whose age gave him a slight edge over the others, but he was with Sampson.

Boarding the plane, Paulina stayed by Fran, conscious to seem apart. But the stale smell and muted colors inside the plane induced another anxiety in Paulina—a fear of boredom. She had barely spoken all day long, but now she found herself bargaining with the man and woman assigned to sit next to Fran, burying her aggression under a manipulative veneer of weakness and manners. Eventually the man in the window seat agreed and took Paulina’s seat instead. Though she’d gotten her wish, Paulina sighed when she sat down and was careful not to look at Fran.

During takeoff, the girls stared silently out the window. The woman next to Fran slept. The white noise of the plane was disconcerting, then distracting, then comforting. After a few stray remarks, Paulina and Fran gradually found their
common ground—the others on the trip, scattered in different seats on the plane. “I see James’s work, clothes, and attitude as a protective measure against the flamboyance prevalent at our school,” Paulina declared.

Fran found Paulina compelling and strange. After speaking her first words to Paulina at the gate, Fran felt sized up and then accepted. Fran had known they’d sit next to each other, and envisioned them, as if in a crystal ball, paired up to the exclusion of the other girls on the trip.

“My favorite,” Fran said, motioning to Milo. Milo was the only male textiles major. He was skinny and friends with girl nerds. His art was draping fabrics. He had never kissed a boy (or girl) and lived in his gayness like a prison. “You will find someone, Milo, soon!” insisted his girlfriends, some of whom had never experienced such delight before—the delight of calling this stooped, eccentric creature their friend. “Milo is the watered-down version of some queers I knew in high school,” Paulina said, but Fran sensed this wasn’t true.

Very quickly, the girls formed a familiarity. Gretchen hated Paulina, Fran knew, but Gretchen felt far away. Paulina leaned her seat back and Fran could hear the muffled protest of the person behind her.

“What do you think those suckers are doing back home?” Paulina asked.

“Being with their families.”

“What would you regret if we died right now in a crash?” Paulina asked.

Fran looked far into the fabric of the seat in front of her. “I guess I don’t have enough good paintings for a solid ‘in memoriam’ show,” she said. “But it doesn’t really matter.”

“It doesn’t,” Paulina said and laughed. “Do you have a boyfriend?” she asked.

Fran thought instantly of Marvin, but Marvin was not her boyfriend in any sense. “Do you?” she asked.

Paulina stared into the dark window of the plane. “Yeah, but I’m ending it.”

“Who?” Fran asked, with increasing curiosity.

Paulina leaned over and took out a sleep mask from her big leather purse. She pulled the mask on top of her forehead, matting down her curls. “I believe his name is Julian,” Paulina said flatly.

“Is he printmaking?” asked Fran.

“Film, but I’ve never seen anything he’s made.”

“I think I had a class with him once, an art history lecture. Does he have long, scraggly hair?”

“I cut it,” Paulina said in the same emotionless way. She slid her sleep mask over her eyes and said nothing for several hours.

In any foreign country, Paulina wanted to belong. She lagged a block behind the group. They trudged along, stopping at
every museum in sight. They ate lunches on picnic tables, the boys all speaking their bad Norwegian. With disdain, Paulina watched as their accents spawned stupid personas. James was the worst offender. His persona had its own name, Gulltopp, the name of the poor man he’d sat next to on the plane. James’s Gulltopp did a funny dance before and after meals and spoke only about fjords.

In a tragic use of alphabetical order, Paulina was sentenced to room with Marissa, who spoke her thoughts freely and often, injuring Paulina with her exaggerated wonder. The first night, Marissa gushed about Norway, and Europe, the artists of the past, while Paulina listened to her earplugs expand. Paulina believed that only Fran deserved to be her friend. Fran, who sat hunched against the wall during art history lectures, who stared too long at birds and bugs and faraway noises, who played with her hair so incessantly that Paulina knew she would never pass a job interview.

In a room of tapestries at the National Museum of Art, Paulina told Fran, “I need to sleep with someone exciting.”

“Ooh, like Nils?”

Paulina made a face. “No, like a fucking Viking from the past.”

Fran laughed, avoiding the glance of the other person in the room, an old man clutching a cane. The tapestries were all
Viking scenes—tall ships slanting on the water, a sword fight inside a treasure cave. The details hurt Fran’s head if she examined them too closely. Neat narrow lines indicated light and shadow. The texture of the waves stood in stark contrast to the clouds, to the sails, the glint of the swords, the hair curling out of helmets. “We could find someone like that,” she said.

“Someone who holds a whole chicken in one hand and eats from it,” said Paulina.

“And he’s got long, blond hair.”

“Yeah he does. His dick is enormous—”

“Not enormous, but a good size, and of good texture,” said Fran.

“Snakeskin?” said Paulina.

“Velvet,” said Fran. The old man left, and they were alone for the first time. “How is his house decorated?”

“With a single zebra-skin rug,” Paulina said, staring with unfocused eyes. “What is his name?”

“Blood Axe,” said Fran, reading the card on the wall.

Paulina laughed. “Perfect.”

“And he’s followed by a pack of animals,” said Fran.

“He can take five puppies in his hand and squeeze them into a full-sized dog.”

“His native tongue can’t pronounce our names.”

“Or his own name!” Paulina said.

“He’s killed men, but never a woman,” Fran added.

“His torso has a lot of drama.”

“What kind of drama?” asked Fran.

“Like scars and hair and muscles and things.”

“Does he carry a bloody ax?” Fran asked.

“Not these days. But once he did,” Paulina said wistfully. They laughed.

They strolled out of the museum and into the chilly air. They huddled for warmth. They lost the group. They posed with statues. They found their way.

Norway was magnificent. Train rides along the fjords gave them clear views of vast, overphotographed glaciers. Though Paulina refused to mix, the others formed experimental social groups, sparked by an ambiguity as to who was cool. The students wandered around Oslo, clueless and buzzed. They had solemn moments in Norwegian history museums, face-to-face with an ancient gown or worn-down coin.

Freed from Sadie and Allison, Paulina spent the long bus rides breaking down their personality flaws for Fran’s entertainment. Sadie was always bragging about her healthy and natural lifestyle choices—drinking only on weekends, never eating fried foods—but went to the tanning booths
weekly
, saying she had an “appointment downtown,” and was always drenched in perfume. Sadie loved pictures of cats and dogs but not the creatures themselves. She was always scolding Paulina
for not recycling, as if she understood the earth’s innermost perils. Paulina declared her incapable of intellectual thought.

As for Allison, she had the bored look of a stranger on a bus, even when she was listening attentively. She took herself so seriously as an artist that Paulina felt embarrassed for her. She often had pimples and took no time to disguise them. The biggest problem was Allison’s hair, which had neither the articulation of curls nor the sleekness of straight hair and was thick, like unprocessed wool.

Paulina described the tedium of Julian, how he slumped around her apartment, oblivious to her other lovers. She criticized all the dull lovers of their school, and the pretention rampant among the art history majors.

“There’s an art history major?” Fran asked.

Paulina nodded. “It’s new.” After finding art making meaningless, Paulina had begged the registrar to count her art history credits toward a major, eventually seducing him. During each of their nights together, she had discussed the benefits of an art history major so casually that even after her successful academic petition he believed that they’d thought of the idea together.

After the first night of the trip, Paulina had convinced Fran’s roommate, Angel, to trade rooms with her so that Paulina and Fran could room together. Fran noticed Paulina rubbing the
little gray rag on her lips at night, but she didn’t ask about it. Fran understood that being this close with Paulina had its restrictions. She couldn’t visibly socialize with the others on the trip, though everyone was very nice and always inviting her to hang out. Being with Paulina was like being under Soviet rule, she thought during a few outrageous moments, but it was worth it.

At a dance club in Bergen, Paulina and Fran experienced the same fathomless fun they felt at the Color Club. Each moment they amazed themselves. In dancing they spread themselves and saw themselves in the reaction of those around them. We must be very beautiful to feel this beautiful, Fran thought. The pleasant shock of a new country made them feel they deserved it, that the earth swiveled to show them things. They drank and flirted with skinny Norwegian boys. They spent so much time together without getting sick of each other, it was inspiring.

Paulina no longer needed Sadie or Allison. She envisioned herself and Fran socially dominating their small school. In good colors, far in the future, she imagined them growing even more sophisticated and successful. In lives abundant with luck and love. In LA or Paris. In short leather jackets.

While Paulina deep conditioned her hair, Fran drank beers with James, Angel, and Marissa at a bar close to their hotel in Stavanger.

“Why do you hang out with that crazy bitch?” asked James. “You should hang out with us.” The others nodded in agreement.

“She is dangerous and unpredictable,” Marissa hissed.