Page 27 of Margo's Got Money Troubles

“Like, how do you get over or how do you build heat?” Jinx asked.

“I don’t know,” Margo said. “Both? What’s the difference?”

“Well, I mean building heat generally means picking fights that piss off the audience. Hate is just as powerful as love, more so where ticket sales are concerned.”

Margo thought about WangMangler and Arabella, how utterly unconcerned they were with being likable. She wasn’t sure she could ever be like that. “Well, then what about getting over, like getting the crowd to like you? Like, how come some wrestlers get famous and other wrestlers don’t? I know it’s not only athletic ability.”

“Right. I mean, the short answer is persona. But usually the wrestling ability needs to be there, at least in my opinion, though God knows Vince has tried to give guys a big push on looks alone.”

There was no Vince McMahon, Margo thought, and that was part of the problem. If it were a matter of pleasing an asshole like Vince, she’d have a better idea of how to go about it. “How do you get hired by WWE?”

“Work for a smaller wrestling outfit so someone can see you work.”

“How do you get hired by the smaller outfit? Like, how does a wrestler get their first-ever job?”

“I mean, a lot of times they’re coming from a dynasty. They get into it because their dad was in the business, all their brothers or cousins are in the business. But sometimes they’re just coming from an athletic background, whether it’s football or they wrestled in college or even bodybuilding. But if you’re not from some dynasty or special background, I think you just make a tape.”

“A tape of you wrestling?”

“Yeah. With your buddies or whatever in the backyard.”

“What if you don’t have any buddies?”

“Gosh, I don’t know if you can become a wrestler without buddies.” There was something weird and Canadian about the way Jinx said “buddies.”

“You need buddies,” Margo said, still thinking.

“Buddies are essential,” Jinx said. “I didn’t know you were so interested in wrestling.”

“Oh,” Margo said. “Yeah.” She was not.

“Would you want to watch some matches with me?” Jinx asked. “Maybe tonight. I could show you some wrestlers starting out, if that’s what interests you.”

He seemed so excited she couldn’t bear to say no.

“Maybe Suzie would watch too,” Jinx said. “Maybe we should make dinner. Should I go to the store?”

“I mean, yeah!” Margo said. “Why not?”

“Do you like lasagna?” Jinx asked.

“Who doesn’t like lasagna?” The idea of lasagna was making this whole idea more exciting. The bigger Bodhi got and the more he nursed, the hungrier Margo found herself. “Garlic bread?” she asked.

“I don’t think we need garlic bread too, it’s so much starch already.”

Margo pooched out her lower lip. “Sooo hungry,” she pleaded. Then she pretended to die, falling off the couch.

“Are you dead?” Jinx said.

“Dead of hunger,” Margo said, eyes still closed. She waited a beat, then stuck out her tongue as a symbol of even greater death. They both heard Bodhi wake up crying on the baby monitor, and Margo popped up like bread from a toaster. “Please!” she said as she scooted down the hall. “I’m still dead! So, so dead!”

That night Jinx cooked lasagna, and he made the pasta from scratch, a thing Margo had not exactly known you could do. “How did you learn to cook?” she asked, as she watched him rolling the dough thin with a rolling pin she was pretty sure they had not owned before. It didn’t make sense that Jinx knew how to cook. So many years of his life he’d been on the road in hotel rooms without kitchens.

“When things didn’t work out with Billy Ants, I retired,” Jinx said, “and Cheri—you know, for so long she wanted me around more, and then suddenly I was around more, and”—he laughed, though it was the saddest little laugh Margo had ever heard—“I guess I was around a little too much. Anyway, I started taking classes. That was one thing I wanted: homemade food. And Cheri was like, ‘I raised five kids, I cooked every damn night, I’m not making a whole pot roast just for you!’ So I thought, Well, then I’ll make the pot roast! But she didn’t... I don’t think she liked me making the pot roast either, for some reason.”

Margo, who had always resisted fully hating Cheri as a kind of instinctive counterbalance to Shyanne’s intense hatred for her, was suddenly finding herself really hating Cheri. What kind of bitch could be displeased by a guy taking cooking classes and making them pot roast? Though she realized this narrative did not exactly account for the heroin use and Little Miss Viper. Presumably those things happened later and not concurrent with the pot roasting.

As things began to smell better and better, Suzie was lured out of her room. “Hey, I’m working on a new cosplay,” she said. “You guys wanna see?”

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