Rachel Glaser - Paulina & Fran

Every now and then, she’d turn a corner in the hallway, suddenly face-to-face with a youngish guy. Their dull faces pulled into quick smiles, and he seemed to feel as Fran did, a look in the eyes. But then it was over and they walked past each other — Fran to the copier like a zombie, the boy to a wing Fran had never seen. Sex seemed the antidote to Levrett-Mercer, or joy and nature and soul music.

Soon there were SUPERCURL salons in LA, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, Austin, San Antonio, Chicago, Baltimore, Boston, and Philadelphia. SUPERCURL products were sold in the hippest boutiques. SUPERCURL produced a revitalization treatment, and a CURLS FOR KIDS shampoo. The marketing team created promotions, photo contests, a Curl Club with rules and rewards. The production team designed an Advanced SUPERCURL Hairbrush and Detangler Comb.

Each development was momentous, but Paulina grew used to it. She was still looking for good people to sleep with. For a month she was obsessed with an ego-crazy plastic surgeon she met at a party, but by the end of their short time together she hated him with all her heart. When she walked down the street, the curls of strangers seemed to shine brighter in the sunlight, and she felt a mix of pride and jealousy.

“I definitely notice a difference,” Luca told her. Paulina lay facedown on the massage table in her beauty room. Luca was a large, presumptuous Romanian man who dressed in black and called himself the Curly King. He worked exclusively on Paulina’s hair, and he also served as her masseuse, her dealer, and sometimes her lover. Luca slept with women and men and lived in a massive basement he called the Dungeon. He often seduced people, then, like picking a lock, drew out their darkest secret before sending them on their way.

Luca stayed inside much of the summer, never wearing shorts, cursing the heat. He hadn’t taken a subway since he was a teenager, finding the lighting untenable. He was constantly rewriting his will, deciding who deserved what trifle, ashtray, or mirror. Most of all, he understood hair. He could predict it, and ultimately, control it. One day, he and Paulina planned to merge their curl philosophies and start their own school, The Curl Institute, where hairdressers would study to become SUPERCURL-certified.

“Five, ten years ago, those same girls had bird nests. Frizz balls. You’ve really cleaned things up,” Luca said while he massaged her neck. Paulina knew this to be true, but most days it did not awe her.

“I was once like a peacock, decked out in all magnificence,” Paulina told Luca, her face buried in a pillow. “I imagined myself the center of a movement. A political movement, or an art movement, something that combined the two.” Paulina still had pizzazz, but the pizzazz had withered. It lay dormant inside her, slipping out in quick, cutting remarks. Luca kept kneading her flesh until the massage became esoteric and neither understood it.

Paulina summoned Fran in her mind. Fran was in a dim place, struggling under a heap of books. “Libraries!” Paulina cried to Luca. “What a trap for youth!” People didn’t think realistically in libraries. People filled their heads with moldy ideas and left their sexuality in a coil near the stacks, where it turned to nothing and joined the dust on the floor, swept by losers.

“Huh?” The massage paused while Luca lit a cigarette, and then reluctantly continued.

“I was just remembering someone.”

“Who?” Luca asked.

Paulina considered telling him the whole thing — the art school, the hotel rooms, the party — but quickly rid herself of this desire.

“Just this weird farm girl who’s probably breeding dogs somewhere and feeling sorry for herself.” Paulina stared into the wallpaper. “She was cute, like a muffin. Paper skirt and all. One time she took up with a discarded lover of mine and I couldn’t sleep well until I had him back, to remind myself why I’d gotten rid of him in the first place. I can’t even remember his name,” Paulina said, but it rang in her head like a bell. She rose from the table and wrapped a sheet around herself.

“Where are you going?” Luca asked.

“Checking the weather,” she said and opened her laptop and typed Julian’s name.

That week, Fran was assigned to a highly decorated cube. A glass jar filled with candy bars sat on a doily. An archaic, sun-damaged “Got milk?” ad was pinned to the soft cubicle wall. But most distracting was an ultrasound taped above the monitor. Fran stared emotionlessly at the ambiguous shape.

Jane poked her head over the divider. “I think that’s the arm,” Jane said, pointing.

“No, that’s a shadow,” Fran said.

“What’s the light source?” Jane asked, raising her eyebrows.

“Congratulations nonetheless!” one of the history guys teased.

Jane giggled. “Imagine you with a baby!”

Fran laughed. “Wait, why not?”

“You can’t even handle a day’s work. Imagine raising a living being? A project you can’t leave for me and Meryl to finish,” Jane said, nudging her.

Fran and Jane were perpetually on the edge of becoming friends. Every workday they’d share a few jokes, or bond over some obscure nonevent in their office: was Meryl eating an Amy’s frozen burrito again? Jane would spot the man they’d nicknamed Old Drawers, looking lost in the lobby. Together they’d uncover hilarious outsider art deep in the image bank.

But when Jane invited Fran out on the weekends, Fran never made it. Often she declined immediately with a lie — she had friends coming in that weekend, or she was dogsitting in Columbus. Other times she’d say, “Yeah, sounds good! I wanna meet your friends for sure.” As the appointed time grew closer, though, Fran was inevitably seized with doubt. What if Jane’s friends were boring? What if it was awkward? Instead she’d take a nap, then wake up at midnight and walk to a bar covered in flags of the world and talk to guys who gave her their business cards.

Jane nudged her again. “Hey, I wanna check out your studio sometime. You could visit mine too.”

“Definitely,” Fran said, blushing.

“Mine is near the Institute downtown,” Jane said.

“Cool,” Fran said. “Mine is a ways out, but I’ll draw you a map sometime.” She needed to find a studio. Why had it taken her this long? That was the whole point of taking a job in Ohio — finding a nice warehouse space where all the artists hung out dancing, where some hot guy was always welding and NYC gallery owners wandered in off the street. Fran still felt a connection to that world. The other day she’d bought an Artforum, hoping to find Paulina’s byline on a few reviews. Paulina had once mentioned wanting to write for them.

“Oh, wait, is it in the Art House Studio?” Jane asked.

“No,” Fran said, “though I looked at one there.”

“The Seventy-Eighth Street Studios?”

“No.” Fran nervously twirled a frizzy curl trying to guide it back into shape.

“Where is it? In Shaker Heights?”

“Yeah,” Fran said finally. “Close to there.” Why did Jane even care?! “I need to make some copies,” Fran said, grabbing a handful of papers and walking confidently down the hall.

Suddenly, the young guy was walking toward her. Fran smiled at him. He nodded at her. When he was just about to pass, Fran blurted out, “I have this feeling, like, that we’re in 1984 , and we have to escape.”

“The year?” he asked.

Fran laughed into her hand. “No, the book. I mean, the civilization in the book. The weird, controlling, conformist society.”

“That’s weird,” he said. They looked each other over. He adjusted and readjusted his watch, then shoved his hands in his pockets. He wasn’t any cuter than the guys Fran met at the bars, but she sensed an intelligence within him. She tried to imagine herself passionately kissing his neck, grasping at his chest and arms. Figuring out what he liked sexually. What his silences meant. Where his mind took him when it took him away from her. He shifted uncomfortably. “Haven’t read that one in a while. Don’t really remember it. Sorry,” he said, walking past her, but he didn’t sound sorry at all.