Page 71 of Margo's Got Money Troubles

“She is a child,” Mark interrupted them, as though he had finally found the words he wanted. “That’s all I’m saying. It’s not personal, Margo. I would say this about any twenty-year-old—you’re just not ready to raise a baby.” He shrugged like there was nothing he could do about that.

“I was certainly old enough for you to fuck me,” Margo said, her cheeks burning.

“That’s pretty low,” Mark said, shaking his head like he was disappointed in her. “I wouldn’t think you’d go that low.”

Margo almost laughed even though she felt like she’d been punched in the gut.

“The rest of this meeting will be held in two separate conference rooms,” Nadia said, standing. “Margo, would you step with me out into the hall, and we can get you situated?”

Pretty much nothing eventful happened after that. Nadia sat with Margo and asked her more questions. She asked about Bodhi’s pediatrician and if he went to the doctor regularly. She asked if Margo had a boyfriend. They were all easy to answer.

“Let me ask, what is your bottom line, your best offer, the biggest compromise you would sign on to today?”

“Bodhi stays in my physical and legal custody. Mark can have visitation, but no overnights.”

“Okay,” Nadia said, clearly disappointed. “So no big concessions.”

Margo knew Ward would be mad at her. She said it anyway: “He doesn’t have to pay child support.”

Nadia raised her eyebrows. “None?”

“None.”

Nadia seemed to be thinking about this. “All right,” she said, getting up. “It’s worth a shot.” They agreed that Nadia would speak to Mark and that Margo would wait for her to come back. When Nadia returned, she looked worried, her frail shoulders hunched.

“That doesn’t work for him,” she said. “Unfortunately.”

They both sat at the table for a moment, tired. “Do we go to trial then?” Margo asked. The idea of it made her sick. Upward of forty grand, Ward had said, and she didn’t have the money. She didn’t even have TikToks to post. Honestly, she was still so mad at KC and Rose that she hadn’t written anything new. She watched her fan count slowly drop, day after day, from lack of vageen. She rested her forehead on the table of the conference room the way they made you put your head on your desk after recess.

“I think in this case it might be a good idea to keep it in mediation a bit longer, to give tempers some time to cool down.”

“Okay,” Margo said, not raising her head. “That will give us time to depose him, I guess.”

“Oh good,” Nadia said. “Then that works for everybody.”

Forty grand, Margo thought. Sporty strand, warty gland, stormy sand.

“It was lovely to meet you,” Nadia said. “I’ll see you in about four weeks. I’ll get back to you with an exact date after I talk to Mark.”

“So lovely to meet you as well,” Margo said, lifting her head off the table and suddenly becoming aware of how inappropriate it had been for her to lay her head on the table at all. “I like your earrings!” Margo called.

Nadia was already halfway out the door. She turned, touched her ear as if to remember which ones they were. “You take care,” she said, and then she was gone, a mystery.

Margo got home and gave Jinx and Suzie the skinny.

“Ward was totally right, they’re treating the OnlyFans as a job, one hundred percent, the mediator didn’t bat an eye, even though Mark kept calling it porno with an o.”

“That’s such a relief,” Jinx said. “But gosh, it surprises me that this is all coming from Mark. Does he— I mean, has he ever met Bodhi?”

“No! And he didn’t even ask to!”

“This makes zero sense,” Suzie said.

“I don’t know,” Margo said. Mark could state the exact same facts of her life as she did—her age, the baby, her work—and make it sound like she was some tragic figure. The idea that she might post naked pictures of herself and remain psychologically healthy seemed not to have occurred to him.

When she was finally bored of complaining (she had gone on an extended jazzy riff about Mark’s long hair and the brooding way he liked to peer out from under it), she gave Bodhi a bath and dumped a whole load of new bath toys in with him. He squealed with delight as the rainbow of small rubber ocean creatures bobbed in the water.

Mark had made her feel so ashamed in that meeting, and she was only now shaking it off. It was a mystery, really, why people thought sex was so dirty. You were literally genetically programmed to do it; it was necessary for the continuance of the species. And Margo liked sex, at least in real life. She’d thought a lot about it over the past few months because sometimes the way men wanted sex seemed pathological, and she wondered if there was something wrong with them or if maybe there was something wrong with her. What she liked most about sex was that feeling of all the normal posturing and social rules falling away, the giddy panic of realizing you’ve lost control and you’re not getting it back. Instead, you’re just helplessly writhing, victim of an ancient itch.

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