Gone Girl

rocking my raft. ‘So what’s it like here?’ she asks.
    ‘Nice. Quiet.’
    ‘Good, that’s what I need.’
    I turn to look at her. She has two gold necklaces, a perfectly round bruise the size of a plum near her left breast, and a shamrock tattoo just above her bikini line. Her swimsuit is brand-new, cherry-red, cheap. From the marina convenience store where I bought my raft.
    ‘You on your own?’ I ask.
    ‘Very.’
    I am unsure what to ask next. Is there some sort of code that abused women use with each other, a language I don’t know?
    ‘Guy trouble?’
    She twitches an eyebrow at me that seems to be a yes.
    ‘Me too,’
    I say. ‘It’s not like we weren’t warned,’ she says. She cups her hand into the water, lets it dribble down her front. ‘My mom, one of the first things she ever told me, going to school the first day: Stay awayfrom boys. They’ll either throw rocks or look up your skirt .’
    ‘You should make a T-shirt that says that.’
    She laughs. ‘It’s true, though. It’s always true. My mom lives in a lesbian village down in Texas. I keep thinking I should join her. Everyone seems happy there.’
    ‘A lesbian village?’
    ‘Like a, a whaddayacallit. A commune. Bunch of lesbians bought land, started their own society, sort of. No men allowed. Sounds just freakin’ great to me, world without men.’ She cups another handful of water, pulls up her sunglasses, and wets her face. ‘Too bad I don’t like pussy.’
    She laughs, an old woman’s angry-bark laugh. ‘So, are there any asshole guys here I can start dating?’ she says. ‘That’s my, like, pattern. Run away from one, bump into the next.’
    ‘It’s half empty most of the time. There’s Jeff, the guy with the beard, he’s actually really nice,’ I say. ‘He’s been here longer than me.’
    ‘How long are you staying?’ she asks.
    I pause. It’s odd, I don’t know the exact amount of time I will be here. I had planned on staying until Nick was arrested, but I have no idea if he will be arrested soon.
    ‘Till he stops looking for you, huh?’ Greta guesses.
    ‘Something like that.’
    She examines me closely, frowns. My stomach tightens. I wait for her to say it: You look familiar.
    ‘Never go back to a man with fresh bruises. Don’t give him the satisfaction,’ Greta intones. She stands up, gathers her things. Dries her legs on the tiny towel.
    ‘Good day killed,’ she says.
    For some reason, I give a thumbs-up, which I’ve never done in my life.
    ‘Come to my cabin when you get out, if you want to,’ she says. ‘We can watch TV.’
    I bring a fresh tomato from Dorothy, held in my palm like a shiny housewarming gift. Greta comes to the door and barely acknowledges me, as if I’ve been dropping over for years. She plucks the tomato from my hand.
    ‘Perfect, I was just making sandwiches,’ she says. ‘Grab a seat.’ She points toward the bed – we have no sitting rooms here – and moves into her kitchenette, which has the same plastic cutting board, the same dull knife, as mine. She slices the tomato. A plastic disc oflunch meat sits on the counter, the stomachy-sweet smell filling the room. She sets two slippery sandwiches on paper plates, along with handfuls of goldfish crackers, and marches them into the bedroom area, her hand already on the remote, flipping from noise to noise. We sit on the edge of the bed, side by side, watching the TV.
    ‘Stop me if you see something,’ Greta says.
    I take a bite of my sandwich. My tomato slips out the side and onto my thigh.
    The Beverly Hillbillies, Suddenly Susan, Armageddon .
    Ellen Abbott Live . A photo of me fills the screen. I am the lead story. Again. I look great.
    ‘You seen this?’ Greta asked, not looking at me, talking as if my disappearance were a rerun of a decent TV show. ‘This woman vanishes on her five-year wedding anniversary. Husband acts real weird from the start, all smiley and shit. Turns out he bumped up her life insurance, and they just found out the wife was pregnant . And the guy didn’t want it.’
    The screen cuts to another photo of me juxtaposed with Amazing Amy .
    Greta turns to me. ‘You remember those books?’
    ‘Of course!’
    ‘You like those books?’
    ‘Everyone likes those books, they’re so cute,’ I say.
    Greta snorts. ‘They’re so fake.’
    Close-up of me.
    I wait for her to say how beautiful I am.
    ‘She’s not bad, huh, for, like, her age,’ she says. ‘I hope I look that good when I’m