Page 76 of Margo's Got Money Troubles

“Oh, Rose. That makes me so mad! Every day, I’m like, The world is complex and wondrous, everything is so nuanced, and then I turn on the computer, and it’s like, ‘Look at my dick, look at my dick, dick, dick, dick, dick!’”

Every day, on my phone, on my computer, they were always there. I thought of my fans now as a garden of little worms, like Ursula the sea witch’s garden of lost souls, but with dicks. And they all said the same thing, they all opened their hungry little penis mouths to ask for more. More vagina, more sexiness, “talk to me,” “show me,” “cum for me.” Their need was colossal, it did not seem possible it could be satisfied, least of all by pictures of my weird little vagina. And yet it was so. They loved that silly Rigoberto video. I had plans to make another one where I fucked myself with a Dyson, though really this was just an excuse to buy a Dyson. It made me both hate my fans and love them. I needed them desperately, and yet I wished they’d all go away, even only for a day, so I could breathe and think and be a person.

“No, I totally know what you mean,” Rose said. “The thing about horny men is that, yes, they are annoying. It’s easy to hate them. But at the end of the day, horny men are people. And they are in need, and they are in pain, or they’re fixated on something, and they deserve as much kindness as we can stand to offer them. That’s kind of my take.”

“You’re a saint,” I said. But it broke my heart in a way. To think of all those dicks belonging to real people. To think of sweet Rose, kicked out of grad school, trying to be kind to them.

Right then KC and Suzie got back, knocked on the sliding glass door to get our attention, then smooshed their open mouths on it and blew, puffing up their cheeks.

We had one more TikTok to film, an eating contest between me and Rigoberto. The bit was that we’d show Rose filling two paper plates with shaving cream (switching mine out for Cool Whip off camera), then Rigoberto and I would have a contest of who could eat it faster. I genuinely had no idea how that part would go. I assumed Rigoberto would dust me, but I was going to give it my all. Rose and I reluctantly left our perch on the balcony, the dusk beginning to gather around us, and went inside.

I changed into a red bikini and assumed my position on the tarp.

Late Monday night I got a message from JB.

I’ve been thinking, JB wrote. When you fall in love with a book, is it the character or the author you’re falling in love with?

HungryGhost: I mean, I guess both?

JB: And only one of them is real.

True, I admitted.

JB: And the fake one is the only one you get to actually know. But you can kind of feel the author under there, beneath the surface of the fake world you’re inhabiting. Their imagination is the water you’re swimming in, the air you’re breathing. They’ve made every table and every chair and every person in the whole book.

I couldn’t breathe.

JB: I’m just saying, even if everything you wrote me was a lie (and I know, not ALL of it was a lie, but even if it was!), then in some sense I would still know you, at least as well as I feel I know Neal Stephenson or William Gibson or whatever, and honestly, I feel like I know them better than I know anyone in the world. Do you know what I mean?

I knew exactly what he meant, but maybe because of the custody stuff with Mark, or everything with my dad, reality did not seem as trivial as it once had.

The thing is, though, I wrote, a book isn’t a relationship. There are these built-in guardrails that keep you from knowing the author. The end of the book is like a chasm, cutting you off from them. And we don’t have that. We might keep mistaking what’s fake for what’s real between us, like people eating wax fruit and wondering why it tastes bad. Like, there is writing each other these emails, and then there is trying to actually, you know, date. If that’s even what you’re suggesting.

Was that presumptuous, to call it dating? He had never said he wanted to date me. But what else could we be talking about here? Did I even want to date him? The moment I posed this question to myself, I discovered that I really, really did.

JB: Can we switch modalities? Can I call?

My phone was buzzing seconds after I typed yes.

“I think I should fly out there,” he said.

“Whoa, what? Really?”

“Why not? I could get a flight for as much as I used to pay you to answer three questions.”

“That’s kind of disturbing to realize,” I said. My heart was racing and it was unclear if I was panicked or excited. I was pretty sure I was both.

“Only for the weekend. And I can meet your baby and we can just... see where it goes.”

Fuck, I was going to have to tell Jinx. Fuck! “Okay,” I said.

“Okay? So what airport should I fly into?”

Jesus Christ, was I really going to do this? And then I told him to fly into Long Beach or else Ontario, LAX as a last resort, giddy as a kid on Christmas.

Chapter Twenty

The next morning, Margo went to Dr. Sharp’s office for her interview. The home observation visit would be in a couple weeks, and while nervous, Margo was feeling optimistic. She sat on Dr. Sharp’s couch, the scratchy kilim of the pillows itchy on her back where her shirt was riding up.

---