The Guest

by Emma Cline

Only their little dogs, blinking from their laps, seemed real: they were the women’s souls, Alex decided, tiny souls trotting behind them on a leash.

calculating exactly how childish she’d have to act to escape his anger.

raised in a time when childishness was a lifetime female affect.

People like Helen loved to display the artifacts of creativity as if that implicated her in the process.

why would she have wanted evidence, why would she have wanted to see herself, watch her body move, hear her voice gone to some unnatural, faraway pitch?

But better to believe your life was valuable, under attack, than the alternative.

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

As if it were that easy, as if love were something you deserved and didn’t have to scramble to earn.

That’s what they all wanted, wasn’t it? To see, in the face of another, pure acceptance. Simple, really, but still rare enough that people didn’t get it from their families, didn’t get it from their partners, had to seek it out from someone like Alex.

the men’s humanness had been overwhelming to her, psychically exhausting.

Their hands were gritty with it, their chins covered, the caviar glinting like tiny black diamonds.

a meditation, proof of her piety, her good intentions.