Rachel Glaser - Paulina & Fran

It was Fran’s first time in studio since break. She watched Marvin while she stretched a canvas. He sat on the floor dipping acorns in paint.

“Why acorns?” James asked.

“I thought the mice would eat them,” he said, “but they didn’t.” Mice had moved in over the winter and lived in the mess the painters made, eating crumbs and construction paper.

“Why that color?” James asked as he walked by.

“I have a lot of it,” Marvin said. His curly hair was in a mess over his eyes. “How was Norway, Fran?” he asked. Their eyes met for the third time that day.

“Pretty,” she said, and her body warmed like she was talking to God.

“You could never date a boy like that, who lives without needing to know himself,” Gretchen told Fran, but Gretchen knew nothing. The girls walked out of the studios without looking at each other. Both wore patchwork backpacks they’d bought at the hippie store freshman year.

Fran and Gretchen had become friends in Foundation Drawing one day after Gretchen’s hair elastic flew through the air, narrowly missing the model. Gretchen was understated. No hairdo announced her. She was a graphic design major, which Fran found uninspiring. Gretchen wasn’t free like the others. She danced, drank, and drew, but never gave herself over to it. She never felt the light of everyone’s eyes upon her; nor did she crave this kind of light.

“He talks in a baby voice,” Gretchen said.

“No, he doesn’t. He just isn’t listening to how he sounds.”

“You know you didn’t call me back,” Gretchen said.

“I know. I’m sorry. I had so much to catch up on.”

“How was the trip anyway? Did you socialize with the enemy?”

“Who?” said Fran. “Oh, I mean, in passing.”

At the lecture, Fran and Gretchen watched a successful New York artist strip to her underwear and gnaw on a man-sized piece of chocolate. During the Q&A, students asked embarrassing questions and name-dropped other artists. The questions were met with a collective groan, as if the student body were one body, one that couldn’t accept itself. After, the artist put a curse on them, insisting: “Only one person in this room will make it in the art world.”

It took a lifetime to walk to SUPERTHRIFT, and much of it was highway. Normally Sadie drove, but she had lent Eileen her car. Skipping ahead of Sadie and Allison, Paulina exclaimed, “I am free! I can fuck anyone I want! I can do as I please!”

“But you were doing that before,” Sadie said.

“But this time with the clearest of minds! An available bed, and a purely selfish heart. The things I will accomplish,” she whispered loudly.

“What are you going to accomplish?” Allison asked dubiously.

Paulina stopped walking. “Hey! Lay off,” she said.

After a step, Sadie and Allison stopped too. Paulina eyed them suspiciously. “What happened here while I was gone, anyway? Did the gap close further without me?”

“What gap?” Sadie asked, though she knew. They resumed walking.

“Those precious inches between your ass and hers. What did I miss around here anyway? Anything revolutionary?”

“There was a flood at the Feminist Warehouse,” Sadie said.

“That guy Fluff sold Eileen cocaine that was laced with something.”

“Oh, and my boyfriend visited and Allison met him,” said Sadie.

“He’s great,” Allison said. They smiled.

“What? What boyfriend?” Paulina asked. Cars sped by like bullets.

“Eric,” Sadie said emphatically. “Remember? I told you about him before you left and I wrote those e-mails.”

“Oh, yeah,” Paulina said. She didn’t want Sadie to have a boyfriend because she didn’t want to have to listen to her talk about him. But at least he didn’t live there; at least Paulina didn’t have to see him. “I’m sure he’s great,” Paulina said. The shoulder narrowed and they walked on in single file: Sadie, then Allison, then Paulina. Paulina’s head filled with images of lame boyfriends, ones who wore puka-shell necklaces, Adidas running pants, and shirts with words.

At SUPERTHRIFT, remnants from hundreds of dull lives hung before them on plastic hangers. Even when the girls found something remarkable, it always seemed like the original owner had misunderstood and squandered it. Every nightgown came with a few bad dreams. This depressive air empowered the girls. Their lives were incredible! When the clothes fit, they felt they’d looted the lame, the poor, and the dead. When they didn’t, the girls dismissed used clothing as gross.

Besides the clothes, they searched earnestly in the cassette pile, the furniture, the shoe racks. Everything seemed like something they could improve, that no one yet had known how to improve. Allison bought the paintings — amateur still lifes and common landscapes, tacky beach scenes with sponged-on clouds, clown paintings, sadly confident bubble-lettered names — to gesso over in her studio.

Paulina began a methodical search in Blouses, though she never had luck there. She listened to Sadie and Allison in Skirts, one aisle over. Their voices rose and fell. They were either trashing Eileen’s work or praising it. Paulina lingered a while, wondering, before marching off into Evening Dresses. At first nothing appealed to her. She closed herself off to every option without really considering them. Most of the dresses she’d seen before. Some had sweat or deodorant marks. Many had no inner life.

The song changed, reminding Paulina that she was free of Julian, and she loosened up. A few items intrigued her and she took some chances, ignoring any indication of size — it’ll stretch, she thought, or I’ll cut it. Once her arm was weighed down with clothes, she walked triumphantly to the dressing rooms.

“Goin’ in, girls!” she yelled to Sadie and Allison, but heard no reply. She waited, then smiled, knowing they would scamper over. When Paulina found something that flattered her, Allison and Sadie always hovered around to admire her while she pranced in the aisle in front of her dressing room. Sadie had long given up debating — anything Paulina found “fabulous,” Sadie praised as well. But Paulina didn’t just want their approval; she wanted them to be jealous.

Paulina hung her fur coat on a hook, wincing when the bottom grazed the disgusting dressing room floor. She took off her shirt and pants and piled them on top of her shoes in the corner. It would be nasty to have sex in a SUPERTHRIFT dressing room, but she’d have liked to be able to say she’d done it.

The first dress was huge and Paulina flung it on the floor. She’d found a nice pair of pants, but before she got too excited she spotted a bloodstain on the butt and extracted herself from the situation. “Sadie!” she called. “Allison!” She wanted to tell them about the bloodstain and show them the jumper she was about to try on: a blue-gray cotton thing that narrowed into shorts. It was the kind of outfit one wore spontaneously, she felt. When she put it on, her breasts swelled out the top. Wearing it, she felt like a provocative babysitter. With the jumper came the promise of warm weather and new love.

She got very close to the mirror trying to discern the pattern on the fabric. Sailboats? Flowers? Nope. Paisley! Allison and Sadie still hadn’t appeared. What are they doing, she thought, fucking on a used mattress? Until that moment, the thought of anything sexual between them had never occurred to her. She frowned at the idea and made the “gross” face.

All day, Sadie and Allison had seemed distant. Upon first greeting Paulina, Sadie had made a snide remark about Farm Girl Fashion Disaster, and though it sounded familiar, it took Paulina a moment to decode. They’re jealous, she thought to herself posing in the mirror. She remembered fondly how her old dog, Mildred, had gone crazy with jealousy whenever Paulina had the smell of another dog on her. Maybe she hadn’t fully accounted for the amount of time Julian had taken away from them. Well, whatever, she thought, a girl couldn’t always be with Sadie and Allison or she’d perish! She smiled at herself in the jumper, so cute.