Once An Eve Novel

seals kept going until they were just tiny black dots on the surface of the bay. The sun didn’t seem too bright anymore. The birds were welcome visitors overhead. Sitting in the boat with Arden, I forgot about Maeve and whatever she was planning back on shore. I was with my friend. We were out on the windblown water, alone and free.

six
     
    WHEN WE RETURNED TO THE DOCK, THE SUN WAS LOW IN THE sky. The restaurant that had become Califia’s de facto dining hall was livelier than it had been in weeks. I parted a tangled curtain of vines and ivy, exposing the restored interior. A long bar jutted out from one wall. Wooden tables and benches were crowded together in the center of the room, covered with the remains of boiled Dungeness crab, sole, and abalone. A two-foot-tall statue of Sappho was perched on a shelf in the corner; it had earned the place the affectionate nickname “Sappho’s Bust.”
    “Well, looky here!” Betty called from behind the bar, her big cheeks already red from a few beers. “It’s Lady and the Tramp!” The women on the stools all laughed. One took a quick swig of bathtub ale, the homemade beer Betty brewed.
    Arden glanced sideways at me, frowning. “I suppose I’m the tramp?”
    I took in her shaved head, spotted with scabs, her thin face, her skin crisscrossed with tiny scratches, and her fingernails, still dirty despite two baths. “Yeah.” I shrugged. “You’re definitely the tramp.”
    The back doors were open, letting in the smell of the campfire burning behind the restaurant. Delia and Missy, two of the earliest escapees on the Trail, were flipping green coins into one another’s drinks. It was a stupid game they liked to play after dinner, to the exclusion of everyone else. They stopped when Arden and I walked past, Delia nudging Missy hard in the side.
    Some women sat along the tables in the back, chatting as they broke apart crab legs. I spotted Maeve and Isis in the corner. Maeve, her sleeves rolled up to the elbows, was opening an abalone shell for Lilac.
    Betty set two mugs of beer on the bar. “Where’s the dog?” she asked, checking the floor by Arden’s feet for signs of Heddy.
    “Left her behind.” Arden took the mug and swigged it. Then she stared at Betty, her brow furrowed in annoyance, until the woman left to attend to someone at the other end of the bar. Arden swallowed. Her whole body seized as she coughed, the beer nearly coming back up. “Since when do you drink?” she whispered, looking at the amber liquid.
    I took a few sips, enjoying the sudden lightness in my head. “Nearly everyone does here,” I said, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.
    I thought of those first days, when I would sit alone in Lilac’s bedroom in the middle of the afternoon, having already completed my chores. Everything had seemed so foreign. The women chopped wood in the clearing above us, the sound following me through the house. The branches rapped on the windows, refusing to let me sleep. Quinn would come retrieve me, insisting I accompany her to the dining hall, where she would sit with me for hours. Sometimes we’d play cards. Betty would pour us her newest batch and I’d sip it slowly, telling Quinn about my journey to Califia.
    When I looked up, Arden was still studying me. “Besides,” I added. “It wasn’t exactly easy to lose you and Caleb in the same month.”
    Regina, a heavyset widow who’d lived in Califia for two years, teetered on the stool beside us. “Caleb is Eve’s boyfriend,” she whispered to Arden. “I used to have a husband, you know. They’re not as bad as everyone here says they are.” She raised her glass, signaling for another drink.
    “Boyfriend?” Arden narrowed her eyes at me.
    “I guess,” I said, resting my hand on Regina’s back to steady her. “Isn’t that what he would be called?” At School we’d learned about “boyfriends” and “husbands,” but only to be warned against them. In our Dangers of Boys and Men class, the Teachers told us stories of their own heartbreaks, of the men who had left them for other women or the husbands who’d leveraged their money and influence to keep their wives in domestic slavery. After seeing all that men were capable of in the wild—the gangs who slaughtered one another, the men who sold women they’d captured, the Strays who resorted to cannibalism in desperation—some of the women in Califia, especially the escapees from School, still believed that men were