Rachel Glaser - Paulina & Fran

“That’s it,” Julian said, relaxing. “It’s yours. This is all yours. I don’t need to see her anymore.” This was true. He felt it like a candle lighting his being. When Joel had asked about Paulina, Julian had described her as “a benevolent monster who fucks well.” Of course she was funny too, and smart, and had bought him a huge steak at the fanciest restaurant in Pittsburgh. He loved her, but she diminished in his memory.

“Really, I just want you,” he said.

“Yeah?” Fran crawled onto his bed and Julian pulled the covers around her. He kissed her face and her neck and her hair and her shoulders.

“Yeah,” he said, pulling her shirt back off. They started kissing again, and grabbing each other. Julian got on top of her. Fran imagined Paulina in quick muddled flashes, each vision bringing her closer to orgasm.

“I don’t care if you see her again,” Fran said, naked against Julian. “But it is a little nostalgic of her.”

“And it’s not of you?” Julian turned off the lamp, filling the room with a bluish doom.

“She’s the one who’s so against nostalgia.”

Julian shrugged. “She started this hair product business,” he said. Fran laughed. “You haven’t heard about it?” Julian asked. “SUPERCURL. It’s all over the place. They’re even building a salon in Pittsburgh.” Fran had seen ads for the product, but she’d had no idea it was Paulina’s. She acted unimpressed, but her jealousy spread like a rash.

“I really wish I could paint again,” said Fran, instantly regretting it. This statement inevitably lead to the tired discussion of fumes vs. studio costs, oil vs. acrylic, lukewarm suggestions involving watercolor or Photoshop. It reminded her of a visual arts test question.

“Just use acrylic,” Julian said. “Who’s stopping you?”

Acrylic paint was uninspiring; it lacked that oily, sexy smell. Fran kissed him to shut him up. They heard a hacking cough through the wall.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Alma,” he said.

“That doesn’t sound good,” Fran said.

“No, it can’t be good.”

The next morning Julian made her pancakes, and it was still fun. They hadn’t run out of jokes. Still, Fran told herself she was never coming back. It felt good and eerie to be near him, but she didn’t need him. While he was going to the bathroom, she took Paulina’s old student card, which she’d all these years kept in her wallet, and left it facedown next to a dead cactus on his table.

At Jane’s opening, Fran was startled to see that Jane was very talented. Her paintings were intricate Bosch-like scenes of caves and valleys crowded with people from different time periods looking at their cell phones, pointing guns, skinning animals, proposing to each other. The figures were just an inch or two, Fran estimated, but each one had a personality painted in.

The gallery filled with people. Good music was playing. There was a spread of food on a long table. Everyone was excited by the paintings. They seemed like something Fran had imagined, had meant to paint herself. Something she would eventually have stumbled upon.

Fran wondered if Paulina was with Julian this weekend and knew she was.

“Fran!” Jane called, and walked over holding the hand of a tall, slender blond. “This is Deena,” Jane said, squeezing the girl’s hand. The girl wore a low-cut black dress. Her hair was shiny and straight. It glistened under the lights.

“Great to meet you,” Deena said. Fran stared at them. Was it possible they were together ? They couldn’t be. Fran would have heard about it. Fran would have been able to sense a vibe from Jane, a gay vibe. Fran got lost looking at Deena’s lips. Deena had dark green eyes and lines on her eyelids where her mascara had smudged. As Fran watched Jane and Deena talk and laugh, it seemed so natural, something she and Paulina could have been, long ago in the college town, without Julian, or Marvin, or any jerk with nice eyes. “Are you a painter too?” Deena asked.

“Oh, no, I’m Jane’s coworker,” Fran said haltingly. Jane and Deena laughed as if Fran had said something hysterical. They were drunk on love. Fran looked at the paintings, wanting to own them. She laughed too, wanting to be a part of whatever was between Jane and Deena, whatever elusive luck they’d mined together, whatever delivered their happiness to them.

That night, Fran took out her cracked watercolors, her stiff acrylics, her congealed oils. She painted on the cardboard box her desk chair came in. She painted cartoonish blobs, naked women, crossed-out faces, burning cities, hairlike forms she turned into clouds, dogs wearing clothes. Everything she painted looked very much like her work before art school, like the doodles she’d drawn in high school, that she still drew during Levrett-Mercer meetings.

The red boots were by the door when Fran walked into Julian’s. “She left them for you,” Julian said, as if they were all roommates. Paulina had worn the boots at Eileen’s thing; Fran had complimented her on them. In Norway, Paulina had looked for boots like these, finding nothing like them. Fran tried them on. They were too big and didn’t match her outfit, but she wore them all weekend.

Fran asked so many questions about Paulina that Julian finally said, “Why don’t you just call her? I can give you her number.”

“No, no, that’s okay,” Fran said. “We’d have nothing to say to each other.” She was careful not to say anything more about Paulina for the rest of the weekend. But she found herself looking at each object in Julian’s house — the ladybug caught between windows, the big crystal paperweight, the dirty inside of the microwave — wondering what Paulina thought about it. In the bathroom, Fran looked at herself in the dusty mirror and wondered what Paulina would think of her. With her finger she wrote “Hi” in the dust.

“I don’t understand,” Paulina said, toying with her new dress. Harvey paced in front of his office window. Paulina watched the sharp lines of his suit as he pulled his phone from his pocket, glanced at it, then slid it back.

“With the rise of Luxene, we’ve been considering offers we haven’t considered before.” Luxene was Johnson and Johnson’s new curl line. The women in marketing were stressed about it, but Paulina wasn’t afraid of competition. Harvey yanked up his venetian blinds, revealing a sunset over New Jersey. “You don’t go to the meetings, so it’s hard to catch you up.”

“I’ve been busy,” Paulina said, picking up a stray hair and letting it fall on the floor. “Are you seriously considering selling?” she asked as her phone vibrated in her hand. “Because that would be ridiculous,” Paulina said, peeking at Luca’s text.

“I’m trying to be reasonable with you, but after much consideration—”

“I refuse to step down and I won’t be bought out.”

Harvey sighed. “The incident,” he began. Harvey’s secretary appeared momentarily in the door’s window, but Harvey waved her off. Paulina sweated in her new dress. Weeks ago, at a benefit for something or other, when an attractive man asked if she would donate to the charity he managed, she agreed immediately. She was just going to give money, but then thought of how hair products could improve the lives of the homeless. The next day she put in a bulk order for them. It was all good-natured, she told herself again. Her actions had been grossly misunderstood. The charity leaked the details to a newspaper. Harvey and everyone had gotten so moralistic on her. What had they ever done for the homeless?!

“Can’t you ever get past that?” Paulina asked with much restraint, her phone buzzing again.

Harvey wore his anger neatly. “You fucked up. You went over my head. You didn’t talk to Garrett like you’re supposed to. It caused a lot of bad press.”