G:?It’s just a glitch. Two wires are crossed. It’s not a problem with the whole system. I don’t need to be rewired.
BS:?Can I ask a strange favor? Is there any chance we could…
Cut this short? Never see each other again?
BS:?Can we be… dog friends?
G:?What’s that?
BS:?Dog friends.
G:?I don’t know what that means.
BS:?Like, can we hang out at the dog park together.
Big Swiss looked slightly queasy. Obviously, she didn’t want to go to the dog park alone, but did she think Keith would show up there, of all places? His obese chocolate Lab couldn’t possibly still be alive, eight years later, and who gets a new dog immediately upon getting out of prison?
Well, Greta might, actually. It might be the first thing she did. But a man? A man would try to get pussy first, followed by… revenge? Big Swiss must have filed a restraining order, but maybe it wasn’t in place yet, or maybe she was afraid he’d hire someone to come after her.
BS:?None of my friends are free in the middle of the day, and—I mean, I realize you “work,” but it seems like—
G: ?Yeah, sure, I’ll go to the dog park with you.
BS:?I’ll buy you coffee afterward.
G:?Would you be willing to give me a hysterectomy at some point?
BS:?Sorry?
G:?I need my uterus removed.
BS:?Do you have heavy periods, or something more serious?
G:?I have PMS. My periods are like bad jimsonweed trips.
A flicker of recognition crossed Big Swiss’s forehead. Greta waited, hoping to hear exactly how jimsonweed had brought her to orgasm.
BS:?My dog ate jimsonweed once and barked at the wall for seven hours. Apparently, the walls melt like butter if you ingest it. [PAUSE] To get rid of PMS, I would have to remove your ovaries.
G:?Fine.
BS:?But I can’t do that, Rebekah. Sorry.
Greta didn’t like being addressed by her fake name. Why on earth hadn’t she chosen a name she’d always wanted? Carmen, Isabelle, Piper—
BS:?What are your symptoms?
G:?Obsessive thoughts. Like, I’m pretty sure one of my feet is significantly bigger than the other, but people tell me they’re roughly the same size.
BS:?Do you wear different-size shoes?
G:?Well, no, because imagine all the shoes I’d have to buy. Imagine all the leftover shoes, all mismatched. I wouldn’t be able to donate them, so they’d all end up in a landfill. I’m also oddly obsessed with my dog’s paws.
BS:?You seem really in love with your dog. Almost as if he were a human baby.
G:?Yes, well, I forgot to have children.
BS:?How old are you?
G:?Thirty-eight.
Greta was forty-five.
G:?I’m not aging well.
BS:?Were you focused on your career?
G:?I forgot to have a career.
BS:?What else did you forget?
G:?Tattoos. I forgot to get tattoos.
BS:?Are you still transcribing our conversation?
G:?Indeed. I’m exhausted.
BS:?I bet I know how to keep you from doing that.
Like a boss, Big Swiss didn’t utter another word, not even “goodbye” or “good to see you.” She simply placed two twenties on the bar, gave Greta’s shoulder a gentle squeeze, waved to Gringo, and then slipped out the door.
Greta immediately ordered another Sazerac, just to get ahold of her nerves. Being deliberately obnoxious had been more stressful than she’d realized, but she also hadn’t anticipated enjoying herself so much. It had been years since she’d made a new friend, even a dog park friend.
Big Swiss was clearly looking for a bodyguard, though, not a friend, and Greta didn’t even work out. Nor did she have any weapons. Perhaps she would start lifting weights, or at least larger logs of wood. She was good enough with a hatchet, but maybe it was time to pick up the axe.
If they walked their dogs together on a regular basis, Big Swiss was bound to bring up Rebekah in therapy again. But what did Om really know about Greta? He didn’t even know her dog’s name, or his breed. He only knew Greta’s age, where and with whom she lived, and that she sometimes slept in the closet.
8
Now that winter was well under way, the fires had to be fed and maintained around the clock. This involved Greta’s trudging outside to the woodpile, loading up her arms, trudging back, dumping the wood onto the hearth, stacking it, making sure she had enough kindling. If she went to bed at midnight, it was necessary to set her alarm for three, four at the latest, to pack the stove, and again at six or seven, and then every five hours, all day long. If the fire died, she started from scratch, and the wood was often wet or frozen, or the fire didn’t catch. If there was a back draft, her room suddenly filled with thick black smoke, which in turn filled her with rage, and she beat the air with a towel like a demon. She’d nailed drapes over the windows because Sabine didn’t own a drill or curtain rods, and it was less drafty, certainly, but staying warm was its own part-time job, and she wasn’t getting paid. In fact, she was the one paying. Her only compensation was not freezing to death.
Big Swiss had texted every day for two and a half weeks, which meant they’d walked their dogs together for a total of seventeen hours. Since Greta felt like she was performing a role, she wore the same thing every day: waxed canvas coat and work pants, in monochromatic green. She looked and felt like the groundskeeper at a cemetery. The other day Big Swiss had asked for her last name.
“My last name?” Greta said. “Graves.”
Big Swiss watched Greta light a cigarette and take a few puffs.
“What are you, nervous?” she said.
“I’m a smoker,” Greta said.
“I know, but your hands are shaking,” Big Swiss said.
The shakes were from the night before, which she’d spent in the kitchen with Sabine, drinking Redbreast whiskey in front of the fire. At some point, Greta noticed that Sabine seemed wasted but not drunk, that she was in fact pretending to drink, and telling stories that sounded like historical fan fiction. Although Sabine was terrified of bats, Greta wondered briefly if she’d been bitten. She continued to lose weight, even in her forehead. Greta could literally see her skull. Sabine was keeping something from her, something she seemed on the verge of confessing, but then she’d disappear to the city, sometimes in the dead of night, and was gone for days. Yesterday she’d texted to inform Greta that she was making edibles for a well-known dealer in Jersey, and might be gone for a whole month, and was Greta okay with that? It was a lot of house for one person, Sabine admitted, but she was making good money now and promised to cover the cost of wood.
Back to Big Swiss. Shockingly, despite ample opportunity, Big Swiss had yet to mention being beaten half to death. Not a whisper. Nor had she mentioned, or even hinted at, her attacker’s recent release from prison. The restraining order alone would be the first thing out of most people’s mouths, and you’d never hear the end of it. Instead, Big Swiss wore a lot of tweed and fixated on her （Rebekah） and was extremely intense （Swiss?） about it. In other words, she reminded Greta of a certain famous psychoanalyst, except she didn’t smoke a pipe or cigars. She sucked on something brown and dick-shaped, however: root beer Popsicles, which she brought with her to the dog park, even though it was the dead of winter. Root beer, she said, was her winter flavor. In spring, she would switch to watermelon. Summer was strictly citrus. Additionally, she ate a lot of salty licorice. And apples. Greta herself had never felt compelled to eat an apple. It was certainly never something she’d craved. She disliked fruit in general, but Big Swiss made apples look irresistible. Since Big Swiss’s mouth was always full, Greta had gone ahead and told her a few things. A few hundred things. Between bites, Big Swiss had peppered Greta with personal questions about her past, which had made Greta uneasy at first, but then Greta remembered that her most basic facts—name, age, birthplace—were outright lies, and the lies made her feel cloaked and anonymous, like a whistleblower in a documentary. After the initial discomfort wore off, Greta talked as blithely as if her face were blurred, her voice digitally scrambled, her exact location obscured.