Page 54 of Margo's Got Money Troubles

Instantly Jinx was beside her, one of his hands on her back, rubbing circles into the fabric of her T-shirt. She could feel the tension leaving her body in real time, just from being touched.

“Everything is going to be all right,” Jinx said. “I promise you.”

“What do I do?” she asked.

“It says you have thirty days to respond, plenty of time. You do what all red-blooded Americans do. You hire a lawyer.”

“Right,” Margo said. Hiring a lawyer sounded overwhelming. “I just— Maybe I should call Mark. He isn’t a bad guy. I mean, he’s kind of a terrible person, but he isn’t an irrational person. I could at least find out his intentions.”

Jinx grimaced. “I mean, you can if you want to, but I would at least consult a lawyer and see if they think you should contact him. You don’t want to accidentally give them more ammo.”

Margo thought about this. The thing was, if she had to guess, it was Mark’s mother who was behind this. Talking to Mark might not do any good, and it would put her in violation of the NDA.

“It’ll be easy,” Jinx said. “We can start calling around after Christmas when people are back in the office.”

“You promise?”

“A hundred percent,” Jinx said. “There is nothing to worry about. This is just the way rich white people say ‘fuck you.’ Trust me, I know their language, I’m practically fluent.”

Part of this game is that you are going to realize certain things before I do. This is called “narrative irony.” I know because Mark put it on a test once.

Shyanne begged Margo to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with her and Kenny, and Margo knew on some level this was Shyanne’s way of solidifying their making up, even if the way she phrased it was backhanded and confusing: “You ditched us for Thanksgiving!” Shyanne said. “You know you did!”

“How did I ditch you?” Margo asked, laughing nervously. Lying to Shyanne about keeping her OnlyFans account left her constantly off-balance.

“You don’t even love me anymore,” Shyanne said.

“Oh, shut up! You know I love you. Of course I’ll see you at Christmas.”

Though she didn’t entirely register at the time that Shyanne wanted not only to see her, but to have Margo continuously present (and Jinx continuously absent) all of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Jinx was very understanding when Margo finally brought the dilemma to him. “Christmas is entirely meaningless to me,” he’d said. He and Suzie planned to watch an old WWE In Your House special, Canadian Stampede, in which, Jinx kept promising Suzie, Bret Hart was almost horrifyingly over.

“What is over?” Suzie asked.

“Oh, just like, the crowd loved him,” Jinx said. “He could have punched an old woman in the face, and they would have cheered.”

Margo would stay at Kenny’s condo. Shyanne and Kenny were waiting until they were married to move in together, which seemed weird to Margo, but weirder still: her mother was also spending Christmas Eve at Kenny’s and had gone out of her way to mention to Margo that she’d be in the spare room while Margo and Bodhi slept in the basement rec room on the floor.

Why wouldn’t Shyanne sleep in Kenny’s room? Was it possible that her mother and Kenny hadn’t slept together yet?

“We thank God our budget has been approved,” Kenny was saying into a microphone onstage. It was Christmas Eve, the five p.m. service, and he was surrounded by the youth band, fronted by a girl singer whose skin was the tender gray white of mushrooms growing in the dark. They had opened the service by singing “O Little Town of Bethlehem” so poorly that Margo had been shocked. The singer kept sucking in air mid-note and sliding around trying to find the pitch. Margo now understood what kind of youth would accept being ministered to by Kenny, and it made her feel tender toward all of them.

When the song finally ended, the band and Kenny left the stage, and the pastor took the pulpit.

Pastor Jim had both Michael J. Fox and Ned Flanders vibes, an ultimately likable combination. The sermon seemed to be entirely about Joseph. “If you were Mary and you were pregnant with the Lord’s baby, wouldn’t you be a little scared to tell Joseph?” the pastor asked. The congregation laughed. “Yeah!” he said in his folksy midwestern accent. “I’d be afraid myself, if I was in Mary’s shoes.”

More laughter.

“But, folks, do you think he believed her?”

Margo assumed the answer was yes, and Joseph believed her because he was a good guy. She was surprised when the congregation stayed silent.

“No!” the pastor said. “No, folks, he did not believe her, and can you blame him? If the woman you were engaged to marry came to you and said, ‘I’m pregnant, but trust me, it’s not from another man, it’s the Lord’s child’—what would you think?”

You could almost hear the congregation silently thinking that she was a lying whore!

“In Matthew 1:19, it says: ‘Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and was unwilling to disgrace her publicly, he resolved to divorce her quietly.’” The pastor looked out at them. “Because what would happen if Mary were disgraced publicly?” He waited a beat. “That’s right, she would be stoned! Put to death! Or, at the very least, cast out!”

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