Do you ever look over at your neighbor's fancy house and think, “Uh oh. Things are going too well over there.”
You watch those same neighbors go out every night, dressed like they’re ready to meet and greet Beyonce on the red carpet. They remodel their home habitually like the rest of you stock up on toilet paper. They travel to Bora Bora as seamlessly as you drive to Trader Joe’s.
You’re concerned. Of course you are. What’s wrong with those people? You often wonder, on your evening dog walk past their bio-luminescent Italian glass porch chandelier, “Are they okay in there?” You don’t say it, but you think, “Are they losers?”
It’s alarming to live near people with no visible problems. You wake up in the wee hours hoping they’ll get hammered by a tornado. You get on your knees and pray one of them will come home early and find the other one humping a stranger.
You wonder, “What can I do to help?” Can you leave breadcrumbs to help some humping strangers find their front door?
At first, all of your neighbors keep quiet about these lunatics. They’re not full throttle gossip yet. You live on a respectful street — one overloaded with secrets, dead bodies molding in the walls, drug dealing kids, the usual suburban frenzy of morally vacuous upper-middle classes.
It’s a good street. Day to day, you all keep to yourselves unless you bump into one of your neighbors robbing a liquor store. Then, of course, you’ll say hello. Obviously. You’re not friends, but you are neighbors.
Finally, this good life baloney goes too far. The people you’re all secretly concerned about purchase a new car. Not a Camry or even a Suburu. An insanely fancy multi-function SUV that comes with a surfboard, paddle board, and sailboat magnetically floating above the roof rack. The car runs on jasmine.
It’s over the top. The muffler leaks joy. At a secret block meeting, you all discuss killing them, but everyone’s calendar is beyond full with all the soccer games and chess clubs. The neighbors agree to an intervention.
Someone has to say something. The block votes for you. You suck. You’re the worst. Everyone has always admired your ability to gaslight and pull the scaffolding out from beneath people’s lives. You’ll sabotage anyone. It’s a gift.
You’re ready. You get appropriately wasted and walk up to the neighbor's door. It’s a brand new door. What’s wrong with these people? Then, you hear a guttural scream. You wait. The woman neighbor is yelling at the top of her lungs at the man neighbor.
She’s yelling so loud you could hear her if she were screaming from the depths depths of the ocean. Your skin tingles. It feels wonderful. The hair on your arms raises like the Jason Momoa is removing your blouse.
Thank god, you think, walking home. You were so worried. Now you can sleep through the night without dreaming of sinkholes inhaling your neighbor’s unfathomably luxurious home. Unhappy people. Balance restored.