Rachel Glaser - Paulina & Fran

When Paulina awoke that morning, she’d felt her life was an invitation to an even better life — she saw her name in wondrous script — but now she found herself in a social nightmare of unending duration. She decided to take a taxi back to school and surprise Sadie and Allison at Thai Dream or wherever they were spending break. She gathered her things. She would just tell Sampson and leave.

The college town seemed suddenly like the most boring, lacking place she’d ever been. She turned and saw Fran. A hive broke out on Paulina’s neck. She clutched the scrap of blanket. She could entertain herself with Fran, even if she didn’t befriend her, even though Paulina knew Fran was friends with a distraught design major who regularly shunned Paulina before Paulina had a chance to shun her first. She could hang out near Fran, and the others would assume they were friends and stay away from her.

Paulina found herself walking toward Fran, who was sitting on a bulky piece of luggage, her nail-bitten fingers skating over the stickers on her old Discman. She took off her headphones when Paulina approached her. Tiny voices sang from the headphones. A mindless beat beat on unhindered. After an unnecessary introduction, Paulina was entertained to hear Fran had a slight lisp. Paulina waited for Fran to draw her out in conversation, but Fran just smiled. Paulina stood paralyzed, snapping and unsnapping her hair clip. She looked for Nils, whose age gave him a slight edge over the others, but he was with Sampson.

Boarding the plane, Paulina stayed by Fran, conscious to seem apart. But the stale smell and muted colors inside the plane induced another anxiety in Paulina — a fear of boredom. She had barely spoken all day long, but now she found herself bargaining with the man and woman assigned to sit next to Fran, burying her aggression under a manipulative veneer of weakness and manners. Eventually the man in the window seat agreed and took Paulina’s seat instead. Though she’d gotten her wish, Paulina sighed when she sat down and was careful not to look at Fran.

During takeoff, the girls stared silently out the window. The woman next to Fran slept. The white noise of the plane was disconcerting, then distracting, then comforting. After a few stray remarks, Paulina and Fran gradually found their common ground — the others on the trip, scattered in different seats on the plane. “I see James’s work, clothes, and attitude as a protective measure against the flamboyance prevalent at our school,” Paulina declared.

Fran found Paulina compelling and strange. After speaking her first words to Paulina at the gate, Fran felt sized up and then accepted. Fran had known they’d sit next to each other, and envisioned them, as if in a crystal ball, paired up to the exclusion of the other girls on the trip.

“My favorite,” Fran said, motioning to Milo. Milo was the only male textiles major. He was skinny and friends with girl nerds. His art was draping fabrics. He had never kissed a boy (or girl) and lived in his gayness like a prison. “You will find someone, Milo, soon!” insisted his girlfriends, some of whom had never experienced such delight before — the delight of calling this stooped, eccentric creature their friend. “Milo is the watered-down version of some queers I knew in high school,” Paulina said, but Fran sensed this wasn’t true.

Very quickly, the girls formed a familiarity. Gretchen hated Paulina, Fran knew, but Gretchen felt far away. Paulina leaned her seat back and Fran could hear the muffled protest of the person behind her.

“What do you think those suckers are doing back home?” Paulina asked.

“Being with their families.”

“What would you regret if we died right now in a crash?” Paulina asked.

Fran looked far into the fabric of the seat in front of her. “I guess I don’t have enough good paintings for a solid ‘in memoriam’ show,” she said. “But it doesn’t really matter.”

“It doesn’t,” Paulina said and laughed. “Do you have a boyfriend?” she asked.

Fran thought instantly of Marvin, but Marvin was not her boyfriend in any sense. “Do you?” she asked.

Paulina stared into the dark window of the plane. “Yeah, but I’m ending it.”

“Who?” Fran asked, with increasing curiosity.

Paulina leaned over and took out a sleep mask from her big leather purse. She pulled the mask on top of her forehead, matting down her curls. “I believe his name is Julian,” Paulina said flatly.

“Is he printmaking?” asked Fran.

“Film, but I’ve never seen anything he’s made.”

“I think I had a class with him once, an art history lecture. Does he have long, scraggly hair?”

“I cut it,” Paulina said in the same emotionless way. She slid her sleep mask over her eyes and said nothing for several hours.

In any foreign country, Paulina wanted to belong. She lagged a block behind the group. They trudged along, stopping at every museum in sight. They ate lunches on picnic tables, the boys all speaking their bad Norwegian. With disdain, Paulina watched as their accents spawned stupid personas. James was the worst offender. His persona had its own name, Gulltopp, the name of the poor man he’d sat next to on the plane. James’s Gulltopp did a funny dance before and after meals and spoke only about fjords.

In a tragic use of alphabetical order, Paulina was sentenced to room with Marissa, who spoke her thoughts freely and often, injuring Paulina with her exaggerated wonder. The first night, Marissa gushed about Norway, and Europe, the artists of the past, while Paulina listened to her earplugs expand. Paulina believed that only Fran deserved to be her friend. Fran, who sat hunched against the wall during art history lectures, who stared too long at birds and bugs and faraway noises, who played with her hair so incessantly that Paulina knew she would never pass a job interview.

In a room of tapestries at the National Museum of Art, Paulina told Fran, “I need to sleep with someone exciting.”

“Ooh, like Nils?”

Paulina made a face. “No, like a fucking Viking from the past.”

Fran laughed, avoiding the glance of the other person in the room, an old man clutching a cane. The tapestries were all Viking scenes — tall ships slanting on the water, a sword fight inside a treasure cave. The details hurt Fran’s head if she examined them too closely. Neat narrow lines indicated light and shadow. The texture of the waves stood in stark contrast to the clouds, to the sails, the glint of the swords, the hair curling out of helmets. “We could find someone like that,” she said.

“Someone who holds a whole chicken in one hand and eats from it,” said Paulina.

“And he’s got long, blond hair.”

“Yeah he does. His dick is enormous—”

“Not enormous, but a good size, and of good texture,” said Fran.

“Snakeskin?” said Paulina.

“Velvet,” said Fran. The old man left, and they were alone for the first time. “How is his house decorated?”

“With a single zebra-skin rug,” Paulina said, staring with unfocused eyes. “What is his name?”

“Blood Axe,” said Fran, reading the card on the wall.

Paulina laughed. “Perfect.”

“And he’s followed by a pack of animals,” said Fran.

“He can take five puppies in his hand and squeeze them into a full-sized dog.”

“His native tongue can’t pronounce our names.”

“Or his own name!” Paulina said.

“He’s killed men, but never a woman,” Fran added.

“His torso has a lot of drama.”

“What kind of drama?” asked Fran.

“Like scars and hair and muscles and things.”

“Does he carry a bloody ax?” Fran asked.

“Not these days. But once he did,” Paulina said wistfully. They laughed.