It was our big trip to Cartagena, and we all brought the wives except for Kyle who at the time was not in a serious relationship but, rather, had been giving it to a young girl he met in acting class. We were all in our early 30s and she had just turned 20. Bleak.

Her name was Kat and while she wasn’t explicitly banned from the trip, her lack of invite was expected and its reason obvious: she was annoying. A clichéd actress vain with her appearance but fast and loose with her sobriety; a ‘performance artist’ who made up stories about her life so she could ‘practice her monologues.’ Whether it was her steady diet of ket, coke, and molly or her perceived ability to read the aura of furniture, none of us could stand when she was around. And it was because of this that Kyle was smitten with her and deemed her the most brilliant talent to ever come out of Bushwick. Infamously, she once rearranged Pete’s furniture, swearing about the feng shui. One time, over Christmas, she came into my apartment and replaced a picture of my mom with a picture of a different mom entirely, imploring that this new lady’s energy was better. I didn’t know someone could even do that.

Mikey, the producer of the trip, our lead friend in many ways, exaggerated the social and financial logistics to keep Kat out. He claimed it threw off the villa head count, raised the excursion costs, and that she didn’t know the other wives. Kyle agreed and nodded along – yes, yes, understood – but despite that, the day we landed, Kyle said fuck it and flew Kat out anyway and we woke up the following day to her banging on the villa doors. Of course everyone was going to be civil. Of course nobody was going to say anything. This is how it always worked with Kyle. He always got what he wanted. And it’s because he was hot.

I know that this is a petty, childish grievance to have at my grown age of 32 but the silliness of it doesn’t make the facts any less true. Even my own wife had reminded me, an unsettling number of times, that Kyle lived in his own world, where things just happened to him, happened for him, landed in his lap. It was a reality that the rest of us had to process. Kyle didn’t deal with No’s. It was Of course, My pleasure, and if not, it was When. Why Mikey thought Kyle would obey him was anybody’s guess. He was always going to do what he wanted.

Of course, the truth is that I was jealous of Kyle. We all were, to some hidden degree. But when you’re an Adult Ugly Person, jealousy simply dulls. It lacks the fun energy of a Young Ugly Person with that prickly, volatile jealousy that suggests you may act on it. Instead, it becomes sedentary. A low hum of frustration.

Now, the Kat invite (or, specifically our letting it happen) set the tone for the rest of the trip. The two of them just did things. She invited strangers over to party in our villa pool. He did a photo shoot of her in the dining room, pushing the table to the far end and laying the antique chairs on their sides. She accused the cleaning staff of theft (who, as you can imagine, stood in contrast to her alabaster nymph). He brought us to a club with an obscene cover charge where only him and Kat were covered by the promoter. He let Kat parade around the beach topless when the vibe was clearly topfull and us 30-year-old men had to look away and feign interest in the Spanish labels on our cans of beer.

The idea of confronting them obviously bubbled up, but what was the point? I no longer cared about friend conflict the way I did when I was in my 20s, when I overemphasized the nobility of it all. “Real friends tell it like it is,” I argued back in those days. “A real friend would intervene.” Such are the moral tenets of someone who is busted. Now, however, it all seemed pointless. It’d just sour the whole trip. And maybe our real frustration wasn’t with Kyle and Kat at all, but with ourselves for letting it happen for so long. I mean this had been commonplace since college.

“Let someone else talk to him,” I said to my wife. We had just gotten back from a night out – a last-minute restaurant change because Kat couldn’t eat ‘with the AC so high’. 

“Let Mikey talk to him,” she said back. I was getting undressed and the room was hot. From outside we could hear drunk tourists jabber at each other in German. It was loud too, with that scary, fratty edge, and it put me more in mind of my old college days.

“I’d feel bad if it became a whole drama,” I muttered.

“Kyle is pushing his luck,” she replied. “He’s waiting to see how much he can take before someone calls him out. You shoulda stopped this behavior a long time ago.”

“He’s not a cat, honey.” 

“Sure, he is,” she smirked. “Now you have to spray him with a bottle.”

With that, she moved to the bathroom, and I did my stretches on the bed. My wife was ugly like me and so I valued her input. As for Kyle, he was always likened to a Golden Retriever more than anything else. He’d run around in his European short shorts, Jewfro bouncing up and down. He’d have his new artistic hobby slung over his shoulder: a canvas and brushes, a moleskin and pens, or now, a vintage Leica that was gifted to him.

“Trisha is giving me a spot in her gallery,” he had boasted, showing off the camera when he first got it. “She wants to put up my Colombia pics.”

Was he a photographer? No. Had he ever been in a gallery? Maybe one of Kat’s friend’s: a squalid Brooklyn walk-up where the paintings hung over the stove, the toilet, and the litterbox. But none of that mattered. We all craved the POVs of attractive people. As Americans, it was all we had.

I went to bed thinking that traveling with friends was a type of time travel. Some sort of therapist hypnosis that made everyone regress. In fact, it was not until I was in that villa, in the proximity of my hot summer friends, that I was suddenly crippled with insecurity, paranoid for perceived slights like I was some sort of elephant man. And now with Kat in the mix? I was a freshman in college again and my back was against the wall.

“Enough is enough,” Mikey said the next morning. “We have to do something.” It was early and the two of us were lounging on the pool chairs. The night before, Kat and Kyle had a big fight and then resolved it with loud fucking. Now, the kitchen staff laid out a spread of melons and cheeses and coffee, and I was getting my fill before the others rolled out of bed.

“Leah says we should spray him like a cat,” I joked.

“I mean, I do want to get him back,” Mikey said. “Teach him some lesson.” He filled his mug with coffee and started to roll a cigarette on the glass table. Mikey was of those guys born serious, always talking about credit card points and tax incentives. He and his wife were medium-looking and successful, and they fronted the majority of the trip’s price tag. “It’s not like we can send her back,” he continued, “but if we course correct now, maybe they can leave us alone for the rest of the trip.”

I mulled it over. He was right. Leah too. There was a Venn Diagram forming between the proposed actions: the spray bottle / the get him back; the teach a lesson / but not a confrontation; save the trip / but no lingering drama. And maybe it’s because of time travel hypnosis, but that youthful jealousy suddenly came back.

“What if we prank them?” I asked.

Mikey’s eyes widened. He lit his cigarette. “I’m listening.”

“Kyle has his camera. And, you know, Kat is his muse. They’ve been talking about taking photos at a farmers’ market. But there’s this market I saw on YouTube. When I was preparing for this trip. It’s in the top ten places to avoid. It’s a wet market. Screaming livestock, bloody cages, straight up thieves and shit. We sell them on it, pay for their Uber there, and then we hang back and enjoy the day.”

I leaned forward and pulled up some videos of the market that I’d seen. The villa’s Wi-Fi was patchy but shortly the videos buffered and played. It was GoPro footage. The place was packed. Hundreds of vendors, shoppers, couriers, hookers, and cooks swarmed over each other. Every stall blasted its own music from its own crappy speakers. The ground was mud and feathers and broken glass and the flies were out, and the sun was beating down, merciless, sizzling raw stacks of fish and skinned goats. The walkway ran between parallel rows of trash: fruit peels, beer bottles, fish tails, buckets of blood, cigarette butts, condoms, human shit, and whatever else didn’t help the cause of the market. And as Mikey and I watched the videos, I could tell we shared a daydream. It was of Kyle and Kat bounding forward through the stalls, delusional and excited to see the locals, enchanted by the poverty until some great horror happened. What that horror was wasn’t clear, but not knowing was part of the fun, part of the deniability. 

“This is amazing,” Mikey said.

“Then let’s do it.”

When Kyle and Kat finally emerged, Mikey was smoking a cigarette, I was cracking into my first Aguilla of the day, and my wife was getting into some fruit juice. The sun was out – it was always out – and the sky was cloudless and it was very hot. The villa’s pool was a bright, alluring blue and just outside our little building, the energy of Cartagena was ceaseless. The others had gone out to walk around the walled city and do some shopping, but I was tired of the crowds and the panhandlers and getting rapped at by Colombians who could only rhyme that I looked like Harry Potter. Plus, I had a job to do. I had usurped Mikey as the leader of this trip, and I was taking my central role in the Prank™ very seriously. 

I knew that if I pitched it as a thing only locals knew about, then Kyle and Kat would take the bait. I knew this because for some reason it has become popular fashion to hide that you’re a tourist. We’re all encouraged to be world travelers yet, somehow, paradoxically, locals of everywhere, finding the secret spot with the ulterior motive to broadcast it at home. I mean, that’s why Kyle brought his camera, isn’t it? To take National Geographic photos of dogs humping. To capture portraits of poor people in flipflops. From the moment they landed Kat kept going on about how she wanted to avoid tourist traps. Well, this market was anything but.

I waited for Kat to jump into the pool (topless again), and I lowered my voice and broached the idea like I was apologizing on behalf of the group, offering some secret olive branch. I leaned forward with my phone and showed videos of a different, real farmers’ market, a beautiful place from a Yelp Top Ten. 

“I know we’ve been kind of harshing you and Kat’s vibe. But you two should go to this. Give her a special time without having to navigate Mikey’s moods.”

“He has been kind of a dick.”

“Yeah, that’s Mikey for you,” I said, and we both glanced at him in the corner, practicing Duolingo.

“This place does look sick though,” Kyle said. 

“Let me get you the Uber,” I said. “It’s the least I can do.”

After that, he took a photo of Kat in the pool (overexposed), and after that they were gone. When they left, Mikey and I jumped up and down and cackled, but Leah rolled her eyes.

“That was mean,” she said, putting on sunblock.

“It was your idea!” I argued.

“No, it wasn’t! I said squash this behavior.”

“Well, he’ll get the picture,” Mikey said. Pun intended? I wasn’t sure. But I cracked another beer and joined Mikey in the pool. I floated on my back and looked up at the walls with the colonial trimmings. Big green plants hung over us and palm trees reached up, higher than the roof. Somewhere in the villa the Black and Brown staff shuffled around in bleach white uniforms. Probably gossiping about us. Maybe applauding. I only slightly cared. I let myself daydream some more about what would happen to Kyle and Kat. How funny it would be when they arrived at the market that was half tents, half warehouse, and all livestock. I grinned imagining that they’d be greeted with a pile of animal bones, fly-ridden trash bags, and a colossal wall of plantains. They’d see a scary man wearing sandals and a soccer jersey, and he would hold a large blade that dripped with blood (maybe from the massacred pig that hung behind him). And the best part is that Kyle and Kat would be too proud, too confident in their looks and their DEI beliefs to turn away. And then, to overcompensate, Kyle would snap a photo of him, and Kat would ask him for ceviche. Oh, it’d be hilarious. This was a certainty, and I smiled to myself in the pool. 

I spent the rest of the day lounging in the villa and ranking everyone I ever knew. Eventually, my wife tuned me out, so I decided to walk to the corner store to get more beer. When I cut through the square, I saw tween hookers calling for men by some steps. The German tourists were there, and they were heckling the girls, and a sudden epiphany occurred to me. The Colombian hookers were ugly and disposable. The German men were hot and to be protected. This fact sat like a decoder in my head, a set of rules to understand the world and its cipher of cruelty. Because of this, I felt even more justified in my Prank™. Mikey had told me the statistics for kidnapping were low. That,contrary to horror movies and true crime docs, pretty white Americans were typically left alone. However, now, I actually wanted danger to fall onto Kyle and Kat. I wanted to partake in the underdog side of whatever illicit trade could be had. Endangering Kyle could mean money, some financial windfall for a poor, Colombian family, or a cartel member with bills. I was a white-skinned American. This was allyship. Chop off Kat’s hair and her little toes too. Sell ‘em! Just know I’m one of the Good Guys. Officially on the right side of history. So far on the right side of history, in fact, that when Kyle called my phone suddenly, I declined it. The Germans heckled the girls some more and I grabbed some beer. I wanted deniability so I threw my phone in the trash. I was a double agent now, working for the cause of the market.

At dinner that night, when Kyle and Kat failed to show up and their empty seats became the center of conversation, I found myself jittery with excitement. Eventually, Mikey looked at me, and with the tension in the air becoming palpable, he finally spilled the beans and told the group about our Prank™. Gabby, his wife, blanched in horror.

“You did what?” She asked.

“Oh, it’s not that bad,” I said.

“Yeah, it is,” Gabby said. “That place is insane. They could get hurt. Or like kidnapped. Human trafficked or whatever.”

Of course, secretly, I wanted that to happen, or at least a diet version of it. Maybe nothing with buzzsaws and handcuffs, but the threat of a firm grip could snap Kyle out of it (‘it’ being his life on easy mode). I realized I wasn’t going to win anybody over with this argument so instead I looked at Mikey and suggested we step outside. As we did, I saw the rest of them reach for their phones, each of them suddenly beautiful in the glow.

Once outside, Mikey lit a cigarette. “Have you heard anything from them?”

“No, nothing,” I lied. 

He took out his phone and gave them a call, probably like the others were doing inside, but he didn’t get an answer. Then he pulled up Kat’s Instagram, and the only photo was a blurry one, inscrutable, and from several hours ago.

“Should we call the police or something?” He asked. It was clear I was still the leader of this Prank™, the big guy calling the shots. My hotness probably went up a rank as well, unless it was no longer funny, then in which case, if I were in trouble, I was ugly again. This all made sense in my head.

“No, no, I’m sure it’s fine,” I said. “They probably got annoyed at us and got an Uber somewhere else. I’m sure of it.”

“Gabby is gonna put me in the doghouse for this,” Mikey said. “I know it.”

“What does she know?” I asked. “She’s from New Jersey.”

Around midnight we all ended up back at the villa. The ugly staff (my comrades) had laid out coolers of beer and rum and more aguardiente. The pool lit up and the grotto beyond it had melted into night mode with dazzling green lights and a soft bubble jet. None of the group felt like ignoring the problem anymore and now Mikey and I were on defense. I appealed to the group’s collective frustration with Kyle and Kat. How, in many ways, I was the only one brave enough to act on our feelings, while, Mikey, on the other hand, appealed to the facts, or, rather, his version of them: Americans didn’t get hurt abroad, it was a crowded place in the daytime, they had their phones. Some of the group was assuaged, but the stickiness of it remained. Gabby whispered something to Leah, my own wife, and she looked at the floor. 

That night I couldn’t sleep. I dreamt of chains and blood and white vans carrying Kat and Kyle to some underground lab. I dreamt of white bones and red organs slapping onto metal trays. Harsh fluorescent lights shuttered and buzzed as a grimy doctor consulted a clipboard with market prices and going rates.

I dreamt of the German tourists and the tween hooker. I dreamt of them surrounding her.

“Alex!”

I jolted awake. Drenched in sweat. “Sorry,” I mumbled. “I was having a nightmare.”

“There’s someone banging on the door.”

I froze, and I listened. The banging was loud and with authority. I got out of bed and shambled to the front door of the villa. The others were gathering as well, each of us holding ourselves in the humid night. Just a few days ago Kat was banging on the same doors to be let in, but this one was different. It was a man on the other side. Someone upset.

“Policia!” The man announced. “Tenemos su amigo.”

We all looked at Gabby. She stammered it out. “They have our friend.”

I pulled open the big doors, and the police officer came in. He was small and bald and had dark brown skin. Foreign uniforms always look like play costumes. The weapons they carry too, the way their boots shine differently. Like the money, everything is make-believe in another country. He looked around at us all like we were trash (and he was ugly, very much so, this was important to me, and because of this, it felt serious).

“Hablan español?” He asked us. 

Gabby raised her hand and he spoke to her fast and sternly and with each unknown word her face crumbled more and more in horror. After a moment, she pointed towards Kyle and Kat’s room and the officer sauntered over. Then Gabby looked at us.

“They found Kyle in the road and he’s been badly hurt. They took him to the hospital. They can’t find Kat and now he’s looking through their room for her passport.”

(Gabby was hot now, a babe, and so I didn’t care to listen.)

The police officer came back out with Kat’s wallet. He gestured for us to follow him to his car and, being the leader of the Prank™, I did. My wife (prettier than usual) clutched my elbow in an effort to hold me back, keep me safe from what I’ve done, but I shook her off. At the officer’s car, the policia threw Kat’s stuff into the passenger seat. He then handed me the address of the hospital Kyle was at. Then, as a final gift, he reached into the back and handed me Kyle’s camera.

I don’t know why but I asked the officer in English, “How bad is it?”

I’m not sure if he understood me exactly but he answered with a single motion – he grimaced in disgust and moved his hand all over his face like he was wiping it down.

It was clear to me then that my hot friend had been badly disfigured.

Six months later I got the invite to Kyle’s gallery, and I took the train down from Hudson. Leah stayed behind. She was too upset, she said. Too guilty. I tried to tell her that none of this was her fault, but she said that she couldn’t stand next to me in that room and hold my hand. I didn’t push her on it. She was hot now, I decided, and since I was aligned with the uggos, I knew we weren’t gonna last. 

On the train ride down, I obviously thought of the Colombia trip. None of us stayed close after that. They didn’t release Kyle from the hospital until he was stable, and then there was a long round of questions: who did this, what do you remember, and then the one statement: we can’t find Kat. I gave Brooklyn a wide berth and made several excuses to not debrief with Mikey. Apparently, Gabby had gone to visit Kyle and had screamed when she saw his face. And apparently, all the blame was on me.

When I got to Trisha’s gallery – a brightly lit and popular place in Williamsburg – I started to shake with nerves. I was about to see the end result of my Prank™, and I could barely contain myself. I took a few of my wife’s propranolol and found a space along the wall where I could lay low. I cleared three cups of cheap wine before Kyle came out. He was led by Trisha, the gallerist, and she moved like she was carrying someone disabled. It took me several moments to recognize him and the mere fact of that sent me reeling.

He was hairless, for one. A shaved scalp showed a patchwork of scars, puckered and raised like a valley along his head. His left arm hung limp at his side, perhaps from nerve damage. He shuffled his sneakers forward inch by inch, and when he reached the lectern, he faced us and my heart skipped a beat. A large scar ran down the left side of his face, over his eye and across his lips at a diagonal. The affected eyeball was gone, and the meat of his once full lips drooped low. The assumption I had put together was that someone tried to cut his face open. Maybe even cut his face and pull it off.

“I don’t want to say too much by way of introduction,” Trisha started. “As Kyle’s energy is in short supply these days. But I’m pleased and honored to have his photos on my walls. I offered to speak about them on his behalf, but he insisted. Kyle?”

Trisha stepped away to polite applause and Kyle placed a hand on the lectern and fumbled with the microphone. He wobbled forward and the track lights overhead cast a ghoulish shadow on him. His scars glistened and the hole of his missing eye randomly twitched.

“T-thank you to T-Trisha for this opp’rtunity,” he said. Only half of his mouth moved, and his words came out a long slur, each consonant bleeding into the next. “These’re pictures of Colombia. Summer of my friends. Sumaren’t.”

Exhausted already, he moved from the lectern and collapsed into a fold-out chair. Within moments Trisha and others were shaking his hand and taking photos, bringing him water and little plates of bruschetta, actions and generosity I really couldn’t understand for someone so hideous, uglier than me now (unless he still wasn’t?). I stayed behind and examined the walls. Indeed, some of the photos were of his friends, and some were not. It was a dichotomy. Our friends were in the street (hot). In the pool (hot). Kat was on the beach (naked and delicious). A woman in a dress balanced fruit on her head (leathery), and a monkey hailed a taxi (hilarious). And then it was the wet market: pigs in pens, piles of refuse, a kid dragging around a wagon of chickens. Friends, tourism, camp/horror, livestock, violence. And then, somehow, the photos blurred and began to capture the impossible. Kyle was getting a machete buried in his scalp. Kat was being bound and gagged. Kyle was crying, face down in pig shit. Kat was being chained up (hot, hot, spoiled, fuck ‘em). I was making money, working for the market. I was being an ally, laughing in the pool. Mikey was smoking. I was jealous. I was young again. I ran through Cartagena desperate to be seen. I had to show these Colombians who I was before I fell into the shadow of my hot friend. Fuck the Germans (hot); praise the hookers (young). I was in the pool. Kyle was dying. Kat was never seen again. Hey, everyone, look! This gringo can move!