The day Boyfriend goes missing, I am having lunch with Thursday Girlfriend, because it is a Friday. It used to be Wednesday that we got lunch together, but it was a problem that I had already seen our Boyfriend the day before and would have to wait a whole week, whereas Thursday Girlfriend felt giddy and elated anticipating her date for the following day. It made me feel bitter and gloomy and put a strain on our relationship. This was a problem because Thursday Girlfriend and I were friends before I ever met Boyfriend; we had grown up together and reconnected when I moved across the country, to this town where she had lived ever since college. In fact, Thursday Girlfriend introduced me to our Boyfriend with impeccable timing; right when his Tuesday slot opened up, we all met at a karaoke bar. Old Tuesday Girlfriend had to move home to care for her dying father and could no longer commit to a serious relationship. Sometimes she and Boyfriend still write each other letters. That night I sang “Still the One” by Shania Twain, and he touched my hand over the table when Thursday was in the bathroom.
            Monday Girlfriend is a part-time college student who works at a fancy restaurant and, I expect, enjoys being pampered by Boyfriend on her day off. Of course I am Tuesday Girlfriend. I wrote a novel seven years ago and not a single word since. Wednesday Girlfriend is an environmental scientist also in her mid-30s, and although I’ve always found her quite plain, I expect the stability she provides in the middle of the week is a welcome and grounding force for Boyfriend. Thursday Girlfriend has family money and an art degree and runs a boutique selling candles, hand-made stuffed animals, and designer-brand baby clothes. Friday Girlfriend works at a law firm with a four-day work week. Saturday Girlfriend, who works in marketing, is Boyfriend’s childhood sweetheart, so of course she gets the best day. They were next door neighbors as kids, and sometimes it makes me sick to think she knew him when he was little and ever since. Sunday Girlfriend is Boyfriend’s mother or Mother Mary, since this is the day he takes his mother to church and gets his rest for the week ahead. I met his mother once, after we had passed the sixth month mark, which is when all the Girlfriends get to meet his mother. She had wrinkly hands that shook when she held her fork up to her waxy lips to eat.
            Wednesday has been saying for a while that we should unionize, or that we should hold a general meeting on the first Sunday each month. She wants bylaws and accountability and yearly retreats. She’s the one who started the newsletter and keeps everyone’s contacts up-to-date in the case of an emergency. I think she wants five friends in addition to Boyfriend, which is greedy and beyond the scope of our arrangement. Thursday Girlfriend is my friend, but all the others – especially Wednesday – I wish they didn’t exist.

​

            Thursday and I eat a refreshing salad with orange slices and roasted pecans. She tells me about her store and its new shipment of felted ornaments and dishes made by a local ceramics studio. I tell her about a job I am vaguely interested in applying to (part time, at a wine bar). When we get to dessert, a wiggling milky green Jell-O, Thursday’s phone rings. The caller ID says it’s Friday Girlfriend, which is odd. We shrug it off, thinking it must be an unintentional dial. 
            But then it is my phone that is ringing, and it’s Friday Girlfriend again. I don't really care to speak to Friday, who always seems snobby and aloof, but calling twice is so out of character for her that I reluctantly pick up.
            “Is he with you?” She asks as if gasping for breath.
            “No,” I say. “I’m with Thursday.”
            “Oh. He hasn’t shown up for our date today. I can’t get a hold of him. His number’s going straight to voicemail.”
            “Maybe you’re being broken up with,” I say, even though I can tell that this is a mean and unnecessary comment. And I also know it’s very unlike him to no-show. Boyfriend is prompt and conscientious. He’s much more accountable than the average man on the dating market. That’s why we all enjoy being in a relationship with him so much. 
            “That’s not funny,” Friday says.
            “You’re right,” I say. “Sorry.”
            I ask her if she’s tried his mother or went to his house, and she tells me she’s done both. It must be Wednesday Girlfriend’s dream scenario because I find myself saying we should all hold a meeting at Thursday’s store, which is around the corner from the cafe we’re at.

 

            “He was perfectly normal yesterday,” Thursday says, to me, Monday and Friday. We’re still waiting on Wednesday to arrive, and haven’t yet heard from Saturday. Thursday had closed the shop early for the day. “He picked me up from work. We got dinner and drinks. He put me to bed and was gone by the morning. Same as always.”
            We all nod, perplexed. We want to believe it’s just Friday who’s being ousted, but Boyfriend isn't answering any of our calls either. I keep my cell phone to my ear just to hear his recorded voice mailbox message on repeat, as a way to prove that his name and his phone number really do exist. 
            “Who’s his emergency contact?” Monday asks. “What if something terrible has happened? What if he passed out somewhere without his ID?”
 

            My emergency contact is Thursday. I thought about asking Boyfriend, but it would kill me to know he might be leaving a date to find me in the hospital after some car crash rendered my face unrecognizable.
            Just then, Wednesday walks in with a coffee bigger than her head and three white binders. 
            “His emergency contact is his mother. He doesn’t like to play favorites with us,” she says.
            She sets the binders down and reveals they contain compiled information about Boyfriend: menus to the restaurants he likes, photocopies of his address books, the background checks he conducted on each of us when deciding to begin a relationship. She has his employment records, a copy of his mortgage note, even his car registration, along with a few voyeuristic shots of him with each of us. I would make fun of her in any lighter circumstances. At this moment it almost feels moving; I want to stroke the binder and hold it tight like it’s Boyfriend’s fleshy ribcage, like it’s all he’s left behind in the world. 
            “Is any of this stuff useful?” I question.
            “It’s good to be thorough,” Wednesday says. “We have a potential missing person case ahead of us.”
            “Are you a private investigator or something?” I ask, wondering what it is about Wednesday that makes me so catty.
            She ignores me. “Friday,” she says, “Did you very thoroughly check his house? Every nook and cranny?”
            Friday nods with slight hesitation. “I looked everywhere where a fully grown man might be hiding, I’m pretty sure.”
            “The attic?” Wednesday prods.
            “Well, no,” Friday says.
            “The chimney?”
            “Well, no.” 
            Because Wednesday also has a key (apparently you get a key after two years of dating) we all decide to take a field trip together to Boyfriend’s house and look for any signs of a disappearance. We send Saturday, who’s been emitting radio silence all afternoon, a text alerting her to the developing situation. She probably feels so secure in their relationship that she’s not worried about him disappearing.
            Because there’s five of us and she’s an environmentalist, Wednesday offers to drive, and we stop at a drive-thru for fries and blended coffee drinks on the way. In the backseat, I sit squished in between Monday and Thursday, who is maybe taking the news hard, thinking she drove him away during their final night together. I reach over and squeeze her hand while sipping on a caramel frappuccino, which I had never before realized was essentially just ice cream. Wednesday plays the local alternative station, which almost makes me feel sweet toward her — I don’t know anyone who still listens to the radio. Her car is a light blue Prius with a window decal of a turtle on its rear window, and there’s candy wrapper trash in the backseat. I would have thought Wednesday’s car would be squeaky clean and pristine, but there’s candy wrapper trash in the backseat.
            After fifteen minutes of me falling into Thursday's arm at every round-about, we arrive. Wednesday pulls into Boyfriend’s driveway leading to his mid-century modern style house. The first time I saw it I told him it looked like a smart arrangement of rectangles. Usually we had our dates elsewhere, at restaurants and at my studio. I imagine he liked keeping his house to himself, having one peaceful place where he didn’t have to constantly wash the sheets, a place where he could spend the quiet hours in which he didn’t belong to anybody. 
            Wednesday charges forward ahead of all of us, speed walking in her cork wedges to the front door. Thursday, Monday and I pile out giggling before putting on a serious face. Friday strolls behind us, somewhat despondent. By the time we get to the door, Wednesday is already inside the house shouting for Boyfriend and tearing up the couch cushions. Friday hangs back and says she doesn’t really want to snoop around anymore; she had checked everything this morning. I agree that Boyfriend probably isn’t hiding under his bed or behind a secret-door bookshelf, but I still enter to humor Wednesday and to sneak a few sniffs of Boyfriend’s pillows, just in case this is my last chance to do so.
            “I’ll get the bedroom,” I say, and slink through the hallway to the master. The floors here are always so cold. I close the door behind me and vaguely hear Wednesday making clatter in the kitchen. I check under the covers, just in case Boyfriend was hiding there all along, sleeping and needy, but he isn’t. I crawl under and wrap myself in his duvet like it’s a cocoon.

​

            When we had been dating for about seven months, I told my sister Gretchen about Boyfriend during one of our weekly Sunday morning phone calls. I had been single for around ten years at that point, so she nearly screamed in delight at the news. I told her we were taking things slow. She asked if the two of us might take a trip home to meet the family one day, and I had to explain the arrangement, that if we ever were to be introduced, it would have to happen on a Tuesday. She got all confused and thought this was a sad thing and asked me why I couldn’t  try to find happiness in a normal way. She asked me if I was doing this for a book or something. I told her a traditional relationship was just about the least straightforward path to happiness, and that it was much better to date a professional.
            She must have wondered whether something happened to rewire my brain such that I would elect to share a partner with five other women. The truth is there was no great heartbreak, no cheating scandal, no unearthed childhood trauma preventing me from developing normal and adult interpersonal relationships. Sure, there had been miniature hurts along the way. Like my college boyfriend who kept me a secret from his family. Or when my best friend slept with the person I had a decade-long crush on the summer I turned 27. But overall, I’m relatively unscathed. I went on dates here and there across my twenties. I spent a decade going to work and coming home and tending a manuscript and not doing much else. A capital-R Relationship as portrayed on television and books became an increasingly cartoonish fiction inapplicable to my life. 
            It gets sticky when one person has to be everything. I don’t think I could handle the pressure. My current life, up until today at least, is the ideal. I have one day to spend with Boyfriend, to tell him my thoughts on books and TV and the articles I’ve been reading. We hold hands and whisper bad jokes and go to places like the beach or a Michelin star restaurant. Maybe I could stand to have him one more night each week, but any more than that would be too much. I have lunch with Thursday each week. I call my sister. Maybe the descriptions of these relationships sound mechanical, but I have always found comfort in the routine. 
            Gretchen has asked me on several occasions what I would do if I ever decide one day that I want children. Did I expect a child to be satisfied with only having a father one day a week? I tell her over and over there is zero maternalistic instinct or desire residing within me. There are, of course, some days where I put photos of Boyfriend and I into a photo application that shows what our baby might look like and feel a tug in my chest. My warm feelings toward the digital infant normally expire within minutes, leaving me with boredom, so it is good I relegate the experiment to a virtual space instead of forever bringing into the world a child whom I will inevitably tire of.

​

            Thursday knocks on the door a few minutes later and joins me in the bed. 
            “You found my hiding place,” I say. She jumps on top of me and I hit her with a pillow, like we’re little girls. Once when I was twelve years old, the two of us had a sleepover back in our hometown, when my parents were away for the weekend. Thursday had braces then, and I had a permanent feather woven into my hair. During the night, despite our best attempts to whisper and keep our giggles to a minimum, her mother separated us for chatting too late. She stormed into the room and grabbed my wrist and dragged me to a guest room. 
            “Wednesday’s still at it?” I ask.
            “She’s relentless,” Thursday answers, rolling over on top of me. 
            “Do you think we’ll find him?” I ask.
            “I don’t know,” Thursday answers. “I think I always knew it was a bit of a precarious situation. It’s just a bummer he had to disappear after a date with me.”
            “Don’t say that too loud,” I say. “Wednesday will start investigating you as a murder suspect.” 
            Thursday laughs. “Is it bad to say I’m kind of having fun trying to find him together?”
            Then Wednesday knocks on the door and I feel twelve and scolded again, but I just raise the comforter over my head and laugh. She forces open the door and looks a bit distraught at the situation as well as at the fact that despite the situation we are in here monkeying around. Monday stands beside her and emulates her exasperated posture. Instead of scolding, though, Wednesday sighs and climbs into the bed and Monday follows.
            “He’s not here,” she says, and I laugh because of course he’s not. He’s not an elf on the shelf or a stray lego piece. He’s a 6’2” 200-pound man who has clearly grown tired of his harem.
            “You guys are going to strip away his smell from the sheets,” I say. Thursday shoves a pillow in my face, which doesn’t smell like anything. 
            “Where’s Saturday?” I ask, though I’m sure if Saturday were here she would just sour my mood.
            “We should go to her house next,” Thursday says. 
            “You don’t think…” Monday renders.
            “Sure. I have her address,” Wednesday says. 
            “I would never want you as an enemy,” I say.
            Before exiting the room, we check his closet and see that some of his favorite clothes and his smart navy blue duffle are missing. We leave his bed unmade and abandon all of our drive-thru trash on his kitchen counter. Outside the front door, Friday is smoking a cigarette and scrolling through Instagram on her phone. I wouldn’t have guessed her to be the type of person to smoke or have a social media addiction. 
            “We’re going to Saturday’s house,” I say to her. “Wednesday has her address.”
            Friday nods and ashes. She says what all of us are thinking. “Maybe he’ll be there too.”
            In the car to Saturday’s, the radio plays a Paris Hilton song I haven’t heard in fifteen years and we keep all the windows open, even on the freeway. Maybe it’s the field trip aspect to the afternoon or the fact that we are five spurned women heading to a tertiary location, but I feel unhinged, like both of my ears have been loosened for what’s between them to spill out. The shock of his disappearance has worn off, and at this point we are more angry than concerned. The journey has transformed from a search party into a vengeance mission. 
            “Six years together,” Wednesday says, laughing but scary, her foot on the gas. “Ate up and spat out six of my best years.”
            Six years of devotion and she had never been promoted to a flashier day of the week.
            Friday laughs solemnly, “Four for me.”
            One and a half for me.

​

            Saturday lives in a quaint, yellow two-bedroom bungalow as picture-perfect as the rest of her. We don’t even knock. Wednesday kicks down the front door — I’m beginning to respect her sense of initiative — and we enter behind her. Sure enough, beyond the floor-to-ceiling window to her backyard are her and Boyfriend reclining in lounge chairs, reading the paper, sipping some cold and delicious-looking beverage. They look like an advertisement for the neighborhood. Their bliss, of course, is interrupted by our presence, by the physical threat of five scorned women. Saturday sees us first and points, so Boyfriend turns around and looks at us with discomfort but no shock. We pile into the house and march out the back door to confront him, while the two of them don’t even get up from their seats. On our way, Monday and Friday tip over the candles and flowers gracing Saturday’s countertops, the broken ceramic pieces crushed beneath our sandals, to make a big mess along with our big scene.
            Outside, Wednesday leads the charge. I can’t help but notice it is such a warm, beautiful day. Saturday has a bird bath and bushes orbited by three butterflies. The five of us stand there sour despite the good weather. We surround the culprits, and I realize we devised no plans for what happens next. 
            “Do you know what day it is?” Friday asks Boyfriend expectantly.
            Saturday flashes her left hand and its ring. “It’s the day I got engaged,” she says, smiling. 
            Boyfriend flashes his finger. “And married. We went to the courthouse first thing this morning. We leave for our honeymoon tomorrow.”
            The ring on her finger probably costs all our salaries combined. Even though she was one of us just a day ago, her face is snide, as though she looks down on us for what we’ve put up with, for the compromising arrangements we’ve agreed to. She’s his full time, seven-days-a-week Wife now. I think about the wedding, about how, if all of us were present, we might each seize the moment to object, taking the pulpit one after the other.
            “I know it must be difficult,” Boyfriend says. “But I hope you can be happy for us.”
            It’s a ridiculous thing to say, so I laugh. I look at his hairline, the sweat beading down his face and the moles dotting his shoulders, and I try to recall what it is about him that I love so much. Was it the dinners or the late nights or Shania Twain? Looking at the two of them, it’s not exactly jealousy that I feel. I don’t necessarily want to take her place as the wife. But it’s a feeling of betrayal, of having the rug swept from underneath me. The two of them, in their romantic impulse, have broken a contract and disrupted my routine.
            “How could you do this?” Wednesday asks. “We had rules and agreements. I should have signed something legally binding.”
            Friday chimes in. “You stood me up on our date. I had a dinner reservation tonight that I'd been planning for a month. You could have ended things after our date, you only would have had to wait one more day.”
            “I’m sorry,” says Boyfriend, “Once I made up my mind, I needed to be with her right away.”
            “I’ve been stupid. I should have known it wasn’t going to be sustainable,” says Thursday. “But I thought maybe we’d grow old together. All of us, together.”
            “I’m grateful to you all, truly,” Boyfriend says, diplomatically, “If not for the time we’ve spent together, I’d have no idea what I truly wanted. Each of you, in your own way, has taught me about what truly matters.” 
            I had never thought of myself as a teacher.
            “You weren’t even going to say goodbye?” Monday asks.
            “Things happened quickly,” Boyfriend says. 
            “He just wasn’t thinking of you,” Saturday says. 
            I hate her, but I’m sure she hates us more. 
            Boyfriend looks at me next, expecting me to say my piece. The other Girlfriends do too. I almost don’t want to give him the satisfaction, but it spills out of me anyway.
            “Now I have to start all over,” I say. 
            It feels daunting but not impossible. 

​

            Monday is the first to leave. She is the youngest and therefore the most suited for quick recovery. She will call one of the many numbers left for her on receipts at the restaurant one of these days. She says she’ll wait for us in the car. Friday leaves next, and asks if we could wrap it up quickly since she needs to pick up her kid. I didn’t know she was a mother, but apparently she has a daughter, from a young and brief marriage. She has someone to look after all night. Thursday and I leave together a few minutes later, holding hands. So many hours have passed beyond our normal allotted lunch hour. Before leaving the front door, we look over our shoulders at Wednesday, who is still in the backyard at a loss for words, staring at Boyfriend, who has returned to his paper, denying her gaze. 
            We wait for her in the car with the windows down. We share snacks Friday has stashed away in the bottom of her purse — fig bars and fruit snacks made with real juice. I pull out my phone and try to find the Paris Hilton song, because I want to listen to it again. Thursday sings along and sounds so good I wonder why she didn’t sing karaoke that night so long ago.
            After a while Wednesday walks out with a grin on her face. She has an egg in her hand that she throws at Saturday’s front door before joining us in the car, cackling as it squelches into drippy yellow on the white wood. She drives each of us home, me being last since I live at the edge of the city. It goes Monday, then Friday, then Thursday, then me. One by one, they crawl out of the Prius. I don’t know why, but I’m sad to see them go. 
            It is dark by the time Wednesday pulls in front of my building slow, unlocks the car door and tells me she’ll be in touch, if I’d like. I pinch the skin on my wrist as I walk up my steps, shove my rusty key into the lock and turn the latch to enter my unit. No one is waiting for me.