Rachel Glaser - Paulina & Fran

They strolled out of the museum and into the chilly air. They huddled for warmth. They lost the group. They posed with statues. They found their way.

Norway was magnificent. Train rides along the fjords gave them clear views of vast, overphotographed glaciers. Though Paulina refused to mix, the others formed experimental social groups, sparked by an ambiguity as to who was cool. The students wandered around Oslo, clueless and buzzed. They had solemn moments in Norwegian history museums, face-to-face with an ancient gown or worn-down coin.

Freed from Sadie and Allison, Paulina spent the long bus rides breaking down their personality flaws for Fran’s entertainment. Sadie was always bragging about her healthy and natural lifestyle choices — drinking only on weekends, never eating fried foods — but went to the tanning booths weekly , saying she had an “appointment downtown,” and was always drenched in perfume. Sadie loved pictures of cats and dogs but not the creatures themselves. She was always scolding Paulina for not recycling, as if she understood the earth’s innermost perils. Paulina declared her incapable of intellectual thought.

As for Allison, she had the bored look of a stranger on a bus, even when she was listening attentively. She took herself so seriously as an artist that Paulina felt embarrassed for her. She often had pimples and took no time to disguise them. The biggest problem was Allison’s hair, which had neither the articulation of curls nor the sleekness of straight hair and was thick, like unprocessed wool.

Paulina described the tedium of Julian, how he slumped around her apartment, oblivious to her other lovers. She criticized all the dull lovers of their school, and the pretention rampant among the art history majors.

“There’s an art history major?” Fran asked.

Paulina nodded. “It’s new.” After finding art making meaningless, Paulina had begged the registrar to count her art history credits toward a major, eventually seducing him. During each of their nights together, she had discussed the benefits of an art history major so casually that even after her successful academic petition he believed that they’d thought of the idea together.

After the first night of the trip, Paulina had convinced Fran’s roommate, Angel, to trade rooms with her so that Paulina and Fran could room together. Fran noticed Paulina rubbing the little gray rag on her lips at night, but she didn’t ask about it. Fran understood that being this close with Paulina had its restrictions. She couldn’t visibly socialize with the others on the trip, though everyone was very nice and always inviting her to hang out. Being with Paulina was like being under Soviet rule, she thought during a few outrageous moments, but it was worth it.

At a dance club in Bergen, Paulina and Fran experienced the same fathomless fun they felt at the Color Club. Each moment they amazed themselves. In dancing they spread themselves and saw themselves in the reaction of those around them. We must be very beautiful to feel this beautiful, Fran thought. The pleasant shock of a new country made them feel they deserved it, that the earth swiveled to show them things. They drank and flirted with skinny Norwegian boys. They spent so much time together without getting sick of each other, it was inspiring.

Paulina no longer needed Sadie or Allison. She envisioned herself and Fran socially dominating their small school. In good colors, far in the future, she imagined them growing even more sophisticated and successful. In lives abundant with luck and love. In LA or Paris. In short leather jackets.

While Paulina deep conditioned her hair, Fran drank beers with James, Angel, and Marissa at a bar close to their hotel in Stavanger.

“Why do you hang out with that crazy bitch?” asked James. “You should hang out with us.” The others nodded in agreement.

“She is dangerous and unpredictable,” Marissa hissed.

“Ask her about her semester at Smith sometime,” Angel said.

“Smith?” James asked.

“Paulina was a big lesbo at Smith,” Angel said. “She seduced every girl there, then got kicked out.” Just when it seemed like Paulina could not be more interesting to Fran, something like this would emerge.

“Every girl?” James asked.

“Practically. I’m serious. At least half of them. She told me about it when she transferred here.”

“You roomed with her?” Marissa asked.

“One semester. I have never met anyone with a higher opinion of herself. I had to convince her that she didn’t deserve to use both closets. That I needed a closet too, even if my clothes weren’t as special as hers.”

Fran was used to hearing Paulina criticized. Freshman year, Paulina had seduced Gretchen’s high school boyfriend visiting from Northwestern. He’d gone to a party while Gretchen hot glued cardboard for her foundation class. The boyfriend fell for Paulina, but Paulina refused to talk to him afterward. The boyfriend broke up with Gretchen, who was devastated and then obsessed. Vital parts of Gretchen had been destroyed, and she knew it, but couldn’t repair herself.

“Oh my god,” Angel said, “look.” A few feet away, Nils was flirting with the bartender, a woman with blond hair and horse teeth.

“Do you think he’s cute? I think he’s so cute,” Angel said. Nils took out a pencil and started to draw the waitress in his sketchbook.

Fran shrugged. Generally speaking, Paulina and Fran felt grad students to be egomaniacs who had charmed themselves into a stupor. At school, the grad students all had small cells where they played artist, sitting in a chair from SUPERTHRIFT mulling over their lives, experimenting uselessly with video (all of them!), reading online artist interviews. Their résumés hovered in their thoughts.

“They try too hard,” Fran said. “Grad students, I mean.”

Every grad student TA’d a class — sitting smugly in the back of the room, smoking theatrically outside the woodshop, talking too much about too many artists. Always the grad students were breaking up their long-distance relationships and partnering up with one another, fighting boredom with infatuation. Every year, there was one grad who rose above this — a girl who didn’t just understand the undergrads, but could rule over them. An artist would show up and inject dye into a fish tank filled with hair gel, depicting the scene of Helen Keller and the water pump, or make a video that wasn’t lo-fi and self-reflective, but instead brilliant.

Nils was tattooed. He was okay. In the hotel elevator he’d told Fran he liked her pheromones. The conversation veered from him to a grad Fran couldn’t picture. She missed Paulina’s cruel gaze. She tried to imagine the insults Paulina would whisper to her. Paulina might say Angel was a “daft beast with a big crease.” She’d once called James a dildo with eyes.

A week into the trip, Angel had grown tired of Marissa and, by the time they got to Kristiansand, wanted to room with Fran again, like she’d been assigned. Angel made it clear that she couldn’t stand Paulina, but Paulina refused to leave, and instead shared a bed with Fran in a “Nordic sleepover.”

“I actually fantasize about Blood Axe,” Paulina told Fran.

“You do not!”

“I do,” said Paulina.

“So do I,” Fran said.

“Who the hell is Blood Axe?” Angel asked from her bed.

“Just this guy we fucked,” Paulina said.

The next day, back in Oslo with the afternoon free, Paulina wanted to get lost in Frogner Park and search for hallucinogenic mushrooms, but Fran wanted to go to an amusement park with Angel and Milo. “Just go,” Paulina said dismissively. “It’s not like we’re connected by a cord or anything.” At an Internet café, Paulina read an e-mail from Sadie, again about the boy she’d met on vacation, but more in-depth — his hobbies, his family history. Paulina skimmed it quickly, then composed her own reply.