Page 82 of Margo's Got Money Troubles

“I’ve started seeing someone,” I said. We were at the park with Bodhi, pushing him in the little bucket swing. I stood behind, with Jinx in front, and periodically pretended to be a monster who wanted to eat Bodhi’s fat little legs. Bodhi shrieked with laughter.

Jinx looked skeptical. “Who?”

“You know that guy I was writing long messages to?”

“Oh, Margo, no!” he cried.

We went back and forth for over an hour, me explaining, Jinx objecting, first at the park, then at the waffle shop, then the apartment. I tried to be patient. I’d known it would be like this. Jinx was convinced JB was going to rape and murder me. Finally, I had Jinx read the portrait JB had written of his mother.

He sighed when he finished reading, handed my phone back. “Well, that’s very compelling.”

“Because even if it isn’t true,” I said, “the sensibility to make up a lie like that.”

“I don’t think it’s a lie,” Jinx said. “But you’re right, even if it was a lie, your typical murderer/rapist wouldn’t make up this lie.”

I nodded, happy and reassured that he knew what I meant.

“I am perturbed,” Jinx said. “I’m really of two minds about this.”

“What are your two minds?”

“Well, I mean, I worry. What if this guy tries to take advantage of you? He sees that you do all this stuff online, maybe he’ll get ideas.”

I guffawed. “Dad, I mean, you know I’ve had sex before?”

“Well, yes, I’m aware!”

I wasn’t sure what to say. To me it was obvious JB was coming to have sex with me, that it was the whole point really. If things went well, obviously. And I wanted them to go well.

“The other part of me is just delighted to see you this happy,” Jinx said. “You should get to have that—you should get to be young. I can remember that feeling, when you’re smitten and can’t think about anything else.” He smiled, his eyes far away.

“Were you smitten with Viper?”

Jinx came back to himself. We were lounging on the pink couch, stuffed full of waffles, Bodhi asleep on my chest. “Viper was a much sadder situation.”

I waited, though it didn’t seem he was going to explain. “Was Viper her real name?” I asked.

“Oh, I assume not,” Jinx said. “I don’t know her real name. She was an escort. I was— I’d started using again and I was hiding it from Cheri, so I’d go on these ‘business trips’ and basically have a bender.”

“Where would you go?” I was afraid of what he would say, but I also wanted to know.

“Oh, I went to a town about thirty minutes from us that had a La Quinta. But it’s not very fun to do drugs all by yourself. So I called one of those escort services, and Viper came, took one look at me, and said, ‘You better share!’ We wound up spending a lot of time together.”

It was all so banal, so much more ordinary than I had been imagining. I remembered the way he had been when he was high, imagined him and Viper eating Milky Ways together in the La Quinta, probably watching old wrestling matches. “Why do you think you have such a hard time being faithful?” I asked. Because in some ways it was the question of my whole life. His inability to be faithful was why I’d been conceived at all. Jinx had broken hearts, ruined marriages, alienated his kids—all for sex? It was almost easier to understand the drugs.

Jinx sighed, seemed to really consider it. “I’m not sure any of it was about the actual sex.”

I guffawed again. “What was it about then?”

Jinx was rubbing his chin over and over like it was sore. “I get lonely. At night. And women are, you know, like, soft and—”

“Soft?!” I said too loudly. Luckily, Bodhi didn’t stir.

“Look at it this way,” Jinx went on. “If you’re feeling awful and hollow and lonely, do you want to go out and do coke with Shawn Michaels and get into a bar fight when he uses the N-word, or do you want some giggly redhead to tell you her whole life story while you eat ice cream on a hotel bed and then cuddle you with her soft boobs?”

“My God,” I said, “do you think we weren’t lonely?”

“You and Shyanne? You and Shyanne had each other,” he said.

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