Page 17 of Margo's Got Money Troubles

“So when are you free? You’ll have to get a sitter.”

“To have dinner with Kenny?”

“Yes.”

“Why wouldn’t I bring the baby?”

“I haven’t told him about the baby.”

“Okay, I am not pretending I don’t have a baby, Mom.” I knew well enough to head these things off now. When Grandma had finally died, Shyanne reused her death again and again to get out of things.

“I knew you were going to be this way.”

“Yes, because this is psychotic.”

“It is not his business whether you have a baby or not, Margo.”

“I’ll go to dinner with Kenny as soon as you tell him that I have a baby,” I said.

“Fuck!” she said, and hung up on me.

Chapter Five

On the day the Kats moved out, Suzie came out of her room, plopped down next to me on the couch, and said, “Thank God they’re gone, right?”

“Well, except for the rent money part,” I said.

“I have some friends who could maybe move in,” Suzie said. “I have to check on their lease situation.”

I dreaded having Suzie’s weird nerd friends move in. They’d be fucking LARPing all over the living room. But I nodded. “Go for it,” I told her. Anything so that I didn’t have to post ads and interview people. Anything so that I could stay half awake and perpetually nursing. After two weeks, it had started to become real to me that Jinx wasn’t going to call me back, and the sadness was like quicksand.

“Hey, I saw Mark on campus,” Suzie said.

“Yeah?” I didn’t want to talk about Mark. Every time I thought about him it hurt. Not because I missed him or loved him; it just hurt.

“He looked rough,” Suzie said. “Real rough.”

I shrugged, but I was a little bit glad that he wasn’t out there thriving.

“Did you know they made him chair?”

“Good for him.”

“No,” Suzie said, “everyone hates being chair, it’s so much work. He’s fucking miserable. But he’s in all the faculty meetings now, so I get to give him the stink eye.”

Part of Suzie’s job was keeping minutes at all the meetings for the dean. It was so weird how I had been a part of that world, campus and college, and now I never left the apartment except to go to the gas station. I’d finished out the spring semester, and Bodhi had been born in July, so I hadn’t registered for any classes in the fall. I had always assumed I would go back at some point, but now that idea seemed ridiculous.

“Can I hold him?” Suzie asked. She’d never asked that before. Bodhi had finished nursing and was soundly asleep in my arms. I rolled him onto her chest, grateful for the chance to stand up and stretch.

“My lower back is fucked,” I said.

“Oh my God, it’s like having a cat sleep on you!” Suzie cooed. “A person-cat!”

“Can you stay like that?” I asked. “I haven’t pooped in, like, two days.”

“You bet,” Suzie whispered, relaxing a bit, tucking Bodhi’s fuzzy head under her chin. “But if he wakes up, I’m barging in there and handing him back.”

“Deal.”

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