Paulina & Fran (5 page)

“What was the film about?” Fran asked. She didn’t listen to his lengthy answer. She watched her face in her dark bedroom window. It was furrowed in pretend concentration. The longer they stood there, the more it seemed she might let him in. Anxiety fidgeted through her body. She ran her finger along the jagged edge of her house key. When he wished her a good night, she was extremely relieved. She quickly unlocked her door and went inside.

From the peephole, she watched him smile. He was too tall to date. It was Marvin she loved. Things were building with Marvin. The mice + the gloves isn’t something that just happens every day, she thought. If mice + gloves happens to people, they’re meant to be together. Still, she was high off Julian’s attention. She felt pretty without needing to see it in a mirror. She felt like she was great at painting, but had no desire to paint.

W
hen Fran asked Paulina what it had been like with Julian, Paulina paused to remember. They were in the library looking at books of old paintings. “All the physical stuff was good,” said Paulina.

“Yeah?”

“All the physical stuff was great.” In that moment, Paulina wanted Julian, wanted to have him around. Julian was funny sometimes. Sometimes he’d made her laugh. He’d made her feel important. As if it were she who graced the dollar coin, instead of that Indian woman. She watched Fran twirl her hair, and resented how Fran’s naïve questions kept dredging Julian back up. Paulina wanted to talk about
them.

This semester, Fran’s teacher was a boisterous woman painter who told them to “get weird and get wild.” The woman’s most famous work was a video of natural disasters edited to a soundtrack of awkward karaoke mistakes. In Fran’s
midsemester meeting, she told Fran she was straddling the edge of painting “good” and painting “bad,” and urged Fran to choose a direction and not look back.

In the studio, James was playing the Beach Boys’
Smile
for the millionth time that week. Fran could hear someone relentlessly sanding a wooden panel. She painted Marvin from memory. It actually looked like him this time! But she got self-conscious her class would see, so covered his face with a beard, and made his eyes pink, covering each color with another color until the connection was lost.

She kept her face down as she painted, but could hear Marvin talking with someone (James?) across the room. “First you rip off its legs,” it sounded like James said. She strained to hear them. “A boy’s first stereo,” Marvin said, or something like that. Fran took her brush to the brush-cleaner machine, just to get closer to their voices. She cleaned and cleaned her brush until they stopped talking.

“Hey,” she said, leaning over Marvin’s studio wall, where he was rubbing a chocolate bar over an immaculate white canvas.

“Hey,” he said, but did not look up from his big scribbly lines.

Fran imagined a whole gallery of paintings like this. Critics would say, “Cy Twombly meets Willy Wonka!” Fancy people would buy the paintings and hang them in their dining
rooms. People would hang the paintings over their beds and glance at them while they were having sex. The art school would buy one of the paintings to hang in their museum and a mouse would smell the chocolate. One of the famous costumed mice!

“Do you think the mice are still wearing their outfits?” she asked him.

“I bet the other mice have bit them off by now,” he said matter-of-factly.

Fran ate ice cream at the cafeteria with Julian, anxious that people would see them. She hadn’t memorized his face yet. Each time she looked at him he looked different from what she expected. Freshmen sat around in groups having the time of their lives. Some had never dyed their hair before, or worn their bikini top as a shirt. Julian looked at Fran, his eyes shining.

“I like someone else,” Fran said.

“Impossible,” Julian said.

“You probably don’t know him,” she said.

“Does he like you as much as I do?” Julian asked.

“No,” Fran said laughing. “It’s hard to tell. He’s really spacey.”

“Spacey, huh?” Julian leaned toward her as he spoke, and though so much of her rejected him, she wanted to let him
love her. He seemed like he knew how. She looked down at her melted ice cream. She couldn’t have Paulina if she had Julian. Paulina was the smartest, strangest person she’d ever met. Paulina talked about cavemen times as if she’d really been there.

Julian held Fran’s hand. “What about Paulina?” she asked.

“I don’t think about her anymore,” Julian said.

“She’s cool,” Fran said. “I mean she’s crazy, but I really get a kick out of her, you know?” Julian touched her chin. Again, Fran saw herself the way he saw her and it looked infinitely better than how she saw herself.

They walked into the quad, a courtyard covered in ceramic tiles and relief sculptures of naked women and moon faces. “Freshman year, I thought this was a Gaudian paradise,” Fran said. Students were posing with cigarettes on dorm steps. Unsightly faux-leather portfolios leaned against the brick wall. Julian pulled Fran close to him. The air was thick with the freshmen’s ideas and enthusiasm. “Are you going to kiss me?” she asked. She beamed at him and he kissed her. Her eyes took her to a regal, shaded place.

Paulina pressed her face to the window of the Furniture Studio, where Tim’s rickety table was being critiqued. Tim nodded robotically in the corner. Paulina leaned against a streetlight, bored, thirsty, and missing Art History III. The
sky was black and friendless. Paulina missed Allison and Sadie and punished them in her mind. She imagined herself the queen of Egypt and Allison and Sadie toiling in the sun, hauling bricks on their backs, begging for forgiveness.

Out of the darkness, the Venus Flytrap approached. Paulina had never seen her near a campus building. She was wearing striped pants and a huge poncho. Her wild hair hung in the air like a halo. “I know what you call me,” the Venus Flytrap said. Paulina watched as Tim left through a side door with his friends. “And I like it, but I’m not too crazy about you.”

There was an impenetrable misunderstanding between them. Paulina would never comprehend it. She wouldn’t ask. She wanted to call out to Tim, but the Venus Flytrap paralyzed her. The girl looked at her expectantly. Tim was walking farther and farther away.

“Don’t you talk?” the Venus Flytrap asked.

“Yeah,” Paulina said, “all the time.”

The Venus Flytrap scoffed. “Congratulations,” she muttered.

Paulina hesitated.

“I can see right through you,” the girl said. The girl was like a boardinghouse for misfit spirits. Paulina wasn’t the only one who thought so. “Why did you come to art school if you don’t make art?” the girl asked.

“For the memories,” Paulina said. She’d meant it to seem
snappy, but it came out sentimental. Once she had seen the Venus Flytrap eat a live fish from Eileen’s fish tank. Eileen had been upset about it, but what was there to do? It was at a party and everyone had loved it.

The girl laughed at her, then turned and left.

Paulina rushed to Tim’s house thinking of things she could have said. She had modeled herself after the Venus Flytrap, but she hated her. What misuse of my time, she thought angrily. She had embarrassed herself. She had been weak like Fran. She had acted like a sophomore, not a junior. She had acted like a freshman deciding between graphic design and illustration, like someone who lived off a meal plan, who kept an online diary, someone with themed socks.

Tim opened the door a crack. “Yo, bad time,” he said. Paulina could hear Cassie’s voice inside.

“I walked all the way here,” Paulina said, exasperated. “And I have a stone in my shoe. It feels like it’s never a good time.”

“Exactly. It’s never a good time. I’m with Cassie, remember?” He sneered at her. She gave him the finger and he shut the door.

Paulina felt icy and dead. Cassie was a sculpture major. Sculpture majors think they’re so far out, Paulina thought as
she wandered down the street. Sculpture majors loved nothing more than taking up space. They clogged rooms with sloppy abstractions. They destroyed their computers. They damaged hallways dragging heavy plaster pieces to show friends. They had all kinds of filth under their fingernails.

The streets were deserted like a movie set. Paulina remembered how she and Julian had made the small town into a big joke. Each store seemed ridiculous—the store that sold tights and sunglasses, the fancy hotdog place. She and Julian had towered over the town. But lately she had forgotten all that. She’d just been living in it, taking it seriously.

Fran’s apartment was totally dark. Paulina could see this from far off, but still walked up the steps and leaned against Fran’s doorframe defeated. She rang the doorbell idly, just to touch something and make a sound.
Where was Fran? Drawing Marvin’s likeness with a needle? Competing in the hair-twirling Olympics?
Paulina felt homeless. Glory was getting harder and harder to find. She scratched her name into the chipping paint on Fran’s door.

Walking home, she saw Eileen drive by in Sadie’s car but didn’t wave. The world bored her. She wanted to be transformed. She needed sex, or drugs, or dancing—something that pushed the old self aside and made the new self gleam. She wanted to reclaim the red boots she’d given Sadie. The boots would torture her ankles but alleviate her mind. Paulina
imagined Sadie with the other apparel majors, stressing/not eating. In her purse on her key ring, she felt for the cold key to Sadie’s house.

Outside Sadie’s window, Paulina saw Sadie and Allison eating pizza with a boy. He was handsome and wore a shirt that said
TODAY IS A GOOD DAY
in a faux handwritten font. Paulina was shocked to see the boy. It was how Sadie had said—he had green eyes and shaggy hair. The dining room was lit with candles. Paulina felt a sticky, static dread.

The boy squinted at Paulina through the window. She shrank back into a bush. She knew he wouldn’t understand her, that his presence would evoke small talk and easy jokes. Sadie was wearing a preposterous
SUPERTHRIFT
costume that shouldn’t have been revived. It clung to her like mermaid skin. She was pathetically in love with the creature in the T-shirt. They were holding hands under the table. Paulina watched them like a nature documentary.

Julian’s apartment was one room plus a bathroom. In the corner, a mini fridge buzzed underneath a fake marble counter. On one wall hung a charcoal drawing of a school shooting. “Creepy!” Fran said.

Julian laughed. “Part of a series I did for my drawing class.”

“How was the crit?” she asked.

“Awkward.”

Fran couldn’t tell if this pleased him or pained him. His bookcase was filled with sci-fi books and religious texts. A layer of dust coated everything but the bed. Fran couldn’t imagine Paulina there.

Julian sat on his bed and pulled Fran to him. She noticed a picture of a Caravaggio painting that had been cut from a Caravaggio calendar and taped to the wall. She stared at a poster of a bearded man in a sweater.

“Who’s that?” she asked.

“Alejandro Jodorowsky,” he said.

“Who’s he?”

“Crazy Chilean filmmaker.”

She thought they would drink something or smoke something, but nothing was offered.

His body was pale. Any muscle he had was one needed to move. They kissed. He was almost handsome. He was handsome. Julian undressed her and her mind went limp. “You’re so beautiful,” he said. “You have amazing breasts.” Sincerity felt queer at the school. Romance felt foreign. She ran her hand over his short dark hair. With her eyes closed, Julian was everyone, Paulina and Marvin, the world wanting Fran. This feeling colored her completely. Wanting proof, she stuck her hand in his boxers. Gripping his erection, she thought,
Mine.
She felt graceful behind her eyes. She was barely aware of what she was saying, but they did talk. They complimented
and teased each other. His intense attention, his want to please her, it made her brave and powerful.

“I can’t believe you are fucking that freak,” Gretchen said. Fran’s eyes danced from tree to tree. Her breasts felt amazing. “He’s weird,” Gretchen said.

“Good,” Fran said as they walked into Utrecht. “No one will steal him away from me.”

“In Drawing II, he only drew tragedies. Bad sign.” Fran ignored her. “I’d rather get HIV from a dead warlock,” Gretchen mumbled.

Fran laughed. “You sound just like Paulina!” she said.

Gretchen glared at Fran. Fran blushed.

“That’s the only good part of this,” Gretchen said, examining a set of expensive markers.

“What?”

“That you stole Julian from Paulina like she stole Andrew from me,” Gretchen said with satisfaction.

“But she broke up with Julian.”

“It doesn’t matter. She’s a sociopath.”

“Well, don’t tell anyone about me and him,” Fran said. “Okay?”

“What do you care?”

“I’m sort of friends with her,” Fran said, sweating.

“Finally, you admit it,” Gretchen said. “I saw you guys dancing at a party once and wanted to throw up.”

“What was I supposed to do? There was no one cool in Norway! I couldn’t help it. We just hit it off.”

“Hit it off? No one hits it off with her. It takes a lobotomy to be friends with her. Have you
seen
her friends?”

“I’m sorry,” Fran said, but she wasn’t. She felt Gretchen was the kind of girlfriend she would be offered again and again by the adult world, the real world, but Paulina was someone truly original, someone who existed only once.

“I’m over it,” Gretchen said, trying out a black ink pen on the sample paper stuck to the shelf. She wrote her name in perfect cursive. “The important thing is you’re dating Julian. It will ruin her life.” She smiled.

Even after receiving Julian’s affection, Fran remained fixated on Paulina. Paulina was like part ship captain, part call girl. Once Fran spent a whole party watching her, unable to name what was so impressive. Fran was terrified of Paulina finding out about Julian. Sometimes she would have dinner with Paulina, let Paulina walk her home, and then, when she was sure Paulina was out of sight, run to his house.

Fran lay on Julian’s chest, asking him about Paulina.

“She fancied herself a wild lover,” Julian said.

Fran giggled. “How?” she asked, stroking the coarse hairs under his arms.

“She was always thrashing about like there was a great passion within her, but somehow I doubted the passion.”

Fran wanted to ask if there was a great passion in
her
, but it was a damning question. First, she would create a great passion. She was almost there. In bed with Julian, all her concerns flattened into a cracker.

“I’m going to tell her,” Fran said. “You think it will go okay?”

“It could be awful, to tell you the truth. Like her in an awful mood, tromping about like a robot on the wrong setting.”

“My Norwegian princess!” Paulina exclaimed when Fran found her in the library. “Look at this hairstyle!” Paulina said, pointing excitedly to a painting in a Velázquez book. “Isn’t it amazing? I’m going to write my final on ancient hairdos.” She grinned at Fran. “These girls are like hair gods!”