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Jinx and I spent the next hour going over Maribel’s visit in micro detail, trying to reassure each other that everything would

be okay. We debated who’d called in the complaint, and I figured it had to be Mark. There was really no way of knowing.

“What I’m worried about is your drug test,” Jinx said.

“My drug test?” I asked. “Why?”

“Because of the mushrooms,” he said. “I mean, I don’t know if they test for them or not.”

“Oh God,” I said. The mushrooms had not even occurred to me. “Oh no, oh God!”

“It’s okay,” Jinx said. “Jesus, you didn’t realize?”

“No! I didn’t think about that at all! That feels like forever ago! Can it still show up?”

“Don’t panic,” Jinx said. “WWE didn’t test for mushrooms, so CPS might not either.”

We googled and the results were confusing. There were all different kinds of pee tests for different things. Finally, we thought

to look up how long mushrooms stayed in your system, and with a urine test it showed up for only one to three days. So even

if they did test for mushrooms, I should be in the clear. Hair follicle tests were a whole other story, and we both thanked

God I hadn’t been asked for one. I should be okay. Somehow, I didn’t really feel any better.

“I don’t know what to do,” I said.

“Let me see that ankle,” Jinx said, and patted his lap for me to swing up my leg. “Wiggle down here so you can bend your knee.”

I scooted down the couch, Bodhi on my chest. He was in a wonderful, milk-drunk mood at least. Jinx examined my foot, running

his fingers over the tendons until he found the place that made me wince. He explored the bones on the top of my foot, but

none of that hurt.

“I think it’s a sprain,” he said, finally looking up. “Oh, hey, why are you crying?”

I shrugged, my chin crumpling. I really didn’t know. It might have been that my body didn’t have another way of processing

so much adrenaline. I couldn’t tell how bad everything was. I didn’t know if I would lose Bodhi, if I was going to have to

quit OnlyFans. I felt guilty for spending a night on my own, for sleeping with JB, for thinking it was okay that I was allowed

to be young again just for one night. The needles in my closet. “I’m a bad person,” I gasped.

“No,” Jinx said. “No, honey, you’re not a bad person.”

I closed my eyes.

I couldn’t trust him.

He was a bad person too.

Jinx left for Rite Aid to buy me an ankle brace, and I went to my closet, gathered the bundle of needles, wedged them deep

in the diaper trash, then hobbled outside, taking the whole bag with me to the dumpster while Suzie watched Bodhi. I sat down

on the curb and called JB, the sun helping to relax some of the muscles in my back. The crows were calling back and forth

across the parking lot, arguing from the trees.

“Hey, how are you doing? Everything turn out okay?” he asked, his voice so warm and easy.

“Not really,” I said.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

I didn’t want to get into the details. It all felt so terribly shameful.

“Should I come over?” he asked.

“No,” I said. I knew he had only a few hours before he’d have to head to the airport. We’d made tentative plans to have lunch

with my dad, but I couldn’t imagine him coming over now. I felt like I’d throw up. The idea of seeing him and being excited

and happy was almost grotesque. “I can’t have lunch.”

“Oh,” he said. I could hear the disappointment in his voice.

“JB,” I said, “I had so much fun last night. But I—I think we should stop seeing each other.”

“What?”

“At least for now. I’m in a really bad situation. I haven’t gone into it with you. Mark, Bodhi’s father, is suing for custody,

and I’ve been undergoing this whole investigation, and Child Protective Services came by today—someone reported me for neglect.

I—” I broke off, my voice cracking. It burned, having to admit all this to him.

“Oh, Margo, I’m so sorry,” JB said.

“I just really need to focus on my shit right now,” I said. “There isn’t room in my life for romance, even if I wish there

was.”

There was a pause, then I heard him sigh. I wished I could see his face.

“What?” I asked.

“I was going to say, couldn’t I help? Couldn’t I come over and offer moral support or... I don’t know?”

“It’s just, JB, I’m fucking up. I’m fucking up bad. I need to focus and do the right thing and be an adult.” I left unsaid

that I didn’t think JB could offer me any help. He was awkward as hell just meeting the baby, it wasn’t like he could hold

Bodhi while I called Ward or went to the bathroom. And I didn’t want him there. I knew it was irrational, but it felt like

spending the night away from Bodhi had caused Maribel to come.

“If that’s what you want,” JB said finally.

“It’s what I need,” I said. “At least right now.” I wasn’t sure it would get any better in the future either. My mind snagged

on that moment talking about my dick ratings, the wariness that had come into his face. How would it ever work between me

and JB? What guy would be able to tolerate my phone constantly buzzing with pictures of other guys’ dicks? We might lie to

ourselves for a little while and pretend it could work, but how could it? I didn’t know if it was better to say all this or

let it be unspoken.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “This is going to be one of those things I regret.”

“Then why are you doing it?” he asked, really and truly angry now.

Good, I thought, get angry at me. Hate me. Boo and set me free.

When we hung up, I hunched over like I’d been stabbed and stayed there, remembering how, after we finished making love, we had scam pered into the backyard naked and slipped into the steaming water. I’d worried it wasn’t good for my ankle, but I didn’t care, didn’t want to consider it. The stars were bright above us, and we both groaned as we relaxed into the hot tub.

“You’re sparkling,” he said, gesturing to the mist around us. “The steam makes it look like your skin is sparkling. Like you’re

a goddess.”

I laughed, delighted.

“I think maybe you are,” he said. “That’s the only rational explanation.”

“Explanation for what?” I asked, and then kissed him so he couldn’t answer.

Of course I didn’t get to be that happy.

Why had I ever thought I deserved such a thing?

Jinx returned with an ankle brace and, charmingly, Orange Meals for them both.

Margo felt better with the brace, more secure. “Do you think I should quit my OnlyFans?” she asked, opening her bag of SunChips.

“It’s not illegal to have an OnlyFans,” Jinx pointed out. “I don’t think they can make you quit.”

“It’s not illegal to be on methadone either!” Margo said. “What are we even going to do? You can’t get off the methadone!”

“Oh,” Jinx said, suddenly hesitant. “I thought that part was easy. I think we just— I mean, I think I should move out.”

He looked so normal as he said it. As though he weren’t pushing her off a boat and into the freezing water.

“If I’m not living here,” he continued, “they don’t get to say what course of treatment I pursue. And the methadone, Margo,

I mean, I feel really hopeful. I don’t want to quit.”

Margo nodded rapidly, tucking her hair behind her ears. “Totally,” she agreed. “But...” She didn’t know how to frame it,

how to say it. She had no excuse for how badly she wanted him to stay. “Where would you go?” she asked finally.

“Somewhere close, at least for now,” he said. “I want to stay close by the clinic. But eventually, you know, I’ll probably have to start working again.”

Margo nodded, unable to speak. It wasn’t that she’d thought Jinx would live with her and Bodhi forever. But what would she

do without him? The idea of continuing OnlyFans without Jinx felt scary somehow, just her and Bodhi and her garden of penis

worms. She couldn’t bear the idea of it. And she felt certain, deep in her gut, that if she kept doing the OnlyFans, Maribel

would find a way to take Bodhi. She could picture her, smiling as she lifted Bodhi out of her arms. But how would Margo make

a living? Who would watch Bodhi? She was back in the same predicament she’d always been in, and depending on whether there

was a trial or not, she might not even have any savings.

“What’s a career where you can make good money without going to school?” she asked Jinx.

“Don’t do something hasty,” Jinx urged. “I feel like if it were that clear-cut, she’d have said you had to quit. I mean, you

should be good on the pee test, the mushrooms won’t show up. They can’t take him, Margo. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

But Margo knew the world was perfectly willing to punish you no matter what you had done.

She drafted the announcement to her fans that night.

She explained she was going back to her home planet and that she’d miss them all terribly, and that she’d sculpted exact replicas

of each of their penises out of tinfoil and planned to eat one a day until they were all gone. She let her cursor rest over

the “post” button. She wouldn’t do it tonight. There were too many unknowns. She needed to come up with a plan. She thought

about Ward saying the State of California would rather a kid be able to eat and have a mom who sells nudes than not eat. She

would need to devise some other way of making money and figure out childcare, now that Jinx would be moving out.

She pulled an old three-ring binder from her shelf, the one she’d used for Mark’s class, and clicked it open, dumped everything

out. She would do this the way she had done everything else.

The more she read, the more the plan cohered in her mind. If she quit the OnlyFans, Mark wouldn’t have any grounds on which to take Bodhi; they wouldn’t have to go to court. She could use the thirty grand in her account to launch herself on another career. She could hire Suzie as a nanny. She was an hour deep into research on how to become a real estate agent when her phone buzzed with a message from JB. Thinking of you, it said. She set it down without answering. That was exactly the problem. She couldn’t afford to be thinking of him. Dr.

Sharp’s in-home observation was three days away, and Margo had to be ready.

It was at first extremely weird having Dr. Sharp in her apartment, like seeing your second-grade teacher at the grocery store,

and then suddenly not weird at all.

“What’s all this?” Dr. Sharp asked, gesturing to Jinx’s moving boxes. Margo knew she’d promised Ward that she’d lie to Dr.

Sharp about Jinx’s addiction, but if she was quitting the OnlyFans and he was moving out, she didn’t see any point in that,

and there was something wonderfully freeing about being up front. She explained the CPS visit, and Dr. Sharp confirmed that

it had not been triggered by the 730.

“I figured,” Margo said, then explained Jinx’s relapse and treatment, that CPS required he get off methadone. “And we want

him to succeed, we want evidence-based, effective medicine, and that means staying on the methadone, so he has to move out.”

Margo shrugged.

“I see,” Dr. Sharp said. She didn’t seem sympathetic, but she didn’t say it in a judgy way either. They had settled at the

dining table. Bodhi was in his highchair, and Margo was feeding him pureed yams.

“I’ve decided to quit OnlyFans,” Margo said. “I haven’t told Mark yet. But I don’t see a way forward. I can’t put Bodhi at

risk like this.”

“So you feel that the work is harming him?” Dr. Sharp asked.

Margo snorted. “No! But I’m not willing to have CPS come in here and mess everything up whenever they want to.” She shivered,

imagining Maribel holding out her arms for Bodhi, the wistful way she’d said, “He’s cute.”

“I see. So then what are you thinking workwise?” Dr. Sharp asked. This was much closer than Margo had ever sat to Dr. Sharp, and she could see the downy hairs on her plump cheeks; they made Dr. Sharp seem more human. She was, after all, just another woman. Probably a mother herself.

“I have a fair bit in savings,” Margo said. “I was thinking of getting my real estate credential.” She liked how solid and

grown-up that sounded. When she’d told Jinx, he’d been exasperated with her. “You will hate it,” he spat, “all those phonies!

Margo, no, this is not for you.” At least Dr. Sharp didn’t react like that, she merely nodded and wrote something down in

her notes.

Margo wiped some yam off Bodhi’s face. He was squealing and gibbering, so happy. He loved yams. She’d started doing Baby Signs

with him, and he touched his fingers together in the sign for “more.”

“You want more?!” she cried, laughing. “I don’t have any more!”

Bodhi signed frantically, More, more!

“Okay, all right, you want some banana?” she asked.

Margo peeled the banana and mashed it in a little blue bowl with a fork while Bodhi shrieked like a chimpanzee with delight

and impatience. She’d been feeding him the yams with a little spoon. Most of the time she let him feed himself with his fingers.

She didn’t know if this was bad or good, but it was her secret belief that it couldn’t hurt him, and it might even help his

fine motor skills.

“This might get messy,” she said to Dr. Sharp. “He loves to feed himself, and I think it’s good for him, to have to use his

hands.” She gave him the bowl, and they both watched Bodhi, who looked comically excited, as he steered his hand down into

the banana and then slammed it up into his mouth. It really was amazing how consciously he had to manipulate his hands, like

he was working an arcade claw machine, every movement jerky and a little askew.

“Really makes you more impressed with deer,” Margo said.

“How’s that?” Dr. Sharp asked. She had taken off her blazer at some point.

“Oh, what with the walking from birth and all. Or like snakes that don’t need any parenting at all, they hatch and say peace out and go try to be a snake. They’re programmed to know what to do. I wonder what it’s like, acting completely on instinct like that.”

“That’s an interesting question,” Dr. Sharp said. She didn’t write anything down this time. She wasn’t saying it was interesting

that Margo had said that, like she was evaluating her. She just seemed genuinely interested in what being a baby snake might

be like. They were two women imagining being baby snakes.

Once Bodhi was good and coated in goo, Margo stripped him down and put him in the bath, dumping his toys around him. Dr. Sharp

sat on the closed toilet while Margo knelt by the tub. Margo had worried she’d be awkward with Bodhi in front of Dr. Sharp

the way she’d been with Maribel, all her words vanishing, everything coming out wrong. But she found that it didn’t matter

if Dr. Sharp was watching them; she was giving Bodhi a bath like she always did because Bodhi expected her to, and Bodhi was

more important to her than Dr. Sharp in an almost physical way.

Dr. Sharp stayed while Margo got him out of the tub and changed him into a fresh diaper and jammies. “So in general, at this

point I would nurse him to sleep,” she said, mainly to warn Dr. Sharp she was about to whip out a boob.

“That’s fine, Margo,” Dr. Sharp said. “I think I’ve seen enough. You’ve been so generous with your time. I’ll get out of your

hair and let you get Bodhi settled.”

“Oh,” Margo said, “okay.” She trailed Dr. Sharp out to the foyer.

“Thanks so much,” Dr. Sharp said. “I know it’s a lot, to be observed in your house with your child. That’s a lot of trust.

Thank you for letting me be part of your evening.”

“Oh,” Margo said, “of course!” She almost said, “Anytime!”

And then Dr. Sharp was gone. It felt almost too easy. Margo worried she might have done something wrong, though she couldn’t

think what it might have been.

She went to bed wondering about mother snakes and baby snakes and whether snakes feel love for each other, or if they draw that intense pleasure from some other aspect of their nature, maybe from killing. She imagined a snake philosopher telling his snake students about the greatest good and how everyone knew of course it was killing.

She’d have given anything to have someone to express these thoughts to, but she knew it wouldn’t be fair to call JB, even

if talking to him would be more wonderful than anything. Who cared about sex, really? When what you needed was someone to

talk to in the dark. She thought about what her dad had said about women and why he always ended up cheating. People are all

so lonely. Even when they do horrible things, it often comes down to that, if only you take the time to understand them. It

seemed like that should mean the world could be better, that people could help each other, like Jesus said. And yet that’s

not what happens. That hardly ever seems to happen at all.

She couldn’t help thinking that if she went into real estate and things calmed down, and if her phone wasn’t buzzing with

dicks and her days weren’t spent in cosplay lingerie, she and JB could try dating for real. But it was difficult to picture.

Whenever Margo thought of herself as a real estate agent, she imagined her body with someone else’s face pasted on it, the

scale slightly off so the head was too big like a Barbie. She tried imagining a JB doll grasping the Margo doll with his stiff

arms, kissing her with his numb plastic lips.