Rachel Glaser - Paulina & Fran

“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 Riff’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.

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.