Paulina & Fran

3

Julian and Paulina walked to the thin canal that cut through town. Swans made it seem special. A huge mall rose in the distance, but they walked toward an abandoned area of grass. Julian hummed a few notes from an Ennio Morricone score, quietly so Paulina wouldn’t hear. Then louder, so she would. It excited him to be around her. Her moods were so erratic. He could not control her. He looked at the deformed shadow she cast in the grass and smiled. He looked at his own shadow, expecting it to be noble, but it too was foreshortened and grotesque.

Behind the rusted shell of a school bus, they lowered themselves to the ground and pulled off each other’s clothing. The grass poked and itched them. Watching Julian kiss her pale breasts, Paulina felt like an empress, one who didn’t protect her people. Julian pushed his pants down and she guided him into her. She felt nailed to the universe, in the spell that made things work. They both moved at the same time. They were impatient. There was no rhythm. The irrelevant voice of a child floated across the canal like a runaway balloon. They stopped.

“You go,” Paulina said, trying to stay graceful. Julian moved back and forth like a swimmer. Paulina felt she would never reach her orgasm, that it was continents away and unknown to her. A train hooted in the distance. She got on her hands and knees. “Like this, so you can. .” They did it that way for a while and Paulina sensed the orgasm and strove to meet it. She grabbed her breast and imagined it was someone’s. Her orgasm was drowned out by his.

Julian lay back on the grass, caught his breath, and kissed Paulina. She scrunched away from him. He kissed her again.

“I don’t want to date you anymore,” Paulina told him.

“You love me,” he said.

“Nah, not really. Not lately.”

“What am I, your discarded plaything?”

Paulina felt his semen pool in her underwear. She had wanted one last time. As she’d told Sadie more than once, “Brains can fuck.”

The breakup sex reminded her of her semester at Smith. That had all started with Sally in the yoga shack by the lake. But Paulina couldn’t avoid her feelings for Audrey, who gazed at Paulina unabashedly in the dining hall, forcing Paulina to eat in a rugged, macho way to impress her. Then, in a steamy room at the Smith botanical gardens, she felt up Susan Bradley, a girl preoccupied with sustainable living. Later, in her dorm room, a knock.

The girls at Smith had been naturally drawn to Paulina, whose critical gaze held weight. She followed each loaded stare to its giggling, passionate realization. But, by midterms, the girls revolted, led by Audrey. Sally looked on, stunned out of her heartbreak, as one of them punched Paulina in the face. The girl’s fake sapphire ring left a scar. After, Paulina tried to punish the girls by seducing the male teachers they all lauded. Only one was weak to this, and he was the worst looking of all. The scandal led to Paulina’s transfer.

“Did you stray from me on your trip?” Julian asked. His choice of words, his measured speech, his expression of defeat annoyed Paulina. He took everything too seriously. He silently buttoned, zipped, and belted his pants. “Was it James?” he asked glumly.

“God, no!”

“Nils?” he asked incredulously.

Paulina was ashamed that she hadn’t slept with anyone on the trip. It was unlike her. Fran had kept her occupied. She scratched hard at a trapped hair on her leg, while her lips quivered into a smile.

“I didn’t want to tell you,” said Paulina, “but me and Fran,” she paused thoughtfully, “I mean Fran and I met. .” She laughed. “You are never going to believe this, but we met this huge Viking named Blood Axe.”

“Shut up,” Julian said with disgust.

“No, really. I mean, it’s possible it’s not his real name, but we met this huge hulking guy and were swept away. Fran lost her virginity to him, to Blood Axe,” she said. “On his zebra-skin rug.” Julian stared at the water, looking hurt. “Don’t tell her I told you,” Paulina said. “Really, I wasn’t going to say anything, because I knew you wouldn’t believe me. And you know me, I wanted to be good, but it promised to be such a unique experience.”

“Bullshit,” Julian said.

“It’s how I got this,” she said, showing him the black-and-blue mark on her arm. “He’s unaware of his own strength,” she said, as if defending him. Paulina’s face was stoic, while inside she felt glee.

Julian cringed. “You weren’t going to tell me?” He examined her coldly.

“We’ve been drifting apart for some time,” Paulina said. “Blood Axe just sealed the deal.”

“Which one is Fran?” Julian asked. “Curly hair?”

“Yeah,” said Paulina. “Nice girl.”

“She’s a virgin?”

“Not anymore.”

Julian sighed. “Leave it to you to find some—”

“Viking,” she interrupted.

“Viking poser.”

“Like I said, a Viking. From long ago. He was divine. I don’t expect you to understand.”

“Fuck off,” Julian said and left Paulina in the grass.

She felt a stab of longing as he grew smaller and smaller in her sight and wished he’d turn around and walk her home. Even if he just wanted to fight about it some, Paulina would have fought some. She tried to salvage the glee, but now there were only a few glittery bits that dissipated once she noticed them.

The Junior Painting Studio was a large room divided by white drywall partitions. Students worked late nights in their studios and idolized the artists of the past, especially the lesser-known ones — Dubuffet, Guston, even Morandi and his underwhelming little vases and bowls. The painters glued pennies and trash and family heirlooms on to their paintings. They painted their friends making out with old television stars. They painted their friends nude in the streetlight. Nude at the Pyramids. They thought of a concept and created a series exhausting the concept.

Some of the studios were clean, like a gallery showing work. Others, like Fran’s, were stuffed like a locker with clothes, books, broken mirrors, pill bottles, doll heads, candy wrappers, stiff brushes, old glue, and stray stretcher bars. Her paintings were thought to be strong — she’d been compared to Elizabeth Peyton and Bonnard — but she didn’t work as hard as the others. She was slow and took breaks. Spring semester, her studio was across from Marvin’s. Other love has felt normal, but my love for Marvin feels like a wilderness, Fran wrote in the margin of her art history handout. I don’t just love him. I like everything he does. Everything he touches seems lucky. It is painful to watch him.

She drifted toward him naturally, like a dog. He seemed to like her, but had never asked her to do anything, even go to the cafeteria. People were perturbed by Marvin, who had no definite social allegiance and would cruise into a party, then leave wordlessly. He didn’t need anything from anyone. Once, in the computer lab, Fran clicked on a file saved to the desktop and read an artist statement: My work affects my relationships with people. Sometimes a painting will change my relationship to my parents, even though the painting is completely abstract and mostly one color with some texture. There was no name on the document, but Fran felt drawn to whoever wrote it, and was sure it was Marvin.

It was Fran’s first time in studio since break. She watched Marvin while she stretched a canvas. He sat on the floor dipping acorns in paint.

“Why acorns?” James asked.

“I thought the mice would eat them,” he said, “but they didn’t.” Mice had moved in over the winter and lived in the mess the painters made, eating crumbs and construction paper.

“Why that color?” James asked as he walked by.

“I have a lot of it,” Marvin said. His curly hair was in a mess over his eyes. “How was Norway, Fran?” he asked. Their eyes met for the third time that day.

“Pretty,” she said, and her body warmed like she was talking to God.

“You could never date a boy like that, who lives without needing to know himself,” Gretchen told Fran, but Gretchen knew nothing. The girls walked out of the studios without looking at each other. Both wore patchwork backpacks they’d bought at the hippie store freshman year.

Fran and Gretchen had become friends in Foundation Drawing one day after Gretchen’s hair elastic flew through the air, narrowly missing the model. Gretchen was understated. No hairdo announced her. She was a graphic design major, which Fran found uninspiring. Gretchen wasn’t free like the others. She danced, drank, and drew, but never gave herself over to it. She never felt the light of everyone’s eyes upon her; nor did she crave this kind of light.

“He talks in a baby voice,” Gretchen said.

“No, he doesn’t. He just isn’t listening to how he sounds.”

“You know you didn’t call me back,” Gretchen said.

“I know. I’m sorry. I had so much to catch up on.”

“How was the trip anyway? Did you socialize with the enemy?”

“Who?” said Fran. “Oh, I mean, in passing.”

At the lecture, Fran and Gretchen watched a successful New York artist strip to her underwear and gnaw on a man-sized piece of chocolate. During the Q&A, students asked embarrassing questions and name-dropped other artists. The questions were met with a collective groan, as if the student body were one body, one that couldn’t accept itself. After, the artist put a curse on them, insisting: “Only one person in this room will make it in the art world.”

It took a lifetime to walk to SUPERTHRIFT, and much of it was highway. Normally Sadie drove, but she had lent Eileen her car. Skipping ahead of Sadie and Allison, Paulina exclaimed, “I am free! I can fuck anyone I want! I can do as I please!”

“But you were doing that before,” Sadie said.

“But this time with the clearest of minds! An available bed, and a purely selfish heart. The things I will accomplish,” she whispered loudly.

“What are you going to accomplish?” Allison asked dubiously.

Paulina stopped walking. “Hey! Lay off,” she said.

After a step, Sadie and Allison stopped too. Paulina eyed them suspiciously. “What happened here while I was gone, anyway? Did the gap close further without me?”

“What gap?” Sadie asked, though she knew. They resumed walking.

“Those precious inches between your ass and hers. What did I miss around here anyway? Anything revolutionary?”

“There was a flood at the Feminist Warehouse,” Sadie said.

“That guy Fluff sold Eileen cocaine that was laced with something.”

“Oh, and my boyfriend visited and Allison met him,” said Sadie.

“He’s great,” Allison said. They smiled.

“What? What boyfriend?” Paulina asked. Cars sped by like bullets.

“Eric,” Sadie said emphatically. “Remember? I told you about him before you left and I wrote those e-mails.”

“Oh, yeah,” Paulina said. She didn’t want Sadie to have a boyfriend because she didn’t want to have to listen to her talk about him. But at least he didn’t live there; at least Paulina didn’t have to see him. “I’m sure he’s great,” Paulina said. The shoulder narrowed and they walked on in single file: Sadie, then Allison, then Paulina. Paulina’s head filled with images of lame boyfriends, ones who wore puka-shell necklaces, Adidas running pants, and shirts with words.

At SUPERTHRIFT, remnants from hundreds of dull lives hung before them on plastic hangers. Even when the girls found something remarkable, it always seemed like the original owner had misunderstood and squandered it. Every nightgown came with a few bad dreams. This depressive air empowered the girls. Their lives were incredible! When the clothes fit, they felt they’d looted the lame, the poor, and the dead. When they didn’t, the girls dismissed used clothing as gross.

Besides the clothes, they searched earnestly in the cassette pile, the furniture, the shoe racks. Everything seemed like something they could improve, that no one yet had known how to improve. Allison bought the paintings — amateur still lifes and common landscapes, tacky beach scenes with sponged-on clouds, clown paintings, sadly confident bubble-lettered names — to gesso over in her studio.

Paulina began a methodical search in Blouses, though she never had luck there. She listened to Sadie and Allison in Skirts, one aisle over. Their voices rose and fell. They were either trashing Eileen’s work or praising it. Paulina lingered a while, wondering, before marching off into Evening Dresses. At first nothing appealed to her. She closed herself off to every option without really considering them. Most of the dresses she’d seen before. Some had sweat or deodorant marks. Many had no inner life.

The song changed, reminding Paulina that she was free of Julian, and she loosened up. A few items intrigued her and she took some chances, ignoring any indication of size — it’ll stretch, she thought, or I’ll cut it. Once her arm was weighed down with clothes, she walked triumphantly to the dressing rooms.

“Goin’ in, girls!” she yelled to Sadie and Allison, but heard no reply. She waited, then smiled, knowing they would scamper over. When Paulina found something that flattered her, Allison and Sadie always hovered around to admire her while she pranced in the aisle in front of her dressing room. Sadie had long given up debating — anything Paulina found “fabulous,” Sadie praised as well. But Paulina didn’t just want their approval; she wanted them to be jealous.

Paulina hung her fur coat on a hook, wincing when the bottom grazed the disgusting dressing room floor. She took off her shirt and pants and piled them on top of her shoes in the corner. It would be nasty to have sex in a SUPERTHRIFT dressing room, but she’d have liked to be able to say she’d done it.

The first dress was huge and Paulina flung it on the floor. She’d found a nice pair of pants, but before she got too excited she spotted a bloodstain on the butt and extracted herself from the situation. “Sadie!” she called. “Allison!” She wanted to tell them about the bloodstain and show them the jumper she was about to try on: a blue-gray cotton thing that narrowed into shorts. It was the kind of outfit one wore spontaneously, she felt. When she put it on, her breasts swelled out the top. Wearing it, she felt like a provocative babysitter. With the jumper came the promise of warm weather and new love.

She got very close to the mirror trying to discern the pattern on the fabric. Sailboats? Flowers? Nope. Paisley! Allison and Sadie still hadn’t appeared. What are they doing, she thought, fucking on a used mattress? Until that moment, the thought of anything sexual between them had never occurred to her. She frowned at the idea and made the “gross” face.

All day, Sadie and Allison had seemed distant. Upon first greeting Paulina, Sadie had made a snide remark about Farm Girl Fashion Disaster, and though it sounded familiar, it took Paulina a moment to decode. They’re jealous, she thought to herself posing in the mirror. She remembered fondly how her old dog, Mildred, had gone crazy with jealousy whenever Paulina had the smell of another dog on her. Maybe she hadn’t fully accounted for the amount of time Julian had taken away from them. Well, whatever, she thought, a girl couldn’t always be with Sadie and Allison or she’d perish! She smiled at herself in the jumper, so cute.

Where were they? She called out to them again. The jumper began to look silly in the mirror. Sadie wouldn’t approve, would make fun of the jumper. Also, it was way too tight. It clamped around her stomach and pinched under her arms.

Then she realized — it was a child’s jumper. Her face flushed. She felt hugely stupid. Sadie will burst out laughing at this, yes, uncontrollably. Allison too. She tried to shimmy out of it, but it shrunk with every movement.

“Yes, what?” asked Sadie finally. Paulina saw her through the gap where the curtain failed to meet the wall.

“Oh, nothing. I had it on, but nothing now.”

“Let me see,” Allison said.

“No, I don’t need any opinions,” Paulina said, still imprisoned in the jumper. It looked like a doll’s apron. Sadie poked the curtain. Paulina hastily pulled it shut.

“Chill, girl,” Sadie said. She poked the curtain with her elbow and Paulina flinched.

“We found a lot of good things,” Allison said.

“Where?!” Paulina asked. Defeated, she stopped struggling and stood before the mirror, one arm in and one out. Her hair had looked ideal when she left for SUPERTHRIFT, but all order had been destroyed by the wind. Her life felt like a mistake. She looked and felt like a shipwrecked alien whose mission had gotten horribly derailed.

Art school had been an impulsive decision. Paulina hadn’t really thought she’d get in. Her portfolio was mostly doodles she’d drawn over the photos in her high school yearbook. When she showed up, she found that the other students knew much more about art history than she did. They drew better. They worked harder. After a week, she abandoned her artistic goals. It was preposterous to have “artistic goals.” She cringed at the very words.

Then she’d seen the Venus Flytrap crack up an entire party with her exceptional laugh. Wearing only a cardboard headdress and Troy’s boxer briefs, the Venus Flytrap danced with total abandon. She trembled and shook, sacrificing her body to the song, letting it fill with spirits. Paulina envied the performance. She decided her personality would be her art and revamped her closet with SUPERTHRIFT treasures. She overheard the disturbing life story of a deranged man downtown and adopted it as her own.

Paulina’s ass hurt from sitting on the tiny corner seat in her dressing room. With concentration, she finally managed to take off the jumper without ripping it too badly. Then, slowly, she put her clothes back on, as if her existence were futureless and blank, and dressing just an automatic, ceremonial act of the life she’d left behind. She listened to Allison and Sadie try on their finds.

“Oh my god, those pants rule!” Sadie told Allison.

“You think? I feel like a tightrope walker or someone,” Allison said.

“Check it out, Paulina,” Sadie called, but Paulina refused to view their successes.

While the two of them paid, Paulina moped in the parking lot. She missed Fran, and the feeling was unique, as Paulina made it a rule to miss no one. When Sadie and Allison came out, they barely acknowledged her and continued their conversation. This stung Paulina, but she followed after them, pretending she was an alien sent to study Sadie and Allison’s feeble minds. She thought, My findings are quite abysmal, Rolan, ruler of Rolanzil. Their preening techniques are surprisingly rudimentary. Especially the tall one, whose tresses hang off her head like dead grasses.

“You’ll be there, right, Paulina?” Sadie asked nonchalantly, like the three had been talking all along.

“Where?” Paulina asked bitterly.

“My apparel show!”

“If I’m alive,” Paulina said, clutching her fur as if it could leave her.