Rachel Glaser - Paulina & Fran

“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.

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.

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.