Esme Gigi Geniveve Squalor appears in the Ersatz Elevator. At first, she seems like a terrible guardian for the Baudelaires, but then turns out to be in an alliance with Count Olaf, an evil villian. Later on in the books, she becomes Count Olaf's girlfriend.
In the Ersatz Elevator, she is married to a timid man named Jerome. She gets everything her way due to her husband's lack of braveness. Being incredibly full of herself because she is the 6th most important financial person, she often introduces herself by saying "I am Esme Gigi Geniveve Squalor," She has tendency to wear, buy, or do everything that is "in" or fashionable right now. Her clothing is often ridiculous due to the "in" styles. Being the host for the In auction,(an auction selling the "innest" things around) she meets up with a person named Gunther who claims to be the innest person in the world. Gunther is Count Olaf, and Esme is aware of that. when the Baudelaires go down the Ersatz Elevator using Violet's device to rescue the Quagmire Triplets, they see the triplets are already gone, Esme takes away the rope, leaving the children stuck down there. Later, as seen at the auction, the Baudelaires buy VFD, something Duncan Quagmire had said to Klaus beforre being captured. Esme and "Gunther" give VFD to the kids, but it turns out VFD stood for Very Fancy dollies. Esme and Olaf and his henchman run away, taking the Quagmires along with them in a Fish Statue.
In the Carnivorous Carnival, Esme is seen with Olaf at Madam Lulu's fortune-telling. Olaf is convinced Lulu is magical and in return for her prophecies, he gives her a great deal of presents such as new Freaks for her House of Freaks, and Lions. Esme, jeolous of the gifts, go into the freak's caravan wearing a dress saying i love freaks to try to persuade allthe freaks to join Olaf's Troupe. Esme makes it sound as if they always perforemed on stage instead of performing crimes. All they had to do was throw Madam Lulu into the lion's pit. Violet and Klaus were picked to go into the pit. By stalling, everybody pushed Madam Lulu and one of Olaf's henchmen into the pit. Later, it is seen that 3 freaks, Hugo, Kevin, and Collette join Olaf's Troupe.