Paulina & Fran (6 page)

“How’s it going with Tim?” Fran asked nervously.

Paulina sighed. “Honestly? It sucks.” Paulina leaned dramatically against the bookcase behind her. “Sex with Julian was a million times better.”

Fran’s throat tightened. She’d expected Paulina to tire herself out praising Tim. Fran had grown used to hearing about Tim—his hands rough from sanding, how sawdust fell off his clothes like a kind of masculine powder.

“I gave up on Tim. He was completely unavailable to me. Anyway, what’s happening with that, with Marvin?” Paulina asked.

“Nothing.”

“That boy needs to get his dick checked at Health Services. Seriously! Who could resist you? Your silhouette should replace the school logo.”

Fran opened her mouth to tell her, but Paulina was distracted, watching two girls covertly rip pages from a book. “I think Sadie and Allison have finally decided to ask for my forgiveness,” Paulina said. “They asked me to come over. I had completely forgotten we weren’t speaking.” She turned suddenly, and looked into Fran’s eyes. Fran stared back in terror. She had always been afraid of Paulina, even in Norway—afraid of her temper, her hasty dismissals, but also afraid of her affection. Once Paulina endorsed something, she raised it too high in her regard. Fran always felt exposed around her, that Paulina knew too well Fran’s desires and insecurities.

“I should really go to studio.”

Paulina made a face. “Promise me you’ll come to Sadie’s party tonight.”

Fran found it impossible to say no.

A
llison saw them at Thai Dream,” Sadie told Paulina. The three girls sat on lawn chairs on Sadie’s porch. Below them, the students biked and walked to class.

“They’re definitely together,” Allison said with satisfaction.

“We thought you should know,” said Sadie, beaming.

They hadn’t apologized. Instead, when Paulina arrived, they’d hugged her stiffly, then told her of this poisonous development. Her face faltered. She forced a laugh. She pictured Fran naked and got the wind knocked out of her.

“Are you okay?” Allison asked.

“You look bad,” noted Sadie. She remembered how Paulina looked when they’d first met, before Paulina had redone herself. Paulina’s hair had been a ball of frizz. In the bathroom, she’d try to mat it down with water. She hadn’t yet learned to carry her weight with power, and danced clumsily
at Artist Ball. For a few weeks, she’d tried to get people to call her Lina, but no one would.

Paulina sunk into a primal, hateful area of her consciousness.

“What is it about my porch?” said Sadie. “When I’m up here I feel like I’m deciding who will get into heaven.” They watched their classmates walk by in insignificant groups. Paulina sat frozen in her chair.

“It’s actually really perfect. They’re both corny and have no instinct for fashion,” Paulina said. A muscle twitched in her face. Nils walked by, and normally Paulina would have shouted out to him, or at least criticized him to them, but she was silent. “She’s ruined everything,” Paulina said.

“Maybe she’ll die,” Allison said lightheartedly.

“She’d haunt me. Though she’s no great mind, she’d figure out how.”

“What if
you
died?” Sadie asked. Paulina gave her a nasty look. “No, I mean like, then
you
could haunt
her
.”

That Fran could find happiness with Julian was excruciating to Paulina. Fran was adding on to a project Paulina had halted. Hadn’t she mined all there was? She took her blanket out from her bra.

“You still have that bit of rag?” Sadie asked, pitying her.

“It looks like Joseph Beuys’s wolf blanket,” Allison said, “but smaller.”

“This blanket was given to me by a spirit in the night,” Paulina said. A smile fleetingly premiered across her face before drooping like a dead plant. Allison rolled her eyes.

“Let’s go,” Sadie said. Already they were tired of her again.

“Fine, go. But I feel poisoned and might do something horrid we’d all regret.”

“Like what?” Allison asked. Paulina wanted more of a reaction. She sat silently, depriving them of her answer.

“Then come to the cafeteria with us,” Sadie said impatiently.

Paulina refused. “It’s always crawling with freshmen in their high school wardrobes.”

“If you want to hang out before the party, we’ll be at Eileen’s. You know the address.”

“No, I don’t. I forgot it,” Paulina said unhappily.

“You know it!” Sadie said, gathering her things. “Listen, stay here all you want, but lock up when you go.” Paulina gave them a pained look, but still they left her.

She sat on the porch for a miserable half hour, the plastic bands of the lawn chair sticking to her thighs. The dread she’d felt in little packets over the last few months now traveled to her from a greater source, in huge waves from the town’s reservoir of dread, sending dread meant for other people, a collective dread her body absorbed with no immunity. She
pictured the dread like smoke or oil. Oil that turned into smoke. She felt like a ruin of a woman, like a cold, empty cave. She tried to draw up a life plan, but a mean magnet sat on her brain, preventing her from thinking forward. She was stuck in the ugly cell of the moment.

Eventually, Paulina rose from the chair, stormed into the room Sadie used as her closet, and ransacked the shoe rack for the red leather boots.

In a daze, Paulina marched downtown. Naïve bitch, Paulina thought, and pictured Fran laughing in Norway. Fran dancing at the Color Club. Too easily, she imagined Fran naked. Gather your thoughts, bitch, Paulina thought.
I love myself I love myself I love myself,
Paulina chanted to herself.
Do the breath thing, get your breath straight.
She tried to remember what it was that she usually summoned to keep her from crying, but instead pictured the Holocaust—the thing she pictured to stop laughing during a lecture. She made a sound between laughing and crying. Two flat-chested girls turned to stare.

She was surprised to find she knew his schedule and in what classroom he was watching mediocre films. She burst in the door and they all looked up, squinting like shrews at the light. He was slumped in the back row. Paulina marveled at the weird creatures who had chosen film/animation/video as their major. Beastly looking people she recognized from
freshman year hadn’t transferred as she’d assumed; they’d actually been holed up here, tinkering with buttons.

Paulina saw that none of them knew how to use makeup, that the boys were clinging to their eccentricities, that the girls were clutching their insecurities dear. They wore big T-shirts and had stringy hair. Two of them wore chain wallets. There were a few girls and guys who had good posture and clever eyes, but they stood out like swords in a room of noodles. Someone in the front row reached out to touch Paulina’s dress and she swatted the creature’s hand. The girl whimpered and sat back in her seat. “Brains!” Paulina managed, and an unremarkable middle-aged man looked amusedly to Julian.

With big steps he walked around his sleepy, unwashed classmates and met Paulina in the hall.

“Fuck me,” she said, “in a video-editing room, my place, your place.” She swayed aggressively.

He recognized the embroidered silk undershirt she wore over a faded sundress. Her lips were scrunched tightly together. Her body seemed braced to engulf him. “No,” he said. Her heart beat violently in her chest. She waited for him to say more, but he held himself still. He could hear the audio from his classmate’s film.

The dread was lodged in her throat. The oil turned to smoke. “Take your life,” she said shaking, “and have it
far
away from me.” Straightening to a height he’d never seen, she
stomped her boots down the hall, each step making a terrible crack.

At Sadie’s party, the kitchen floor was covered with mud from everyone’s shoes. The wallpaper and curtains clashed in discord. Paulina was in a circle of acquaintances. “I can’t get excited about small dogs,” she said to the group. She’d changed into one of her more preposterous costumes—her Guatemalan war dress, Sadie called it. Bright knit fabric frayed over her cleavage where she’d cut the dress with scissors. Her hairdo relied on all her hair clips to create a “velvet rope” effect—again, Sadie’s words.

After leaving Julian, Paulina had picked up a random boy outside the Film Building who wore his T-shirt tucked in his jeans. The boy had a number of nervous tics, and looked like he animated dragons all day. During the short walk to his place, he’d talked good-naturedly about his classes as if he were giving a school tour. When they were finally in his small bedroom, he gave Paulina an impish, Fran-like shrug. She pushed him onto his made bed. He seemed grateful for her direction. It felt to Paulina that she was giving the boy’s narrow bed something it had always wanted but never thought it would have. For a few minutes it made Paulina feel better—the boy acted like he had undergone a religious conversion—but soon Paulina’s good feeling crashed and she felt quite doomed again.

Fran arrived at Sadie’s party dressed for spring, and skipped over to Paulina, who evaded her hug and pushed her into the wall. “You bore me,” Paulina said, and the crowd around them backed up.

“Paulina,” Fran said blushing, but Paulina turned swiftly on her heels, and as if attached to her with string, the group followed her into the dancing room. Even from the next room, Fran could hear her theatrics.

“The stars in our sky are far, far inferior to the stars of our ancestors,” Paulina said and laughed. Every time Fran looked over, Paulina glared back. Fran drank beers and the beers made her tilt.

Marvin wandered through the door. Fran walked shakily over to him, believing he was the Savior. When she reached him, she realized he was just an undiscovered model with a creative mind. Still, his smile unwound the knots in her.

“This party sucks,” Fran said. “Everyone is just making up theories.”

“I’m no fan of theories,” said Marvin. He looked with deep interest at the mud pattern on the linoleum. Sadie burst by, stupidly drunk, covered in jewelry. “He said he loves me!” she cried, carrying a splayed-open laptop into the next room. Fran’s glassy eyes were fixed on the wall.
But she dropped Julian so casually! She spent so much time complaining about him. She hadn’t seemed at all attached.

“You okay?” Marvin asked.

“This party just sucks,” Fran said, avoiding his gaze, “but I have to stay,” she said. “I have to talk to someone,” she said, “about something sort of stupid,” she said. She wanted to latch on to him. He looked at her blankly.

Paulina sat like a princess on the ottoman. Apollo walked by and Eileen ran after him, holding a bag of cocaine. Fran felt disoriented. Girls from her studio eyed her with curiosity. Fran had no idea if her hair looked good. She touched it and couldn’t tell. She searched for a reflective surface.

One night in Norway, after Paulina had styled Fran’s hair, they had shown each other their breasts and complimented them. Fran had felt they had always known each other and always would. Now Fran walked up to Paulina and everyone cleared away except Allison, who sat unmoving. In the kitchen, girls took pictures of Marvin. “That’s no way to treat beauty,” Paulina said and Fran silently agreed.

“I know you hate me right now,” Fran said.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” said Paulina, playing with a bracelet on her wrist that made a sound like rain.

“I didn’t think you liked him anymore, but I should have asked.”

“Who?” There was a pause in which neither moved. Paulina fixed her eyes on her bracelet, shoplifted from Nord
strom. Of course she
liked
him. She loved him, loved both of them, but this thought snapped back into the dark unknowing place of her. Bits of conversation made her turn to the other room where Eileen was humping the floor “breakdancing.” Someone was saying, “It’s that gluey stuff you spread onto the solder and the metal so they bond.” A girl said, “I found a cockroach in their toilet and saved it with a piece of toilet paper.” “I was an absolute animal in LA!” Apollo yelled and beat his fist in the air.

Paulina turned back to Fran. “I
don’t
like him. He’s boring. His life is useless. His apartment sucks,” Paulina said, looking at her fingernails. Fran rolled her eyes. “I mean he’s nice. I think he’s nice. Do you think he’s nice?” Paulina asked Allison, who was slowly packing weed into a bowl. Each time she said nice, it sounded like a boring, stupid thing to be. Allison smirked.

Sadie plopped down next to Paulina. “The best night of my life!” Sadie said, and threw her head on Paulina’s lap. Paulina mindlessly stroked Sadie’s long black hair.

“He loves me, Fran!” Sadie said happily.

“I’m really sorry,” Fran said, her eyes filling with tears.

“Enough,” Paulina said waving her away. “You’re ruining the party.”

Paulina’s hate balled like a fist, willing Fran to leave, but Fran still stood before her. Paulina glared holes in Fran,
watching her tears drip. Finally Fran turned and left. Allison blew out smoke. “She is actually pretty ordinary,” Paulina told Allison. “She deceived me by dressing so eccentrically. A lisp doesn’t make you charismatic.”

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.