The Guest

by Emma Cline

A conversation performed as a smooth transaction—a

Such shocking cleanliness, edging on the perverse.

While scuba diving, or something like that, he couldn’t remember. One of those freak accidents the rich suffer—too many people kept them in too good of shape for them to die from natural causes.

full glasses held with both hands. Alex

Alex could see Simon was no longer engaged, that he no longer felt implicated

in whatever drama Alex was creating. A switch had been flipped.

That was the worst part—to watch how swiftly Simon absented himself, a professi...

from a stack on the platform. Interviews with local restaurant owners and culty exercise instructors with amphetamine grins, a summer gift guide for hostesses that featured a lot of blown glass.

Jane Birkin.

She watched a father making the trek to the sand loaded down by folding chairs, umbrellas, a sack of beach toys, all the unwieldy props of family fun.

kept her purse on the chair next to her, its teeth zipped in a sharp smile.

Alex was a sort of inert piece of social furniture—only her presence was required,

Anything beyond the fact of her sitting

in her chair and nodding along was a...

They were dressed to invoke the wives they either already were or would one day become, future domestic totems.

people who looked the ages that they were. Citizens of the real world.

So much of getting away with things was the outward insistence of normalcy.

was so cold that it tasted like nothing.

They had already absorbed

whatever information existed about how they should be in the world, what was correct.

But what did any of these kids need that they didn’t already have?