Dean and Troy arrived, rescuing the party from its familiarity. In the dark, they were all renewed. They sweated through their outfits. They sniffed a bottle of shoe polish that gave a staggering two-minute high. People made out in the corners of Sadie’s apartment. Apollo put his arm around Paulina’s waist, and she draped herself over his twitchy shoulders. She touched his shaved head and it felt eelish and undid her.
She imagined sex with him while he pitched a book he was writing about the government. “Nineteen fifty-five, they dropped three hundred thousand fever mosquitos from a plane over Georgia. Then they made a bomb made of fleas. It burst open on the plane. Those are facts. But what is their aim? How are they going to control the world with bugs? The facts are out there, they just need to be interpreted.” The novelty of Apollo was evaporating. “Where’s Sadie?” Paulina asked Allison.
“Phone,” Allison said. She lay on Sadie’s couch looking at her hands. The party’s excitement had expired, but while most people gathered their things, believers tried to revive the party by flinging themselves around the room and sniffing shoe polish.
Eileen motioned Paulina into the kitchen, but Paulina turned and left. Apollo followed her onto the street. Outside it smelled like skunk. He kissed her and she let him. His tongue jabbed around her mouth. She had a vision of a charcoal drawing she’d done of him freshman year: he was crouched on a box, his uncircumcised penis in shadow. Paulina burst out laughing.
“What?” Apollo asked.
“It stinks out here.”
“I’m taking you to my hideout,” said Apollo. Paulina wanted to ridicule him, but she also wanted him.
“You’ll have to wear a blindfold, though,” he said.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she said.
“No one knows where I crash.” He took his American flag bandanna out of his pocket.
At first, Paulina kept track of the direction they walked, but now she no longer cared. She hadn’t really liked Fran as an equal she told herself. She had just been entertained by Fran’s youngness. She remembered Julian as a time suck. What had they even talked about? Lazing on the couch, saying nothing, nothing interesting. She remembered how she had lorded over Smith and laughed out loud.
“What?” Apollo asked.
“Nothing,” she said.
He held her still. She heard his keys. A door creaked open. Inside, it smelled familiar. “Okay, up these stairs, go slow.” She managed up the steps. Lovers pass over quickly. Yes, there is a turnover rate for lovers. As proof, she strained to remember her first boyfriend from junior high and could not, but then with a flash—Aldon Landry—she remembered his green backpack, Alice in Chains tattoo, and all that went with it.
Paulina lay on an air mattress in Apollo’s cramped attic space. Now that they were done and talking, his body seemed smaller to her. He rocked from side to side. He couldn’t lie still. “All of you are just freaky rich kids with drawing talent, but no one cares about that kind of talent anymore. The queen does not need her portrait done, thank you very much.” He laughed.
“Why rich?” Paulina asked.
“Someone has sent you off to draw portraits! Someone has tricked you into thinking it’s a life plan.” Paulina’s eyes fixed on the roof beams and she realized they were in the attic of the College Building.
“Don’t you all know about cameras? A camera does the same thing you guys are doing.”
“I know. I completely agree,” she said. She felt she was the only student in the school who knew art was unnecessary. “Art is an adolescent impulse to busy oneself with oneself,” she said. His eyes stared off. “How many other portrait painters have you slept with?” she asked.
“You think you’re the only one?” He laughed exaggeratedly. “Hell no! When I’m up there, I’m advertising my whole deal. How old am I?” He turned to her, grinning. “How old do I look?” He propped himself up on his elbow and started isolating and flexing his muscles. She looked away to the roof beams. The College Building or the Foundation Building. He’d decorated the space with flags and discount sheets. Unopened instant soups surrounded his rice cooker. There was something congealed in a pan. “What is that?” Paulina asked.
“Whaddya think it is?” he asked. She cringed. He laughed in her ear. Library books were piled by the side of his air mattress. A cow skull sat on his dresser.
“Did you steal that from the Nature Lab?” she asked.
“You think animals only exist in the Nature Lab? You think there are more alive things than dead things? Guess again,” he said. She laughed. “Guess again.”
Paulina thought too much about Fran. She crumbled like a salt woman, making her computer show her revolting things, then asking it honest, naïve questions about her body and the Middle East conflict. At SUPERTHRIFT, she searched for something revolutionary and left wearing the gaudy jacket of a drum major.
Twice Paulina saw Fran with Julian. The first time they were kissing on someone’s doorstep. Paulina averted her eyes immediately, like she’d seen a headless person on the highway. The second time, she arrived early to a movie and saw them, still in the theater after the credits. She didn’t stay for the movie. She rushed home thinking, I will become a myth who murders old loves. At home, she stripped off her clothes and put on her red boots. She imagined setting the theater on fire. It is vain of me, she thought, angrily snapping spaghetti in half.
She recalled, at first in bits, and then in an overwhelming wave, fond memories of Julian. She remembered how stoic he was and how she overturned him. How they insulted their classmates in private and exchanged knowing looks in public. She remembered a time when she’d sat for Julian and when he was done drawing, instead of critiquing it to him, she just complimented him. How exciting it must have been for him to lose his virginity to someone who knew what she was doing and didn’t care about getting dirty or making noise.
Afraid of running into Fran at the college library, Paulina started going to a small library far from campus, in an area messy with construction. The library was cold and sleek. Paulina sank between two rows of books. She stretched her legs. She remembered Fran dancing in front of the jagged mirror and smashed an ant with her sandal. She applied makeup with a small foam cube. She said, “Fuck me, Julian,” and, with her legs spread on the toilet, orgasmed quietly in the library bathroom stall.
7
In May, the Color Club boys graduated. There were extravagant parties every night. Parties where the Venus Flytrap set her final project on fire and Zane danced nude with underwear painted onto his body. Sadie and Allison gave the boys flowers. And then they were gone. One could walk the streets incessantly and never run into them. A family moved into the Color Club and started repairing and removing every wonderful thing about it.
The school’s little society split and scattered for the summer. Fran heard that Paulina and Allison went to New York together, but she didn’t know what they did there or where Sadie had gone. Julian TA’d film classes. The campus filled with high schoolers. Fran took a job at SUPERTHRIFT, stapling colored tags on to the clothing. Monday, green tags were half off. Tuesday it was blue tags. Fran and a high school girl drove the SUPERTHRIFT van to all the metal donation bins. Sometimes there was trash thrown in with the clothes—plastic bags of dog poop, dead plants, shattered picture frames.
Fran sublet her apartment to a grad student for the summer, and moved her things into Julian’s. They spent every night together in an easy love. Fran didn’t tire of watching him. His long legs, his short hair. She studied him. He wasn’t a Greek god or oracle, or whatever Marvin was, but he was real, and smart, and completely hers. Every story he told her, she saved it in her mind as if she were going to write his biography, or tell it to their kids.
They tried to cook things for each other. They did their laundry in the same machines. They got so good at getting each other off that they could do it blindfolded or standing up, or quickly in an alley, or awkwardly on a big rock near the canal.
They neglected their art. They never worked. It was too hot on the weekends. They talked a lot about work. They imagined doing work with such concentration, as if work was done only in the studio of the mind. They lay in Julian’s humid apartment, naked and dreaming.
“It won’t be easy to get the money for my first film, but it will happen,” Julian told Fran. “I’ll be patient and stick with it. I’ll do some shorts and get them into festivals. I won’t use video. I’ll intern for the masters.”
Fran turned onto her back. The fan oscillated toward them and away from them, blessing them and scorning them. “I’m going to get a nice studio with big windows. But first I might have to paint in my room or wherever I can. I’ll get an apartment with a porch.”
“Good. You should,” he said.
“This year I’m going to be super focused and do really good work for my show.” She could see herself doing work. She pictured herself blowing a stray curl out of her face, painting in nice dresses and ruining the dresses and not caring. She pictured the paintings she wanted to make and the things people would say about them. And how she would look next to the paintings, having made them. Carrying them around. She imagined living in Brooklyn or Portland with Julian, being grown-ups and hosting dinner parties and raising a puppy together. She imagined a wedding where everyone acted crazy and there were no adults. She imagined raising children in the woods, living off the grid, whatever that meant. Having a secret woods mansion. But running it off green energy.
“I’m never going to use violence for violence’s sake or sex for sex’s sake, but there is going to be sex and violence in these movies.” Julian got up and went to the sink to get water. When he got back into bed, Fran wrapped herself around him.
“What if we moved to Canada after we graduate?” she said. “Wouldn’t that be cool?” There were probably tons of trees in Canada. It was always so green on the map.
“I guess,” he said. “Who knows.”
Fran pouted. She went to the bathroom to look at her hair and it looked good. Her breasts were swollen because she was expecting her period, and they also looked good. She was interesting. People told her she looked like she was in a band. There was no reason he shouldn’t want to live with her, and marry her and everything.
They saw each other so much that summer that the boredom became normal. They talked through the boredom. They criticized each other in their minds, and then a joke broke through the glass or a kiss did the unraveling work of a kiss. Sometimes they knew there was something better out there, sometimes they had the imagination to picture it, but they were lazy and liked each other. Finally they were part of a pair—someone would listen to whatever they said.
“Sampson is recommending me for this big Whitney residency award thing. All I need to do is fill out this application.”
“Fill it out!” Julian nuzzled into her neck. Fran knew he thought she was unmotivated. He’d said so a few times. The application wasn’t that complicated, but there were essay questions. No one had taught her how to write essays. It stressed her out. She felt absently for his dick and his balls. She ran her hand softly against his pubic hair, then on his thin thighs and bony knees.
“You know,” he said, “I know something about you that I never told you.”
“What?” she asked. She wanted to ask him to do the dishes. He hadn’t done a dish in so long.
“I know about Blood Axe.”
Fran laughed. It didn’t make any sense. “What about Blood Axe?” she asked.
Julian danced his fingers up and down her back. “Everything about it,” he said slyly. “The cabin, and Paulina, and the zebra-skin rug. How you lost your virginity to him and made Paulina keep it a secret.” Fran wanted to die laughing. She pressed her face into his stomach. “Don’t be embarrassed. I think it’s super sexy. It was my first fantasy of you.” Fran was incredulous. “I mean, I know his real name wasn’t really Blood Axe. Blood Axe is some ancient Norwegian warrior. I looked it up. But that’s what she called him, so that’s how I thought of him.”
Fran smiled in disbelief.
Julian elbowed her. “When were you going to tell me? I’ve been waiting for you to tell me,” he said.
“But you’ve already heard the whole story,” said Fran.
“I want to hear you tell it,” he said. “Look how hard it gets me,” he said.
She played with his erection, remembering her first time having sex in high school, and then called back the Blood Axe fantasy. All she could see were abs and hair. He’d had powers, too—she remembered. He’d been a time traveler, or something.
“It was a good way to lose it,” she said. “He was very kind. The whole thing was dreamy.”
“Dreamy like how?” he asked. “Were you drunk?”
“No, but I was seeing everything in this heightened way. When I met him, I could have just, like, taken a picture of him and moved on, but I could tell there was something mysterious and wonderful about him, so I lingered.” She looked at him, gauging whether he bought the whole thing, and was charmed that he did. He kissed her and she kissed back.
“And after you, he had sex with Paulina?” he asked.
She nodded. “And after Paulina, Milo.”
“No!” he said. She laughed.
“Yeah. Paulina didn’t tell you that? Milo had never even kissed someone before. It really changed his work when he got back. He switched to sculpture.” Julian shifted his weight. His eyes were filled with doubt. He started to object but Fran interrupted.
“She’s something, right?”
“Who?” Julian asked.
“Paulina. She’s like Cleopatra, but more squat.”
“She’s more like Humphrey Bogart.”
“No!” Fran shook her head.
“I mean her voice is,” said Julian.
“Yeah, her voice.”
Senior year started with no great event. After Paulina’s summer in New York, the college town seemed even more pitiful. Sadie and Allison took pictures of it to remember, but Paulina wanted to watch it shrink in the rearview mirror of a vehicle speeding away. She started hanging out in the dilapidated mill buildings downtown, where art dudes squeezed puff paint on flawed iron-casting projects and built couches and lived their dreams out in high ceilings and local fame, thrashing on drum sets, blowing their amps, going by names like Dog Claw and Mystic. In these warehouses, there was often a Lego wall, a makeshift bathroom, and a desire for the world to end.
Mystic had graduated years before, but he stayed in town, playing noise shows and dating girls from the school. Paulina wasn’t very attached to him, but she needed someone’s dumb eyes on her when she lay in bed. Even in New York she’d thought daily about Julian and Fran. Mystic’s loft bed had a ladder and a slide, and like other girls before her, Paulina usually took the slide. The bathroom had an exposed light bulb and a door with no lock. Instead of a toilet seat, there was a piece of wood with a hole cut in it. Beyond that was a series of rooms crammed with rotting packing materials.
Paulina slept at Mystic’s most nights, avoiding campus when she didn’t have class. She found it easy to ignore Fran, even early in the semester when Fran was still fool enough to wave at her in public. Paulina glided by her, thinking, You trimmed my toenails in a past life or You will trim my toenails in the next life. She saluted Julian when she saw him, as if they had served together in a war and she would always have his back.
She did well in her art history classes. She scared the sophomores in her printmaking class. She wasted hours with Sadie and Allison, styling their hair and listening to the trials and triumphs of their lives. When they left town for winter break, Paulina was especially bored. She recorded her orgasms on her computer and played them back for her amusement.
At the start of spring semester, Mystic’s warehouse hosted a party. Paulina wore a sample dress Sadie had made that had one long sleeve and one short sleeve. Mystic’s roommates decorated the main room with Christmas lights and big foam sculptures. Gr
adually the room filled with Paulina’s classmates. Sadie and Allison arrived and huddled around Paulina while she talked shit about Mystic and his roommates. “They violated a cat yesterday. It was vile. I had to leave.”
“Violated?” Sadie asked.
“They think they’re rock stars, but they’re abandoned children in a never-ending sleepover.”
Despite everything, it still excited Sadie to be around Paulina. Things were revealed around her. People performed. Her curls seemed to contain the natural delight of the universe.
“Your hair looks awesome,” Sadie said.
“Thanks! It’s this new conditioner I—”
They all turned as Fran walked into the party. She was wearing the jumper from SUPERTHRIFT. “Oh my God,” Sadie said, “I love her outfit.”
Paulina shook her head in disbelief. Fran looked stunning, like exceptional things would happen to her.
“Isn’t that, like, a child’s clothing thing?” Paulina said.
“I don’t know what it is, but she can pull it off,” Sadie said. Paulina wished she had ripped the jumper to shreds when she’d had the chance. She met Fran’s eyes and both of them looked quickly away.
The dance floor was barbaric and free. Mystic shined a flashlight over the dancers. Paulina closed her eyes and replayed the compliments she’d received about her hair. She opened her eyes and saw Sadie dancing with Fran. Sadie’s hand caressed Fran’s curls and they danced, flitting around each other like preteens. Paulina raged inside herself. Why couldn’t people stay where she put them? They were always pairing up to destroy her!
“Babe, meet Darlene,” Mystic said. “She’s an art history major too.” Paulina glanced at the slight redhead before her. She had the figure of a pencil.
“Art history is dead,” Paulina said and stormed off to find drugs.
Paulina & Fran Page 7