Page 53 of Everyone Is Lying to You

I shake my head, because no one smokes anymore, but I do miss it in times like this.

“I don’t either, but I could go for one now. I miss it every day when I have my first sip of coffee or a shitty beer. The men here are usually gorgeous too, but so fucking thick, and the kids…oh my god, the kids. You could go to a dozen casting calls in the Valley and never see angels like these. They’re obedient and beautiful. A talent manager’s dream.

“The culture out here definitely pushes women hard to be a certain way. The quest for perfection at all costs is intense. They’d do it without a camera so why not give them one—I moved here and I offered up my services. Accounting at first. There was a lot of money coming in from banner ads and sponsored posts. And then management when the bigger brands and deals started waking up to how influential the girls were. It was similar to what my dad’s boss had done with the bands. He found the kids who had something special. They didn’t have to have too much talent, in fact real talent could be a pain in the ass. They justneeded an ‘it’ factor. Everything else can be manufactured. And over the years that’s what I’ve done for these ladies. I find the ones who have something and we work together to nurture their careers.”

“How long have you worked with Bex?”

“A long time. Seven years now. She was one of my first. We figured a lot of this out together. And she really has it. That ‘it’ factor. She’s an incredible baker, but she was shy about showing it off at first. I convinced her to amp that up. To be proud of it. I also launched Tripod’s Instagram. That stinky-ass goat pays the mortgage for the whole farm.”

“Gray’s family seemed so rich. Why are there all these debts and mortgages?”

“Gray’s granddaddy made that money. He had eleven kids and Gray’s own daddy had eight. That’s a lot of slivers of pie to dole out even if you’ve got a lot of pie. And then a bunch of them made some shitty investments. Gray’s been in financial free fall since they got married, but he hid it for a few more years afterward. When they first moved out to the ranch, he had big plans to breed bison like a millennial Ted Turner. Thought he was gonna make a bison-cow hybrid called the beefalo. But bison are ornery and nasty. They break out of every fence. They rip up your land and they’ll try to kill you every chance they get. No vet wants to touch them, and the farmers out here have no experience with them. It was a disaster. Also, they’re never camera-ready. Rebecca actually took to the farming pretty well. She was raising chickens by hand while she was raising those babies and was making some dough from her egg money alone. And then those chickens made her a star on Instagram. We got more andmore of them. Henfluencing is a real banger. The chicken phase was incredibly lucrative for her. That’s when we decided to start selling merch. Her wicker egg-collecting basket was the first thing we tried on the product side, and it was a massive hit. From there we expanded into clothes and linens and kitchenware. We figured out how to do one media day a week to streamline the production process. Rebecca became a real vibe real fast.

“And she has something else too. She’s not from here, so she wasn’t afraid to push the boundaries, to want something bigger than what this tiny world could offer her. More and more of the women out here are seeing that now, but they didn’t then. She’s truly a star. Always has been.”

“It’s insane,” I blurt out. “They’re all pushing this arcadian fantasy of homemaking and living off the land, the anti-girlbosses, when they’re all building capitalist empires.”

“It’s genius, right?” Olivia claps her hands like an excited child. “She gives the people what they want. They all do. Don’t you fall down rabbit holes of bread baking and closet organizing and baby swaddling? No one is immune to it. You all can’t get enough.”

“How do the husbands feel about this? Do they hate it?” I think about how the tables have turned with Peter and me since he lost his job. He’s grateful that I have mine, but I know he bristles at the fact that I’ve become the sole breadwinner. He can’t seem to help it even though he has the feminist soul of a man raised on the Spice Girls. How must these “manly” and painfully masculine men feel about their wives’ success?

“Not all of them hate it. In fact, plenty of the hubbies like the cash. Money is always nice. But when it’s women making the money they get power. They want things. They question things.The husbands don’t like that and the men who control these towns and the churches, they don’t like it either.”

“How did they feel about Rebecca?”

“Loved her until they hated her. She got too big. She had so much influence, such a big audience. People actually moved out here saying they wanted what @BarefootMamaLove had. They said that to the real estate agents. They showed up at the church services. They bought into the lifestyle. At first it was great. It really set Gray up to be a star in the church and the community.”

“Did Gray want to be a star?” I keep thinking about the cipher on the edges of Rebecca’s pictures.

“He wanted to be important. His dad was an important man around here. He was a big deal in the state, and everyone loved him. Gray wanted that kind of love, that kind of admiration. Politics always appealed to him. Rebecca told me that early on. I could always tell he was desperate to prove himself, desperate to show he was more than his family’s money, especially when it was gone. You can smell that on a person.”

“What’s it smell like?” It’s half a joke.

“Expensive cologne.” She doesn’t miss a beat. Our steaks arrive, Olivia’s as bloody as she requested. When she slices through the flank with exquisite precision, the blood pools around the muscle. Some of it drips off Olivia’s lips as she continues.

“With Gray’s swagger and cheekbones he could have run for office without her, but throw in a pretty blond wife and six perfect children and he was gonna have it made. But he got itchy when she got bigger and bigger. He never wanted her to expand. None of them did.”

“Them?”

“Gray’s family. The church elders. The local political party. They wanted to keep her where she was at. Make her even smaller if they could. Keep her in a box, a glass box where she couldn’t grow.”

“And that’s not what she wanted. Or what you want?”

“Hell no. That woman is a star and she deserves to shine.”

“And there are probably people out there, out here,” I say as I wave my hand toward the desert outside, “who don’t want that?”

“That’s exactly right.”

I take it all in. All of this information about a world I have uneasily consumed on Instagram and YouTube. A world that looked beautiful and aspirational. A world that made me feel bad about my own messy life. We pause the conversation to gnaw on our steaks. Mine is delicious and exactly what I needed. I have the feeling that Olivia is good at giving people exactly what they need when they need it.

There are people who want to silence and control Bex. But she also had every reason to want to get rid of her husband. I’ll be leaving here with more questions than answers.

Olivia’s phone goes off again with that ridiculous ringtone.

“I’m going to have to call them back pretty quick. Always on duty. Go back to your hotel. Get writing. Your room is paid for there as long as you need to stay. I’ve made sure of it. Call me if you need me for anything.”

I finally get a glimpse of her screen to see who is calling. “Veronica.”

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