Chapter Two
C arly, though.
Carly she could talk to.
When Essie and Ryan had first moved to this neighborhood, she’d had a stark fear that her social life would die a slow, strangled death. It would be relegated to talking to people online, switching deliriously from app to app to keep up and keep in the loop with friends from school, friends from her hometown, friends from the city she’d lived in before Ryan.
Everyone in the community seemed to be a mother, working on their Fisher Price empire. Assembling an arsenal of lawn toys and sneakers, backpacks and sippy cups. Essie watched them hauling thick, grey car seats and folding wheeled nightmares they called strollers.
If they weren’t moms, they were aggressively career-oriented. Hillary Clinton’s with dyed hair and high heels, stomping out the door each morning to their gleaming chariots. Fem-soldiers of marketing, HR, and management. They trickled into the city to work at tech startups and offices, everyone doing vague jobs they tried to explain at the summer barbeques but failed to communicate what they actually did. Essie would listen, wanting desperately to be like them—they seemed so purposeful, like they had been air-dropped in already knowing how to live.
But what if they were wrong? What if they were secretly just as unhappy as she was?
“I would rather smoke weed and be bitter,” Carly said one night on her back porch as they derided their entire neighborhood with the gleeful joy of finding someone who hates something just as much as you do.
Carly was like her tattooed older sister—a grim, cynical but ultimately caring friend who was distrustful of everyone as a rule, and frowned on anything too many people were doing. She confessed—that same evening—that she didn’t think anyone was truly happy. “Everyone is working very hard at their illusion, and some of us are better at it than others.”
“I’m terrible at it,” Essie replied.
Carly blew smoke through her nostrils. “That’s why I like you.”
So, naturally, she had to tell Carly about Kara Gibson and the Three Men. It had taken a mythic quality, like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. This half-certain fable of suburban drama.
After a pitiful night’s sleep and a long, dreary day at work, she went over to Carly’s. Like solemn statues claiming their posts, they took their usual spots on the porch, sliding into the white deck chairs that were pockmarked with black scorch marks from Carly’s cigarettes. Carly sparked her lighter and Essie pulled her legs off the ground to perch cross-legged.
“So tell me again what you saw,” Carly said.
Essie launched into it, fishing for every stray detail and iota of information she could pull from the brief image she had. The men, Kara, the van.
Carly made her tell it three times, an interested gleam on her face as Essie recited it. She bit her nails as she listened, and when Essie was done, she let out a long laugh. “Kara Gibson ? Our cute little neighbor—,” she pointed to her house, “—she let me borrow her fucking crockpot? That neighbor? You’re telling me she was in a… bondage orgy?”
“That’s not what I said. I don’t know what I saw. I don’t know if I should tell anyone.”
“Of course, of course.” Carly grinned around the butt of her cigarette. “You told me, though.”
Essie smiled. “Obviously. I had to tell someone.”
“Not your husband though.”
There was nothing to do with that comment but give the same bitter shrug she’d been doing for a while now.
How’s your marriage, Essie?
Who fucking knows.
Carly patted her knee. “Don’t worry, apparently you’re not the only one not telling their husband everything. I’m guessing Mr. Gibson has no idea what his wife is getting up to.”
“Should we tell him?
“I’m not getting involved. Fuck that.” Headlights slashed across the night, illuminating the backyard briefly. Anderson, Carly’s husband, was home.
“Are you telling him?” Essie asked.
“Andy? My luck he’d want to try it,” she said dryly, snuffing the cigarette out. “Would you do it?”
“I don’t even understand what they did.”
“Right, but you have an imagination. Would you get in the van with them?”
“Would you?”
“Probably.” Carly avoided her eyes and examined the bite marks on her nails. “Today I did so many mundane things. I stood in line at the post office. I stopped at seven red lights. I made pasta. I’ll do laundry after you leave. And tomorrow? I have work. Where I will read emails and follow up with people and drink coffee and be this good little worker bee when, in reality, I want to peel my face off because I’m so bored.”
“At least you’re not dramatic about it,” Essie replied.
“Ha, ha. All I’m saying is, you’re telling me three men with hopefully large cocks are gonna put on masks and gloves, kidnap me and take me away from my life for a little while? I don’t have to think, I don’t have to talk, I don’t have to make a single decision?” She stretched, catlike, in her chair. “Do you know how good I would sleep after getting fucked like that? Ugh, that alone makes it worth it.”
The night ended shortly after that. As they were saying goodbye to each other, their phones chirped in unison.
Kara Gibson had invited them to a barbeque. Tomorrow night.
“Let’s ask her,” Carly said. That interested gleam had returned to her eyes.
The close-knit suburb emerged from their dwellings with sacred, routine promptness. They assembled on sidewalks and began the short walk to Kara Gibson’s, carrying round bowls full of potatoes, macaroni salad, and baked beans. The men carried twelve packs of beer, soda, and wine coolers.
Adorned in their ritualistic wear, they crossed the street in friendly salsa-colored sundresses or flowered skirts tied at the waist. The men all seemed to be bald, balding, or had so severely scalped their hair that it clung in neat, hedge-like lines along their skulls. They wore ball caps that were white and turned around backwards. Some had sunglasses; each had T-shirts and basketball shorts. They were each named something like Ryan, Dan, Tyler, or Bob. Their wives were an assortment of Chelsea’s and Rachel’s, with the occasional Mandy or Sandra.
Essie had a horrible sensation that any of them could be swapped with one another, and they wouldn’t notice. She wouldn’t notice; be it a Dan or a Ryan making clever observations for her benefit or criticizing the way Greg Gibson grilled.
The first barbeque she’d gotten dragged to, it felt like the first day of a new school. Ryan had dragged her around, forcing her to meet the neighbors he already seemed to know.
Luckily she’d found Carly, a loud girl with colorful tattoos who was already a bit too drunk for 4 pm, who waved her over and asked why Essie looked so terrified.
“I’m not a people person,” she admitted, and Carly replied that she was barely a person so… friends?
Everyone made their way to Kara Gibson’s pool deck, Kara and Greg shaking hands and hugging people, the joyful chorus of Midwest greeting “Hey! Good to see ya!” shouted at one another, gleaming white teeth glinting in the Tiki Torch light.
Ryan disappeared from her side immediately and beelined for Ron and Jason at Greg’s minibar.
Essie found Carly laying on a deck chair, watching the husbands in the pool as they tossed a football back and forth.
“They look like hot dogs,” she said, tilting her chin at them.
The bald, tanned men wobbled back and forth in the water, like they were boiling.
“You’ve been smoking too much weed,” Essie said.
“What?”
“You’re calling people hot dogs.”
“Not people, them! The bald ones in Kara’s pool.”
Carly’s husband came over holding drinks. He handed one to Carly and one to Essie, saying, “Here, take mine. I want to make a stronger one anyway.” Anderson was a lean, muscular man who seemed like he’d be more at ease fixing motorcycles than working in tech. He was shirtless, and Essie noticed a newer, blue-ink tattoo on the back of his hand. A small, sketched coffin. Carly was covered in them and had been pushing him to get tattoos for a while. It seemed like he was cracking.
“He brings me drinks and has his hair. I knew there was a reason I liked him,” Carly said, kissing him then shoving him away. Anderson wandered off. The football soared out of the pool, and he caught and flipped it, grinning before disappearing back into the house.
“You two make me sick,” Essie said.
Carly nodded. “Absolutely.” Kara Gibson circled the pool while chatting with guests, handing a pink filled glass to someone in the pool. She paused to twirl in her sundress, showing it off for someone who asked. Carly watched her with wolf eyes, tracking her movements. “There she is. Want to go find out how to get kidnapped?”
Essie was watching Ryan talk a little too animatedly to their neighbor Lindsay, grinning too much and gesturing too freely. She recognized all the signs and signals; every blade of grass and green leaf pointed in that direction. Jealousy. She was supposed to feel jealous, right? But jealousy would mean she cared, and cared seemed like such a strong word.
The Kara Gibson mystery was much more interesting. Probably a trainwreck. Infidelity, a collapsing marriage, a messy divorce—all of it on the horizon for Kara. It was satisfying to pass the wreckage of someone else’s life and examine it, curling your corrupt little soul around the idea that oh, that’ll never be me .
Ryan laughed at something Lindsay said and reached out to briefly touch her hip.
Kara went into the house. Like bank robbers planning a heist, Carly and Essie glanced at each other.
They followed her into the house.
They cornered Kara in the kitchen, surrounding her on either end of the kitchen island and peering over a legion of martini glasses. Kara glanced from Essie to Carly, then back, folding her arms across her chest like she was a teenager in defiance of her parents.
“Hi! It is good to see you two!”
“Kara! You look so good in that dress,” Carly replied, closing in.
“Your house looks great,” Essie added, stepping forward.
Kara’s friendly, placating smile dropped. Her penciled on eyebrows narrowed at Essie. “You told Carly?”
Essie shrugged.
“We didn’t tell anyone else,” Carly said. She leaned onto the counter. “But… what exactly are we keeping a secret?”
Essie had seen dogs in animal shelters, skittishly looking from human to human, backing itself deeper into its cage. Kara did that now, her eyes flicking back and forth. Essie wondered when her teeth would come out.
“I don’t have to tell you anything,” Kara said. “Maybe you should just leave.”
“Maybe we should tell your husband—” Carly replied. Essie saw the flash of anger on Kara’s face, the glint of meanness on Carly’s, and slid smoothly between them.
Essie the mediator, the peacekeeper. “I just want to make sure you’re alright. What I saw was… confusing,” she said.
Kara frowned at her, then savored Carly with a glare. She plucked one of the martini glasses off the counter and sipped it, her lipstick leaving a faint pink mark on the glass. “It’s a really, really good story,” she said. “Hand me my purse.” She pointed to it on the wall hook to Carly’s left. Carly snagged it and tossed it to her. Kara unzipped the little black handbag and dug around in it before pulling out a metallic black card.
She slid it over the counter as Essie and Carly drew closer, peering down at it. The card was blank, save for a phone number engraved in it. Essie traced the numbers with the tip of her fingers as Kara began her story.
“I’m only telling you this,” she said pointedly at Essie, “because I think you’re going through something similar.”
“What?”
“C’mon, I saw your husband with Lindsay. And you two don’t exactly scream ‘happy marriage’.”
“Thanks, Kara,” Essie replied dryly.
She shrugged. “Things with Greg haven’t been good in a long time. Maybe years. But nobody wants to admit they’re in a struggling marriage so I did what we all do. Post nice pictures on Facebook and go through the whole act like we’re the exceptions. Everyone else falls apart, not Kara and Greg. Look how great we look on vacation.” She said the last line with such bitterness that it made Essie want to cry.
“What happened? Anything specific or…?” Carly asked.
“No… we just stopped touching each other. You know? Not even the sex but the shoulder bumps, the hugs, he used to put his forehead to mine and hold it there for a while—” Kara’s face crumpled, and it seemed as if she were about to cry, but she recovered, rearranging her features back into suburban perfection. “We’ve been together for a long time. Maybe I’m boring. I don’t know.”
Carly gently reached out and touched her wrist. “So, the card?”
“Right! Sorry. So, things are getting worse and worse with Greg. Not even sleeping in the same bed. Basically roommates at this point. And I should just… talk to him. I should just reach out and say ‘hey, something’s wrong, can’t you feel it?’ but I don’t.”
She’s living my life. Every word of it, Essie realized in a rush of joy at not being alone, followed by a swift torrent of despair because Kara’s story didn’t seem to have a happy ending.
“He’s cheating,” Carly remarked, as if she were commenting on the rain they were supposed to get.
Kara nodded. “Has been for a while. Some girl at work. She has an apartment in the city. I saw the texts.”
Was Ryan getting those same texts? Was there some girl—some faceless, amorphous girl—innocent in her own way but still somehow vile?
Or maybe there wasn’t someone else. Maybe whatever was happening between Essie and her husband was a deeper kind of broken. That felt worse somehow. Betrayal she could almost understand; the disintegration of something that had been good—once—was unbearable.
Kara gulped the last of her martini. Essie hoped they weren’t the first people she was telling about all this; that there was someone she could cry with, collapse against. A friend, a sister, a mother.
“I found out and I was going to confront him. Leave him, start the divorce. Everything. But…”
“You wanted revenge,” Carly said, grinning.
“Yes. And I got it.” She tipped her glass at the card. “Those men took care of me.”
“So it’s an escort service?” Essie asked.
“Nope. I didn’t pay them anything.”
Carly picked up the card. “Okay, enough dancing around. What happened?”
“Someone I went to school with had the card. It gets passed around from person to person. Very secretive. ‘Give it to a girl in need,’ sort of thing. I told this friend some of what was going on in my life and she slipped me this card.” Kara smiled wanly. “I wouldn't have called it if Greg wasn’t cheating. But one of the texts he sent to her, you know what it said?”
“What?” Carly asked.
“I can’t wait to taste you.” Kara was no longer looking at them. She was staring fixedly at her granite countertop, her eyes glassed over with rage-filled tears. “Can you believe that?” She took a deep breath. “I called the number on the card. I did everything they said. And I mean everything. ”
“So you call—”
“You call and you’ll get a voice on the phone. You agree to their terms and a group of men will kidnap you in a van and fuck you until you can’t walk, Carly. Is that clear enough for you?”
Carly blinked and Essie laughed. “They’re hookers?”
Kara shrugged. “The van is just for fun. They took me to a very nice penthouse. They even fed me breakfast. Maybe they’re rich, bored lawyers with power fetishes. I don’t know. I don’t care. That’s the whole point.”
“You don’t know their names?”
“I never saw their faces, Essie. Well, I saw one.” She smiled dreamily. “He was my favorite.”
“What about diseases or protection or… That’s so fucking risky, did anyone know where you were?” Essie’s chest tightened at the thought.
Kara smiled. “I’m not stupid. My friend had my location and knew where I was. As for the rest… Well, it wouldn’t be fun if it wasn’t a little risky.”
A guest wandered in, asking Kara where the bathroom was. She pointed them in the right direction, and they wandered away. A silence fell between the women, before Kara spoke up.
“One of the… rules, I guess, is that I’m supposed to give someone else the card.”
“Oh, it’s like when people do the ‘pay it forward’ thing at the drive-thru, but for dick,” Carly said dryly.
“So you don’t want the card,” Kara said.
“No, my marriage is fine, thanks.”
She slid it to Essie, who held it in front of her like it was irradiated.
“Just in case,” Kara said.
Someone outside called her name. Kara brushed past them, murmuring, “Excuse me.” before slipping out to the pool deck.
Carly and Essie stood awkwardly in her kitchen. Essie slid the card into her pocket. Carly watched her and smirked. “Be careful, okay?”
“I’m not going to do it.”
“Right. But be careful.”
“Carly, I am not calling that number.”
“Absolutely. You’d be insane to do something so risky and impulsive.”
“Exactly.”
“But be careful.”