Olivia, Among Others

Olivia Fletcher Ray never cons anyone who doesn't have it coming. As a high school sophomore in Snellville, Georgia, Olivia realizes that she cannot allow herself to become dependent on the fickle good graces of a man for her survival, and this epiphany shapes nearly every choice she makes thereafter. Her initial money-making schemes are, admittedly, amateurish and haphazard: supplementing her paltry retail wages by absconding with the store's designer merchandise, for example, or faking positive pregnancy tests to trick her sexual partners into giving her abortion money. But her managers are racists and hypocrites, and the predatory older men she dates treat her like she's expendable, so Olivia's acts of self-preservation (and occasionally petty vengeance) can hardly be considered unjustified. Olivia's retail perdition ends at age twenty-three, when she accepts a job as a receptionist for a midsized corporate law firm in Atlanta. Surrounded by pathetic coworkers, obnoxious bosses, and crooked clients, and forced to undertake menial tasks for a piddling salary, Olivia turns to a series of well-organized identity theft, catfishing, and embezzlement operations to fill her working hours and supplement her income. The money generated from these endeavors allows Olivia to pursue an intense, chaotic affair with Alex, the guitar player of an emerging country music band, during the course of the band's North American tour. Olivia and Alex's explosive breakup results in Olivia's second revelation: not only should she not rely on men for her financial or emotional wellbeing, she ought to take as much as she can from them and vanish, otherwise they ultimately would take much more from her, without reciprocation or remorse, instead. Olivia cycles through a series of wealthy but otherwise unremarkable men, shoving down her contempt for their arrogance and entitlement with vacant smiles and unprompted giggles so that they'll continue to pay her bills. Then she meets Raj. Despite his parents' wealth, his notable connections to both Atlanta's and Miami's elite, and a certain measure of personal charm, Olivia quickly realizes that Raj is a deeply flawed, conflicted, and insecure man. Nevertheless, what begins as a mutually beneficial friendship soon shifts to something relationship-adjacent, notwithstanding that their bond is based almost entirely on self-interest and lies. In their shared ambition to rise to the next level of the social hierarchy, neither is willing to acknowledge the growing risk that they will destroy each other outright in the process.