Garden of Earthly Delights

By Carly Sasha Cohen

A secret society, a family scandal, and a mysterious vandal

 

Ani Abrams wants nothing more than to escape Garden City, a town founded as a haven for women, run by women. Ani dreams of journalism school and boys. She'd rather spend her summer falling for Nick Lake, the cute barista at Beanie Babes, and hanging out with Johnny, her drama queen BFF, than serving pastrami at her stepmother Evelyn's Jewish deli and getting caught up in small-town politics.

But when someone begins vandalizing Garden City with misogynistic hate speech, Ani quickly gets pulled into the hunt for the "Vag Vandal" and finds that leaving Garden City may not be as easy as she'd planned. During her search for the Vandal, Ani soon discovers a very secret and very naked society of businesswomen that threatens to ruin the town—and Ani's future.
 

Ani's investigation quickly turns personal as she unearths more questions than answers. Why is the Vandal suddenly singling her out? Could her own stepmother be involved in the attacks? And most importantly, does a stakeout with Nick Lake count as a date?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carly Sasha Cohen
• Release date: Jun 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9798987655917

Carly Sasha Cohen

Carly Sasha Cohen is a writer living in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two grumpy cats. She has her master’s degree in book publishing from Portland State University and an undergrad degree in communication from the University of California, Davis. She enjoys knitting socks, playing video games, and baking for anyone who enters her house. She’s also a mediocre table-top-RPGer and very slow runner.

Book preview

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Garden of Earthly Delights

Carly Sasha Cohen

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Raglan Books

Portland, Oregon

Copyright © 2023 Carly Cohen

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Published by Raglan Books, Portland, Oregon

First edition 2023

ISBN (paperback): 979-8-9876559-0-0

ISBN (ebook): 979-8-9876559-1-7

Cover image: floral pattern © Studio Fevrier/Creative Market; girl © JoyCrew/Shutterstock.com

Cover design by Jenny Kimura

Editing and production by Indigo: Editing, Design, and More

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023901040

To Lesley. Look, Mom, I did it!

Contents

Prologue

1. Bloody City

2. The Grass Diet

3. Mission Meatballs

4. Nick at Night

5. Town Painted Red

6. My Favorite Things

7. Crimson Tide

8. Hot Chocolate Mustaches

9. I Pledge Allegiance

10. Just a Small-Town Girl

11. Holy Shit

12. Waterlogged

13. Weird Kid Pizza

14. The Cult of Domesticity

15. The Daughters of Lilith

16. I Plead the Fifth

17. Garden City’s Most Wanted

18. Fish Sticks

19. Wanna Dance?

20. And All Her Princes Shall Be Nothing

21. What a Couple of Buffoons

22. The Screech Owl Shall Rest There

Thank you!

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Prologue

The back of a cop car is really uncomfortable. Instead of soft upholstery, the seats are hard and plastic, and the doors have no handles on the inside. So you’re trapped. I should know. I’m sitting in the back of Officer Giannini’s Chevy Tahoe. The lights are flashing, and I can see their red-and-blue reflection out the window. The statue of Anne Hutchinson is lit up, and her face turns red. Blue. Red. Blue. I look down at my hands. Red.

I could blame Lilith, say she made me do it. Maybe she did. After all, this was all set in motion long before I started getting those messages. Long before I met Nick. But I can’t tell the cops that Lilith did it. So I sit in the back of the car, ready to confess everything.

1

Bloody City

One Month Earlier

My bonnet itched behind my ears, and large sweat stains surfaced under the armpits of my powder-blue Colonial dress. It was Founder’s Day, and Evelyn was gung ho that the deli do its part—and dress its part. But I was selling knishes out of Dad’s luxurious Winnebago, not reenacting the Battle of Gettysburg, and the dress was starting to stick to me in unmentionable places.

Two pastrami sandwiches! I yelled the order across the BagelBago, as I liked to call it, and Dad smiled at me from his newly installed stovetop range.

Thanks, Ani. I don’t know what we’d have done without you this summer. His deep voice bellowed through the clanging of pots and pans as he used one of his pudgy hands to wipe sweat off his glistening bald head. Everyone was getting their pastrami extra greasy today. The Gentiles wouldn’t have gotten their sandwiches, and Garden City would have staged a coup. He smiled at me, his light blue eyes glinting and his bushy, graying eyebrows raised. How he managed to have the hairiest eyebrows ever and absolutely no hair on his head was one of the world’s greatest mysteries.

Whatever, Dad. Just get me the sandwiches before they realize rye isn’t gluten-free.

I’d been working at Evelyn’s Deli ever since I was tall enough to reach the tabletops. Evelyn taught me how to marry the ketchup by emptying the contents of one bottle into another without causing a molten lava explosion all over the checkered tablecloths. We’d sing the ketchup song as we worked:

Shake, shake, shake the ketchup bottle; none’ll come out, and then a lot’ll.

It’s a little-known secret that the ketchup on the bottom of 25 percent of the containers had been there since the deli opened in the late nineties, being passed from bottle to bottle. Ketchup marrying was just one of my many skills to put on my college applications in hopes of getting out of this town next year. Working at the deli wasn’t bad, but Garden City was small. I couldn’t go to the drugstore without knowing the cashier, which made buying tampons a little awkward. "Hi, buddy. Yes, I am bleeding from my crotch right now. How are you doing?"

The ding from the kitchen bell alerted me to the completed sandwich order. Dad liked the bell, even though I could clearly see him cooking in our tight quarters. I grabbed the towering paper plates of pastrami from the counter and handed them through the window to the waiting couple. The woman stared at her sandwich and then looked up at me with a wrinkled nose.

Is there any way I can get a leaner pastrami? Us girls have to watch our figures. You know, honey. She winked at me, as if we were part of some special club.

I smiled and apologized, despite wanting to throttle her and ask why in the world she ordered pastrami at all if she was watching her figure—and give her a lecture on our society’s ridiculous beauty standards and tell her to love herself and savor the sandwich. Idiot. Sorry, the pastrami only comes one way. But trust me, it’s worth it. I watched her walk away defeated.

Why don’t you take a breather, Ani? I can handle the crowd for a bit. One of us should enjoy the festivities. Dad grabbed a soda from the mini fridge and threw it at me—I surprised myself as I skillfully caught it.

Thanks. Holler if you need me. I opened the back door and walked over to the gazebo to people watch.

The entire town was out, many of them in costume. Men in soldier uniforms paraded by, and women in simple cotton Colonial dresses like mine ran most of the booths. Tourists strolled through the festival, stopping to look at the merchants. They watched Winona from the post office churn butter as if she had been transported from the 1600s and trained by Anne Hutchinson herself. In the middle of the town square was the larger-than-life-size statue of our dear founder, and the out-of-towners flocked to take Anne’s picture like she was some sort of celebrity. Considering the gossip that surrounded her back in the day, I guess she had been a celebrity.

In the 1600s, Anne Hutchinson was kicked out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony for hosting religious meetings for women without the consent of the patriarchy. Anne rallied, moved with her husband and eleven children, and created a town with a female-centric council. Hundreds of years later, Garden City was still run by women. Politically, Garden City now operated democratically like the rest of the country—the all-female council was voted unconstitutional and disbanded in the 1970s when a man was denied a spot, but women still ruled the town. Despite the 50 percent male birth rate, the Garden City downtown business district was 75 percent woman-owned, including Evelyn’s Deli. The businesses were passed down to the younger generations. Men tended to leave for other opportunities, and the women stayed and thrived. Outsiders joked there was one week a month where tourists were advised to steer clear of the town. Hence our nickname: Bloody City.

I sat on a shaded bench and untied my bonnet from under my chin. My dark hair sprang out in freedom and instantly went from Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman curly to Jewfro. My soda began to sweat from the heat, so I wiped a hand on the can and patted down my hair with the excess moisture. This brilliant move on my part quickly turned tragic when my hand got stuck in my curly locks.

Need a hand there, Orphan Ani?

I cringed at the nickname. Don’t be a schmuck, Johnny. You know I’m not an orphan. He liked to mock the fact that half the town couldn’t pronounce my name correctly. It’s Ani. Like On-Knee. Get it right or fall victim to one of my famous vicious glares. I looked up at his wiry frame as he hovered over me. He was wearing tight jeans and a tighter shirt. There was no getting that boy into a Colonial uniform. He helped me untangle my hand from the bird’s nest of curls and then sat next to me.

You know, if you let me help you with your hair, I could tame that beast in a few minutes. It’s all about the right product.

I like my hair. It’s fierce, I said, sticking my tongue out at him like the little sister I wasn’t. People always thought we were related because of our curly hair, but as far as I could tell, that’s where the resemblance ended, what with me barely above five feet, and all boobs and butt, compared to his six feet of slim muscle.

Johnny laughed and grabbed my soda, taking a big swig, only to spray golden liquid out of his mouth seconds later.

What is this?! Sparkling slime? he asked, looking at the label of my Doctor Brown’s Cel-Ray. Celery-flavored soda? No wonder you’re so fierce.

It’s the drink of the Jews. You should know that; you dated Ben Goldstein long enough. I slapped my hand over my mouth the moment the harsh words left it.

Ben liked root beer, Johnny responded in a hushed voice, looking down at his feet. Ben had dumped Johnny at the beginning of the summer. Ben was starting Yale in the fall and didn’t want to get too attached to Johnny, only to leave him behind. Johnny hadn’t taken it well, especially since we were about to be seniors and only a year away from college ourselves. I didn’t tell Johnny, but I understood Ben’s thinking. Ending up with your high school sweetheart seemed too easy and generic. Real love was complicated and torturous. Or, in my case, nonexistent except in the form of romance novels.

Well, no, maybe it’s not always complicated. Evelyn and my dad were in love. They’d been together forever, and I couldn’t imagine my dad with anyone else. Except he must have been, because I’m here, and Ev isn’t my mother.

Ev and Dad fit together like french fries dipped in a milkshake. Sounds weird, but it’s an amazing combo. Dad was a simple man. His passion was to cook, and he did it well—he was the fry in the relationship. Ev was the thick, overpowering milkshake. Too much of her would give you a stomachache, but it was hard to say no to her persuasive sweetness.

Johnny wiped his mouth, gagging from the soda but still stubbornly taking sips. I was thinking about crashing the Hutchinson House after the parade.

"Oh God, Johnny, do not make me go to the Founder’s Day ball. I’m still traumatized from the year my dad made me volunteer as a cater waiter."

Not the ball. There’s a party at the pool house. Rumor has it the whole track team is going. The Sullivan twins got their dad to use his ways with Eleanor. Johnny wiggled his eyebrows in excitement.

I dunno, Johnny. I’m pretty sure the Sullivans still hold a grudge against me. Why the hell do you want to hang out with those asshats, anyway?

"Ani, our senior year starts next week, and you haven’t been to a track party all summer. Some of those asshats aren’t that bad. Besides, you know how awesome the Hutchinson House parties are. I hear Eleanor has one of the Top Chef winners catering. I bet we could sneak into the ball and steal some hors d’oeuvres, Johnny bargained. And I miss you. You’ve been holed up in the deli all summer, leaving me to lick my brokenhearted wounds alone."

Alone, my butt! We’ve had plenty of coffee trips to stare at Beautiful Nick. Oh—he’s going to be there, isn’t he?

Not only was Nick Lake one of the hottest track stars, but he also worked at the local Beanie Babes, the Hooters of coffee. Johnny and I frequently made coffee stops just to see what Nick was wearing that day. The verdict was still out on whose team he was batting for, and frankly, Johnny and I would have no problem sharing. Okay, fine, maybe we weren’t that close.

Johnny claimed he was just in it for the eye candy. Nick’s quiet demeanor was no match for Johnny’s flair. Yes, he was hot, but really, I thought Nick seemed mysterious. He was the star of the track team, and his family was from the wealthy side of town, but he didn’t seem to let it go to his head. He even had a job, though I doubted he needed the money.

As I looked at Johnny, I realized I really hadn’t seen much of him all summer besides those coffee trips. At some point he had stopped wearing his Ralph Lauren sweatpants (the ones with the little pigs all over them, which I kept threatening to steal) and started straightening his hair and wearing cologne. I inhaled his dark, piney scent. Maybe his heart had healed.

It’s the last party of the summer, Ani. I need my wingwoman.

Fine, I’ll go. But don’t leave me alone. You know how the team feels about me.

I had joined and left track all before our first meet sophomore year. The girl’s team hazed the team captain’s house, and as everyone threw streams of toilet paper through the trees of Landon Sullivan’s house, I wrote PENIS in silver lipstick on his Mercedes. The lipstick washed off, but there was a greasy residue for weeks. The girls thought it was funny until they saw Landon’s pissed-off reaction. Now I was an evil bitch. So much for the spirit of Anne Hutchinson bringing us girls together. The high school newspaper had a weekly crime blotter, and half the girls on the track team had emailed in the story. Luckily, I was the news editor of the Daily Apple—which wasn’t actually daily—and decided the incident didn’t need to make it to print.

Maybe I could find something newsworthy to write about at the party, if I was even on the paper when school started next week. We had gotten our class schedules earlier that week and Advanced Bio conflicted with Journalism. But I really liked seeing my name in print, so I was determined to keep writing. Ani Abrams had such a journalistic ring to it.

Can we have everyone’s attention, please? The speaker system set up across the square blared Daniel Sullivan’s crisp, deep voice.

Yes! I love watching the tourists eat up the Founder’s Day speech, Johnny said. He twisted toward the stage set up behind us on the big grassy patch, which was currently occupied with tourists and half the town crowding to get a glimpse of the elusive Eleanor Hutchinson. Daniel Sullivan stood at the podium. Instead of Colonial garb, he was wearing his usual five-button suit (no, I didn’t count the buttons—I had Johnny to editorialize on the entire town’s wardrobe). His salt-and-pepper hair was cut close to his scalp. When you were up close to him, which I hoped never to be, you could see patches of thinning hair. He should have just owned his baldness like Dad. Daniel Sullivan was one of the wealthiest men in town, and he was also the Hutchinson family attorney, which might come in handy soon, as Eleanor was beginning to show signs of age, her skin as wrinkled as the trunk of her family tree.

Many of you have come from out of town to hear the descendant of our town’s founder speak and to see our beautiful city, Mr. Sullivan said. I am very honored to be a part of such a special town, and very proud to have a strong woman like Eleanor in my life. But you didn’t come to hear me talk.

Thank God, I muttered, making a gagging face at Johnny, who laughed at me.

Without further ado, let me introduce Eleanor Hutchinson. Mr. Sullivan stepped away and took his seat on the stage.

Thank you, Daniel, Eleanor’s voice soothed into the microphone. Like Mr. Sullivan, she was not in Founder’s Day attire, but dressed in what Johnny had declared as the Preppy P’s: pearls, pumps, and pantyhose. Or pantsuit, depending. The hose must have been sticking to her legs in the most uncomfortable way, but Eleanor never seemed uncomfortable. She was an East Coast wasp in her finest element. Queen of the hive.

Evelyn could not stand her. Something about how she went against everything Anne Hutchinson stood for and didn’t understand the needs of her own ancestors, or her own gender. Eleanor Hutchinson had raised her daughter and had been a homemaker. She’d let her husband support her, though his venture capitalist work only supplemented her generational wealth, until he passed away last year. Evelyn thought that all the women in Garden City should work, as that type of empowerment was what Anne Hutchinson had fought for.

I want to thank you all for coming to my lovely town, Eleanor purred, placing her perfectly manicured hands on the sides of the podium.

I laughed at this. Out loud. Johnny eyed me, probably worried that my outburst would be heard by others. I guess some of Ev’s ranting had rubbed off on me, as I felt personally offended by Eleanor’s statement. I had grown up listening to Evelyn bitch about how Eleanor was not involved in the town, so the idea that it was her lovely town was ridiculous. According to Ev, she never came to town hall meetings and never involved herself in the town politics; all she did was throw parties and come down from her mansion once a year to give this speech.

Today we remember the greatness that was my distant great-grandmother’s idea to form a town for women. A town where we could own land, practice our own religions, be the heads of our families, and create more opportunities for future generations.

Eleanor had never had to rely on her husband for money, as the Hutchinson line had been so successful in the early days of Garden City that being a Hutchinson paid for itself, but it was rumored that when her daughter, Celeste, left Garden City and became successful in her own right, Eleanor threw a fit and had Daniel Sullivan cut her from her will. When Eleanor died, we would be a town without an heir apparent. But I was pretty sure some long-lost relative would surface, and we would still have someone to give a speech once a year and live in the big house on the hill.

I wondered what it was like to have that much money. To be able to afford real pearls and live in