The Guest

by Emma Cline

Could you live like this forever, in some alternate universe ruled by immediacy?

The appearance of calm demanded an endless campaign of violent intervention.

The women she passed on the sidewalks looked like mothers and daughters. Most of them dressed alike: white cropped pants, expensive sandals, pearl earrings. Their skin was always good, even if they weren’t attractive. They were dressed to invoke the wives they either already were or would one day become, future domestic totems. At the round tables in front of a coffee shop, men in baseball caps and polo shirts sat with younger versions of themselves, all of them looking at their phones, their legs splayed in their shorts. No one was speaking but even so, they were united by some primitive affect, obviously family.

Alex had the sick sense that she was a ghost. Wandering the land of the living. But that was dumb, a dumb thought. It was just when the day was hot like this, hot and gray, anxiety moved closer to the surface.

Children were too much like Alex. Tolerated but not needed, not powerful.

People, it turned out, were mostly fine with being victimized in small doses. In fact, they seemed to expect a certain amount of deception, allowed for a tolerable margin of manipulation in their relationships.

people’s unhappiness could so quickly infect you.

people were never more focused and professional as when they were splitting drugs, suddenly fastidious.