Paulina & Fran

by Rachel B. Glaser

  “They’ll be the first mouse celebrities,” he said. “I hope it doesn’t get to them.”

  He’s childish, but in a sexy, home-schooled-by-wolves way, thought Fran. She felt destined to be alone with him in the night. She struggled to remember which bra and underwear she was wearing. On Ridge Street, they leaned in different directions. His mind seemed dazzlingly blank.

  “Can I walk you home?” Fran asked Marvin. The words sounded outrageous to her. They dangled gaudily in the silence.

  “Why?” Marvin asked, laughing.

  “I don’t know,” Fran said, blushing. She had made the wrong moment. But she was wearing her good bra. Her hair looked good too; she could see it in the windows of parked cars. It didn’t matter. All her looks and artistic talent, and other qualities people had liked—your so dreamy, someone had written in her high school yearbook—none of it mattered. The your so dreamy guy had probably completely forgotten about her. She tried a smile to conceal what was happening behind her face.

  “Okay, bye!” Marvin said. Tears burned her eyes. She watched the back of him as he walked away. His cool, uncaring back.

  Paulina walked dreamily toward the Furniture Studios. Sex with Tim continued to be one of the more disappointing experiences of her life, but chasing Tim was electrifying and occupied her like a job. She touched her hair and liked how it felt. She must have had more than a dozen hair clips keeping it up, but the clips were dark and blended in with her hair. She passed the student store and the slick, new Graphic Design Studios. She passed high school skaters and spiritless adults.

  It was one of those glorious days when Paulina had charmed the registrar into dropping her incompletes, and she felt high above the system. She did little actual work, but the scholarship of a dead art historian kept her funded. In the corner of her eye, she saw Sadie and Allison coming out of the mail room. She had neglected them these last few weeks, but now was ready to embrace them.

  “Hello, beauties!” Paulina cooed while mentally chastising their fashion choices. Allison was wearing a bag-like dress. She should really use a leave-in conditioner. Still, Paulina walked toward them with open arms. Sadie glared at Paulina.

  “I didn’t see you at my apparel show,” Sadie said. “Were you in the back or something?”

  “Sorry, doll, I got caught up,” Paulina said. Something was different about Sadie. Her bangs were swept off her forehead. She was growing out her bangs! Paulina applauded the move.

  “You should have seen her dress,” Allison said. “You missed out.”

  They stood on the mail room steps, staring at a disappointing clothing sale on the sidewalk. Paulina studied Allison’s vacant face, and remembered befriending her in Foundation Drawing. Back then, Allison dressed like a Depression-era newsboy and read The Stranger during breaks. Allison didn’t speak, in class or out of class, and her roommate made jokes about it. Her classmates called her the Stranger, but Allison didn’t seem to care. Paulina wanted to open up Allison like a dusty, locked chest and hear whatever oddities hid inside her.

  Stoned in Paulina’s dorm room, Allison told Paulina what she thought of everyone in their class, and how her favorite romance wasn’t one of her own, but between Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. When Paulina expected her to smile, Allison’s lips merely twitched. It was an accomplishment to make her laugh.

  Allison painted abstract oil paintings. Anytime something figurative emerged from the mess, she blotted it out. She examined the paintings for hours, making sure none of her marks had mistakenly formed any conceivable face. They were chaotic paintings with jarring color choices. The paint was so thick in places it took years to dry. Paulina remembered dragging Sadie to Allison’s studio sophomore year and watching Sadie tense up, afraid of getting paint on her clothes. Back then, Allison thought Sadie a total flake, and Paulina did nothing to defend her.

  “Were you with Fran?” asked Allison. A headache spread behind Paulina’s eyes and there was a wild burn in her chest.

  “This isn’t about Fran,” Paulina hissed. “It’s about her stupid dresses.”

  “Why are they stupid? Because they have nothing to do with you?” Sadie’s voice rose to a troubling pitch. Sadie was the first real friend Paulina had made at school. Many times they’d gotten dressed in Sadie’s dorm and survived the walk to the goth club in heels.

  “Keep it down,” said Paulina. “You sound like a malfunctioning hair dryer.” Freshmen hovered around the clothing sale. A girl tried on a long green sweatshirt and declared it her “soul outfit.” A cloud of hatred exuded from Allison and Sadie, but Paulina pretended she couldn’t feel it. “Fashion here bores me,” Paulina said. “It’s always a dress made out of recycled bottles and cans, or something ‘inspired by nature.’” Telling them off was exhilarating. It felt like cutting the sickly branches off a magnificent tree.

  “You’re being cruel,” Allison said, pulling her lifeless hair behind her ear, “as usual. First you ditch Julian and now us. Just admit you’re in love with Fran!”

  Allison never stood up to Paulina like this. It created bad lines in her forehead.

  “Your new work looks like a sad child’s finger painting,” Paulina told Allison. “I just thought you should know.”

  “That means a lot, coming from a sad child!” Sadie screamed. The three had fought before, but never with this much contempt, and never in front of the mail room, where people had gathered to watch.

  “I can’t believe I wanted Eric to meet you,” Sadie said.

  “Eric?” Paulina asked. It felt beneath her to acknowledge him.

  “God! I’ve only told you a million times!” Sadie said. “My boyfriend. He lives in Chicago. He’s visiting this weekend.”

  Paulina sighed loudly.

  “You don’t even like yourself,” Allison said, and they started walking away.

  “I love myself!” Paulina shouted after them.

  Her headache pounded on. It was an elite headache, she told herself. She’d have to shoo people away from it—it was all hers! People leaving the mail room stepped around her and she made no attempt to get out of their way. They can have each other, Paulina thought. I’ve got Fran.

  Julian leaned against the brick wall of the Painting Building. Paint-stained cigarette butts were stuffed in a gap in the sidewalk. The weather was breezy and warm and made him feel he could will things into existence. The pretty boy walked out, the one Julian had wanted for his film, but had never asked.

  Fran pushed open the heavy studio door.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” Julian said breathlessly, unable to lie. All week he had walked in a daze, addicted to the idea of her. When he talked to Fran in his head, he spoke in a low, suggestive voice. He’d hung around the library waiting for her and never saw her.

  “What? Shut up!” Fran said. She fleetingly wondered if he loved her, and decided he just wanted to sleep with her. Either way, it put her deeply at ease. She saw herself the way he saw her. This happened without her trying. She often felt the impression she gave off. Sometimes it was one of shyness and pretension, but through Julian’s eyes she saw herself as independent and cool. She looked at him and he smiled. She started to walk down the street and he kept her stride. He asked her about her paintings and her semester and what freshman dorm she’d been in. She reminded him they’d taken the same art history class sophomore year.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked as they passed the cafeteria.

  “No.” He was almost handsome. She was walking to her apartment. She hesitated. “Where are we going?”

  “You tell me.”

  Fran rolled her eyes and allowed him to walk her home. They stood awkwardly at her door. Apollo crossed the street and they both stared at him. “One time at Riff’s, I watched him play pinball for hours,” Julian said.

  “Was he good?”

  “Phenomenal. I wanted to use him in a movie of mine, but he got totally paranoid about it when I asked,” Julian said. Fran tried to imagine Julian at Ri
ff’s, Julian with Paulina, but couldn’t.

  “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.

  5

  When 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 s
treet. 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.