About a week after the Applebee's proposal, the doorbell rings. JINX at the door — black jeans, black turtleneck, black leather blazer, many rings on his long thin fingers, leather duffel at his side. Like some kind of unholy priest. He was in rehab. No phone allowed. The moment he got it back, he listened to her voicemail and drove straight here.
She nurses Bodhi and returns. Jinx doesn't flinch — says immediately: As soon as he's done, hand him over. He is absolutely precious. When Bodhi unlatches milk-drunk, she rolls him into Jinx's arms. Jinx holds him with obvious finesse. His eyes are glassy with tears. This is maybe the first time she has ever made her father proud.
Over tea, Jinx tells her: Mayhem retired, Billy Ants didn't work out, and he and Cheri are getting a divorce. He leans back and crosses his long legs. Bodhi is asleep on his chest. The love-drunk look on Jinx's face makes the back of her throat hurt. It was overcast outside, and the living room had a kind of elegant gloom.
She finally asks about rehab. He looks up and stares her directly in the eye: I'd begun using heroin and was having a relationship with a young woman named Viper. Margo: Oh, gross! Dad! The word Viper hangs in the air between them. Jinx holds very still — the dignity of a man who has just said the hardest true thing he knows.
He asks if he can move in — he needs someone to perform sanity for. She tells him she needs him clean around the baby. He assures her. His cheeks are trembling, his eyes look wild. She tells him she loves him. He almost whispers: Well, I love you too. He is sitting close, but not close enough. You can stay. Of course you can stay.
A conference over Chinese food with Suzie. Jinx takes Kat the Larger's room — it is, well, larger. He proposes converting the fourth bedroom into a nursery. Suzie is visibly stressed by the rent arithmetic. Jinx is completely oblivious. Later in the hallway Margo catches Suzie: I'll pay your three hundred, don't worry about it.
Back in the living room, Jinx is watching indie wrestling. He sees Arabella — bright pink hair — whose WWE contract was terminated because of her OnlyFans. He explains it to Margo matter-of-factly. She made more in a month on there than in a whole year wrestling. Margo: How famous do you have to be to do it? Jinx: Oh, I think anybody can do it.
That night, alone in her room, she catches herself in the cheap dorm mirror on the door — the laptop glowing on the bed behind her, Bodhi already asleep in his crib. She looks at her reflection for a long time. Any man would pay to see this. She thinks of Shyanne's voice: Beauty is like free money.
She opens the laptop. She needs a username. Her brain keeps generating ideas like BoobsMcGee and TwatLord. Finally she types: HungryGhost. She finds Arabella on OnlyFans — playing video games in a hot-pink teddy bear suit, chewing gum, killing everyone. This is not what she expected at all.
She still doesn't think she will start an account. Then she turns from the screen and looks over at Bodhi in his crib, softly snoring like a baby pig. Maybe a bunch of people will want to fuck Mommy, she whispers. And that is how she became HungryGhost. Alone, in the dark, lit up by a laptop screen, with her baby.