Money Matters: a novella

When Jack first got the house...

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I.

When Jack first got the house, all his uncle's friends told him, "You're gonna have a hard time with the property taxes." Leo, in particular, was constantly pushing him to sell the place. Leo was a realtor, and he said, "I'll do everything. Just give me a set of keys, and I'll work around you."

But Jack was living alone for the first time in his life. The house was fully furnished, and his uncle had been gay, so the furniture was sleek lines, metal surfaces—and since Jack was quite clearly not gay, when girls saw the place it made him look adult and sensitive. He moved into his uncle's old bedroom—didn't even buy new sheets. Just started drinking until noon, inviting people over.

His girl at the time moved in—she was happy to give up her $1200 a month room, and she kept Jack’s house clean, did the dishes, swept the floors, et cetera. But then how could he sell the house—she'd be homeless! Anyway she was applying to nursing school—nurses made money—he figured they'd sort it out.

A few years went by. Cynthia left him. He got nasty letters from the government saying he was overdue, and angrier emails and calls from Leo, saying, You are destroying your uncle’s legacy! He loved that house—we all loved that place.

The neighbors never responded when Jack said, “Hello,” but sometimes they came over, and rapped on the door, and then it was his turn to ignore them. His place was definitely that house—the bad house—the house with drawn shades, loud music, cigarette butts in the back yard, overflowing garbage cans that didn't get dragged to the curb on time.

And you know what? Leo didn't understand about Jack and his uncle. Didn't get how this house made Jack’s uncle feel so lonely and desperate and trapped—how Uncle Darren had pleaded with Jack not to conform, had literally told him to be "anything other than ordinary." So fuck Leo—fuck this guy who'd claimed to be his uncle's friend, but who'd seen him maybe four or five times a year.

Jack knew someday the government would kick him out and take the house, but in the meantime he was pretty happy. He had plenty of friends, plenty of free time, plenty of girls too, although lately it'd mostly been this one, Mona. They weren't exclusive or anything, but she'd basically lived here for the past few months. Mona was a few years younger than him, perhaps twenty-two, although her stories about herself never totally added up. She was fun and dangerous, and every time she left the house he wasn't sure if she'd ever come back. He didn't totally trust her not to rob him, but that's why he'd starting putting all his cash in his uncle's safe.

Then his old girl, Cynthia, came back into his life. She was on the verge of graduating. And she'd basically...she'd been texting him, asking about him. And in her latest text, she'd mentioned the house—saying, Remember how much fun we had there? Almost like a family. Other guys aren’t really like you. They don’t really want that…

And Jack could, if he squinted, see a path towards some kind of future. But Cynthia had pride—the path wouldn't be open that long. And she was testing him too, waiting to see if he was functional. He wrote her back, saying, Hey.

What? Who's got your phone? she wrote. It's before noon!

Yeah...I wake up sometimes.

But as he was thinking through his next move—how to get Cynthia alone?—he heard footsteps from upstairs.

He couldn't believe Mona was up. Last night she’d given him a pill—said it was MDMA. But almost immediately he couldn't move—his heart was racing, but his arms and legs wouldn't work. He was worried the pill was cut with fentanyl, and he'd asked her to get the NarCan from the safe—she'd said "What's the code?" a little too quickly.

Ironically, she was too high to work the safe, and she came back to him, worried, her eyebrows fluttering, pulling at his t-shirt with kittenish gestures, saying ‘I can't do it’. Very frustrating. So he'd pulled himself together and gone to the safe, and then he realized, oh, I'm fine. And he’d just lain in bed with her asleep on his shoulder, letting his heart race while his thoughts flowed hard and slow as lava.

He didn't think she'd tried to murder him, because...why bother? There had to be easier ways to rob a guy. But still, the vibes were off.

Mona was indomitable. One of those people who never seemed faded or hung-over. She traipsed down the stairs in a tiny skirt and crop-top, and she stood highlighted in the rectangle of gray light from the window, bending down to slip on a shoe.

"Hey do you have twenty dollars?" Mona asked.

"Umm, sure," he said. "Why?"

She pouted. "Why do you care?"

"Well...mostly because it's a window into how you think," he said. "Just wanted to see what you'd say."

She came closer to him in that little pink skirt of hers. Sometimes he tried to tell his friends about this girl in his life, and he couldn't even describe her. He had words, but they didn't really encapsulate it. She was average-height, quite slender, toned, with tattoos on her ribs and thighs and legs—so many that he couldn't believe, now he actually knew her, that she could've sat still for so long. She told Jack she'd dated a tattoo artist, and the guy had done them for free, so long as he could do whatever he wanted, which was honestly the hottest thing Jack had ever heard. He didn't believe that was actually true! But that was the sort of thing she said!

She said, "Well..." She batted her lashes at him and moved closer, pushing her body between his legs.

Mona wasn't stupid. He understood her completely. She knew that you can't fuck a guy right after asking him for twenty dollars, because it'll look like you're fucking him for twenty dollars. So she had to precisely calculate the level of come-on that would make him drop his defenses and hand over the money, without making it seem like a payment. There was a dance here: she didn't have anywhere else to go. But she didn't pay rent. She wasn't really his girlfriend either. And she wasn't exactly a hooker, though maybe in a year or two she would be.

She was just...a party girl. But a smart one! That's what he liked about her: he'd brought back so many girls who, unlike Mona, genuinely seemed weak and lost—girls who genuinely seemed like they needed a white knight. Mona didn't! But the price of her strength, was…well...it sometimes felt like he was being exploited.

"It's okay, I know you're poor," she said. "Living in your daddy's house...someday he'll kick you out, you know."

She didn't know he owned the place—it was just easier to let her think that Jack was a grifter or schemer who’d conned a relative into letting him live here rent-free.

"Come on," he said. "Let's be real with each other...Let's talk..."

He'd spent so many hours talking with her, but always fucked-up, always on a spree. Two nights earlier, at 2 AM, she'd told him some crazy story about being seventeen, reading about Epstein's jet, thinking, I've gotta be on that fucking jet. That jet is the place to be. So she'd taken her fake ID to the rooftop bars in downtown SF, looking for VIP tables, but each billionaire was, like, owned by some woman who swatted away gold-diggers like her, and then this club promoter took her under his wing, and he got her at tables with all kinds of billionaires, who fawned over her and gave her stuff, but, honestly these guys were so hard. They wouldn’t even fuck her! They had these staff who hustled girls like her away at the end of the night—or made them sit alone in apartments or hotels. Nah—no way. Here she was, jail-bait, offering herself up to rich guys, and everything was still so much effort. She could’ve done it, of course—Fuck yeah, I could’ve made it work. But why bother? I don’t need money that bad. Not if it won’t be fun.

They could talk like that when it was late at night, and they heard the squawking of the coyotes up in the hills. But during the day they hardly ever said anything real.

"Hey," she said. "I saw your ex's name on your phone. Just for your information...if she moves back in here, I will burn this place down.”

"Mona," he said.

"I'm serious. You've got that couch in the basement. I will wait till you're not around, I will flick a cigarette into that couch. It'll go up like that—nobody'll believe you didn’t just get drunk and do it. Nobody."

"What am I supposed to say?"

"Nothing," she said. "Just telling you what'll happen."

She pulled on his hand, and gave him a long, yearning glance, but now he was in the same position. Even if he doesn't really believe the threat, a guy can't give a girl twenty dollars right after she's threatened to burn down his house! He let her walk out the door without the twenty bucks, feeling his heart fall to the floor as she hopped into a low purple sports-car that belonged, he hoped, to a girlfriend of hers, because it definitely didn't look like an uber.

---

You might have noticed by now that this isn't a traditional novel. There's not a lot in terms of images. That's all intentional! I can write differently—I just don't want to. Jack’s not the kind of guy who’ll dwell on flowers and furniture.

Still, there are definitely things I want to describe that aren’t possible in this point of view—which is why it’s great to pop out once in a while.

The house is a townhouse in San Francisco: it's got a garage full of tools (Jack's uncle's workshop) where Jack never goes. The attic has Jack’s former room, a tiny, narrow guest room. It's empty right now, but Mona hangs out there sometimes.

On the main level, there's one bedroom and a big spacious living room / kitchen that's dominated by glossy grand piano and a kitchen with chrome countertops. Jack tries to keep the surface of the piano clean, but he spilled a drink in it a while back, and he's pretty certain the piano is ruined forever.

He does his best to keep his clothes and things within the confines of his uncle's former room on the ground floor, but often there are bottles and cups and plates overflowing in the kitchen.

I wouldn't consider this to be a work of metafiction, by the way. I'm not trying to emphasize the constructedness of fictions. This is just a way of telling stories: In the 18th-century, Henry Fielding used to do the same thing! Many chapters of Tom Jones open with a disquisition on the nature of the novel. Then he goes to tell this perfectly nice story about this friendly guy, Tom Jones, and you totally believe the story even though you know there's also a teller who makes no bones about inventing it.

II.

Last week Jack’s mom had called and left him a rambling phone message, saying, (I'm paraphrasing) You're twenty-eight years old, and you've never done a thing in your life except get lucky. Look at your sister! Look how she works, and you don't do a thing to help your own family.

But that wasn't totally true! He had actually tried very hard to convince his sister to be closer with Darren.

He'd literally had this conversation with his sister about ten years ago. He'd said, "Don't you think it's crazy that we have this gay uncle in San Francisco who's probably, like, pretty rich? And our mom doesn't talk to him or anything? We should reach out. He'd probably appreciate that."

"Yeah, totally," she'd said.

"No...you don't get it," he said. "Darren is rich. Like...do I need to connect the dots? He is rich. No kids. Rich. Older. Rich. Am I getting through to you?"

"Eww," she'd said. "That's like what a sociopath would say."

"Okay, but...I mean come on!"

Well fuck her. He'd done it. He had put in years of effort and gotten this money. And yeah, her life sucked, she had two kids in a little one-bedroom apartment in Stockton. If she'd inherited half of Darren’s house, she could've sold it and bought her own place. Well…fuck her. Jack had carried for ten years the shame of his sister acting like he was a schemer or a con artist, well guess what—her conscience was clean. Now eat your conscience. Feed it to your kids, bitch.

Plus, he didn't actually think he'd done anything wrong! Because it really had seemed like Darren wanted more company. When Jack was applying to colleges, Darren had tossed in a word for SF State, saying ‘It'd be nice to have you close. You could even stay up here with me, if you wanted.’ And Jack had done it! They'd gotten along. At first Jack stayed out of his uncle’s way—he didn’t want to seem needy, or like a burden. But Darren started taking him to dinner every Friday, and no matter who Jack was seeing, Jack never booked over that spot. Darren was a smart guy: he'd been an engineer for PG&E for twenty years and had flipped houses on the side before taking early retirement. Darren seemed interested in Jack’s life, would laugh with Jack about the strangeness of how Jack, this nobody of a kid, who’d gotten no interest in high school, was suddenly having to dodge all these girls. Darren was the same way—plenty of twenty- or thirty-year-olds wanted a daddy, Darren could’ve fucked them every day of the week. “You just seem responsible, adult, thoughtful,” he told Jack. “In truth you’re absolutely not those things, and I think they know you’re not. I’m not either! What thoughtful sixty year old would have sex with a twenty-five year old boy? But that’s what they like, I suppose. The idea that we’re secretly bad. I’m not certain—does this resonate?”

Sometimes Jack felt bad about these talks, because he didn’t think he was actually a lady’s man or anything. He was pretty certain he was still a loser, but Darren seemed to enjoy the story.

After Jack failed out, his uncle said, "You can stay here." His uncle knew Jack was just drinking and fucking around. He didn't know how Jack made money, and Jack told him a story about running a drop-shipping business online. Darren never actually gave Jack money—he didn't want to do that—but he'd observed that Jack was relatively responsible (for a man left to his own devices).

He'd always told Jack, "The house is going to Leo and to Felix" (his exes). "You'll get something, but not that much. And you'll be last in line, so there might not be much left."

But Jack suspected this was a lie. Anyway, it'd worked out! Jack had seen an opportunity other people hadn't, and he'd taken that opportunity, and a result he'd inherited a million-dollar house.

Of course by now it was probably impossible to sell. The government had a lien against it because of the property taxes, and he had no idea how to handle that. Every realtor said to hire a lawyer, but he didn't have money for that!

Cynthia was good with forms and things. She'd probably grown a lot at college. If he got back with her, she would probably spend her time and money fixing up this house and making his life sustainable. That might be a bargain.

Right now, staring at that stack of unopened mail from the city, he had the thought...she is literally the only person on earth who can help me. So he sent Cynthia a text.

Hey, want to get together?

She wrote back. Would love to! So busy with classes though—can you come here? Maybe four o'clock?

Seriously? he wrote back. What're we gonna do at four in the afternoon?

I'll show you the library! she wrote.

I went to school there, he wrote. I don't need to see campus.

Well okay... she wrote. I'm pretty busy, so...

No, no, he wrote. Four o'clock.

K! And...be sober, plz?

Sure.

---

I know many of my readers, particularly women, will read Jack as a sociopath. I really don’t think that’s fair. If other people have needs, and you intuit those needs and meet them, then…isn’t that exactly what good people do? Isn’t that empathy, rather than sociopathy? But because Jack is, to some extent, consciously able to intuit and understand peoples’ needs and decide, consciously, whether to meet them or not, then suddenly that’s sociopathic? I don’t think so. He’s manipulative to some extent, but whether that’s bad or undesirable is debatable.

Anyway, there's a reason this story isn't told from a first person point of view. It's because Jack has a certain kind of knowledge, regarding how people work, and that knowledge isn't really something he can articulate or explain. Like when he tries to explain about the gay uncle, it sounds very sociopathic, but Jack also knew—his uncle was lonely, was cast out, would welcome some family in his life. Jack also knew that his sister, even then, wanted a better life than she was likely to get on her own. In his own head, Jack is able to fuse the selfish and selfless, fuse the meeting of other people's needs with meeting his own. But when he tries to explain his thinking, it all sounds very wrong.

III.

Jack understands by the way that he is not hard. At all! He is a middle-class kid. He grew up in a nice little house in Modesto—his dad worked for the city, and his mom was a teacher. They'd gotten divorced when he was twelve, and he got left with his mom, who drank a lot and was really angry, would throw shit, moan about her wasted life. His dad moved on, had another family.

Until then, Jack was poised to try and do well in school, maybe try to be an engineer or doctor.

But because he got so depressed and angry in his teens, his grades were shitty. He stopped doing his homework. Teachers had meetings with his mom, and his mom yelled at him, accused him of punishing her. He was shocked by how hard they dropped the hammer on him, how immediately they leapt to saying, You are causing trouble. You are disrupting our lives. He realized—to other people, I’m just a problem. Nobody ever thought I was special. Nobody ever thought I’d do great things.

Like, if anyone had respected or cared about him, they would’ve said, “You are much too good for the kind of shit you're pulling. You are harming your own future.” But that is not what they said. Instead it was all about them, and their own needs.

Obviously he was lonely! Obviously he deeply wanted (even now) somebody to tell him: "You matter. The world needs your voice. You are unique."

Maybe Darren could’ve given him that. But Jack’s uncle was a single man himself and had basically just reinforced Jack's worldview. "Jack, you're smart enough to know that you cannot derive your self-worth from capitalism. Learn a trade. Work for yourself. Do some honest labor that people will pay for."

Jack supposed that was the ticket, and Darren knew a lot about contracting, etc. He'd tried to get Jack interested in the renovations he wanted to do for this house. Darren had such big plans, now that he was retired, to add third story on top and to turn the garage into a rental unit. Jack saw now that Darren had a wealth of expertise in how stuff worked, how to fix and build things. And if Darren was still alive, Jack would like to believe, he'd have found a way to learn from his uncle’s experience.

But Darren had died while Jack was at a rave. Jack had come home at six a.m., and his uncle was on the ground in the master-bathroom. It hadn't been clean: his uncle was blue in the face, looked deeply in distress, like he'd very much wanted someone there in his last moments. The paramedics said he probably died instantly, but that was clearly not true. Darren had opened cabinets, confused, maybe looking for aspirins or things. His phone was in a corner, next to the toilet. Perhaps Jack could’ve tried to reconstruct his uncle’s last moments, but he honestly tried not to think about it. He hadn’t asked for an autopsy—the man was fucking dead! An autopsy? Why? What was the fucking point!

Paramedics won’t take someone away if they’re actually dead. Fuck those paramedics. He’d asked for the number of someone to call, but they’d told him to google it. When he told this story later on to Cynthia, she was like, oh, but we’re in San Francisco, there are services. No there aren’t! What are these services? Tell Jack the service—he’d asked for the service. There was no service.

So when the paramedics were gone, Jack had gone to the safe and opened the will. He'd done it that night, with Darren dead in the next room. Why not? His uncle was dead. Jack had enjoyed his uncle's company a lot, but in the back of his mind, he'd always thought, maybe I'm just here for the money.

Jack would've loved to have some more plausible deniability about that fact. Would've loved to think, oh, even if there was no money, I would've been happy with the years I spent in the home of this wonderful and interesting guy.

Maybe if he'd had a partner or a family, someone to call—maybe then Jack wouldn't have checked the safe until later. Jack deeply wanted to believe that his first thoughts after his uncle's death hadn't been, What is happening to this house? He'd been numb, he'd been in shock, he'd seen something horrible that night. And the funny thing was, after he read the letter his uncle left—he genuinely did forget about the money, at least for a little while.

Oh god, the moment of reading that letter. What a bittersweet moment. It'd been everything—everything Jack ever could've wanted. It'd said everything he'd ever wanted a man to say. Just the usual bullshit, about how Jack was a very special person, how he'd made Darren very happy, and how Darren regarded him as a son, etc. That's what Jack remembered it saying anyway—he could never bring himself to reread that letter.

He could imagine his uncle writing it down late at night, which was unusual, because his uncle normally didn't like screens around him at night. But he would not have wanted Jack around while he wrote something this sentimental.

Anyway...it didn't matter. The point was, Jack had pride. He knew that's all it was. He was a shitty middle-class kid with no real skills. He didn't want to walk into some trade school or whatever and admit that he had no idea how to use any of this shit or do any of this shit. He didn't want to apprentice. Didn't want to open himself up to that—didn't want to beg to be taught. Fuck that! He'd been in school for thirteen years, plus three semesters of college. He was done with begging other people to believe in him.

Fuck all of them. Fuck them. And he knew that he needed help—that his life wasn't sustainable, but guess what? He didn't care—he would rather die than ever be under another person's power again.

Like, his uncle, his uncle he would've learned from. But even then, who knows? The fact is, Jack only read his uncle's letter after his uncle died. During his life, his uncle never said shit like what was in that letter.

Oh yeah, after reading the letter, Jack called up his uncle’s ex, Leo, who knew exactly who to call. There was a funeral parlor that they all used. The place took calls 24/7. Leo had good credit, gave them a credit card number, which they did in fact charge thousands of dollars—but even that money was taken out of the estate (Leo was the executor). So everything was basically handled. And that’s exactly why you read someone’s instructions after they die. At the same time, reading those instructions hadn’t felt like the right thing to do.

Leo and Jack didn’t get along that well—Leo thought Jack was a spoiled do-nothing (fair enough). He’d offered to sit with Jack, had asked if Jack wanted to come over, but he hadn’t insisted when Jack said “No, I’m okay. I think I’d prefer to be alone.” Like…who actually prefers to be alone after a calamity or loss? Nobody! You prefer to be with people you know, who love you and understand you. But if those people don’t exist, then obviously yeah, you’d rather be alone.

---

We should talk about this letter, Darren's letter. When you finally read it (near the end of this story), you'll understand this letter is quite affirming, but also pretty weird.

Darren's uncle had a very wry sense of humor, and he hadn't really been expecting to die. He was 67—not that old. He had made Jack his heir, but he wasn't certain he wanted to live with this unhappy boy for his final years. He alternated between thinking, oh, I'll build a flat for him in the basement and thinking, hmm, he is bad news, better get him out.

They connected on a personal level. Jack loved his uncle's stories about the good old days. Darren had asked once about getting MDMA, and Jack said yeah what do you need? (Jack bought all his drugs on the dark web, and made money re-selling them to friends, which was not an activity that seemed, to him, totally akin to drug dealing, because it didn’t seem to carry a lot of risk, although maybe that’s what all drug-dealers think at first! ) Darren had asked a few questions about the provenance of these drugs, and he’d been fascinated by Jack’s description of this world—he’d more or less trusted to Jack’s explanation that he was much more drug-consumer than dealer.

They’d taken the pills together once, but obviously Darren much preferred to do drugs with his actual friends. Still, that one time on MDMA he’d told Jack about all the friends he'd lost (yes Darren was positive, come on, he was a 67 year old gay man living in SF!).

Darren saw giving this property, this chance, to Jack as being something like helping out his own younger self. At the same time, he knew it was an objectively bad idea—he would be enabling Jack, keeping him forever young.

He developed this notion that Jack was somehow more awake than other people, built for better things, and gave him New Age books on how to live more intensely. He would always tell Jack "you can fuck up your life, but just don't be ordinary". And those were in fact the last words in his letter. Or something like that anyway.

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IV.

Jack took a relatively light dose of mushrooms, and he walked to campus to meet Cynthia. What a beautiful day, what a beautiful existence! He did a lot of day-dreaming as he walked, imagining himself giving advice to other guys, telling them, ignore everything that older people tell you. It's all bullshit, designed to make you hate yourself just for being a human being.

Even in his daydream, he was aware that his sole accomplishment in life was that one human being (his uncle) had believed in him. But so what! It was very pleasant to imagine other people someday sharing his uncle’s belief.

Cynthia bounced down the steps of the library and pulled him into a hug. She was very preppy, with a ponytail and a collared shirt under a sweater, but still wearing makeup and those big fake eyelashes of hers, which were a weird false note with the rest of the look. She kissed him on the cheek—another new gesture.

"It's so nice to see you!"

"Yeah," he said. "Definitely."

She took him by the hand and pulled him through the library, which was awkward, because it was full of kids who were actually studying for their tests or trying to do work. They used to go to city libraries together, when she was studying for her entrance tests—but in those there were lots of kids, lots of homeless people, and you could talk. The environment was less formal.

"Can we get coffee?"

"Oh..." she said. "Yeah...yeah, yeah, sure."

She took him onto campus. Which, again, he knew perfectly well, but she showed him around as if he didn't. They got coffee, and she chattered at him, and he realized something: she wants me to show interest in her. She wants me to win her over. Which he was willing to do. But...when was she going to show interest in him? She hadn't asked a single question about what he was up to. Why did she even want to see him? Was he even a person to her? It's funny because Cynthia was a nice girl, but she almost demanded to be mistreated, because that was the only way to get through to her!

"Hmm, maybe I could find a new one."

"What'd you say?"

"Just maybe I could find a new girl," he said. "Lots of girls around here."

"What the fuck?"

Even as she said the words, she bit her lower lip. Which was insane! He was pretty sure most girls wouldn't have put up with this. But, again, he'd quite literally chosen her. He had history with her. This was their pattern.

"Just...you don't seem that interested in me," he said. "Maybe someone else would be?"

"Oh I'm sorry Jack, what's going on with you?" She fluttered her eyelashes at him, but he knew it was a bit mocking. At the same time, they were on the grass, and the sun was singing, and now, suddenly, she was leaning into him, her eyes close.

"I dunno," he said. "I have worries about the house...I don't really want to work for a living. But the finances don't hundred percent work if I don't. Just trying to figure something out."

"Huh," she said. "Maybe you should get a roommate."

"That's what I'm trying to do!" he said. "Right now! That's what this is."

And, of course, she laughed. Because she was a logical person. She did understand him. It was kind of a miracle. There did exist a lot of good, normal, logical people. But they didn't always want to put up with you.

"What about that, uhh, Fatima?"

"Mona," he said.

"The stripper," Cynthia said.

"She’s not a stripper, she’s just—”

"Hot," Cynthia said.

"Yeah. But you and her are equally hot. Or, if you wanted to be trashy, you could obviously be super hot."

"Obviously."

But now she was smiling! Somehow this was working on her! Jack didn't really understand it. Or rather, he did understand it completely. He found himself to be a very charming and interesting guy. But he wasn't to everyone's taste. In high school nobody had wanted him—he wasn't really a good kid or a bad one—he was too obviously lost and sad. Perhaps, with effort, he could've found someone. But it wasn't like this! College had been totally different. The thing about college was that a lot of people there were genuinely in despair. These girls looked at him and they saw something. It wasn't him—it wasn't his personality. But something about him was very alluring to them.

"So tell me what you want from me?" she said.

"I don't know?" he said. "Dinner? Not a four o'clock library spot! Maybe you could even pay. That would actually be really nice."

"Really?" she said. "Alright...but I pick the place? And your order?"

"Sure."

So they went to dinner at this salad place she knew he'd hate, and they had a normal conversation. She asked him about how he was spending his days, and he actually thought for a second, and he told the truth, which was that he did a lot of daydreaming about being a useful or important person—a warrior, a leader, a guru. He thought that maybe he had some wisdom to impart, even though that was stupid because he'd never done anything in life aside from scam his gay uncle into leaving him some money. He just wanted there to be some role for him. Like...a war for him to fight—though that was insane because he'd never join the military, he hated discipline, etc.

And what else could she say? If she wanted him in her life, she had to say, "That doesn't sound stupid! I think you have so much to offer! You're so strong! Nobody I know is as strong-willed as you.”

She invited him back to her place, and then she stopped him at the door, saying, "I…I shouldn’t. Not right away. I loved hanging out, but…”

It was a good move. He definitely respected her for it. And he made a move in response—“Oh maybe I should just come upstairs and talk.” She said, “I...no. I don't think so.” But then they kissed, and their bodies fit together. He did the thing she liked, pushing her against the door. And she said, "No, no. This is nice. But no..."

"I'll see you again?"

She bit her lip, but he didn't push it—and he could see her noticing that. He was treating her like a prospect, and she was doing the same.

The thing he liked about Cynthia was the same thing he liked about Mona, and about himself—they all played the game at a very high level. You could call it 'manipulation' if you wanted, but it wasn't—it was just the game, the only thing that mattered. The game of getting your needs met by other people. Most people played it poorly, haplessly, pathetically—you met them and you more or less immediately knew what they wanted from you, but there was no incentive to give it to them, because they had no ability to intuit your needs and meet them in return. So these losers just wandered around forever, pathetically unloved, ruining relationship after relationship through their own obtuseness.

Of course being able to play the game didn't mean you'd win, because the more skilled you were, the more subtle your needs became. Like in Jack's case he didn't just want sex, didn't just want fun and excitement and emotional support, he wanted an extra thing too: money.

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V.

Mona had a key, and he didn't want to invite Cynthia back to his place until he’d managed to kick out Mona once and for all. At the same time, he hadn’t seen Mona in a few days—maybe she'd found somebody better than him, who knew? The thing about Mona was you couldn't be mean to her, like you could with Cynthia, because she’d shut down, start treating you like a mark, and it’d take forever to earn back that trust. With Mona, you did need to show a little weakness, in order to activate some kind of pity or maternal instinct or something.

So he texted her, Hey...missing you...

Oh yeah? she wrote back. What're you doing?

Been hanging out with Cyn, he said.

Yah cool. I'm at a friend's house.

A guy friend?

Why do you care?

Just curious...

Yah, she wrote.

He didn't respond, and after a minute she wrote, You won't be mad if I come home?

No.

Cool, she wrote. See you tonight.

I'll be waiting.

No you won't.

I will.

Mona wasn’t as disorganized as she seemed—she usually didn't flake out on a commitment. The trouble was getting her to commit at all!

With Mona he didn't need to be sober. And she was, moreover, extremely impressive to his various guy-friends. So he started drinking and texting them. The first to show up was Alvaro, which was a relief because the rest of these guys—they were fine guys—would inevitably start testing him, trying him. Maybe by showing up really late, or coming really drunk, or maybe by bringing some extra people. Who knew! Jack didn't do that kind of testing himself—he really didn't get why some guys did. Sometimes he genuinely wanted to say, "Should we fight? Can we get past things that way?" The problem was, these guys knew beating him in a fight wouldn't matter! They wanted to be around him, they wanted to come to his house, but they didn't want to admit they did. So they fucked around.

After a few hours, Mona entered a room that was already hazy with smoke and sodden with beer. Someone had turned on some loud, desultory music—way too loud for the number of people in here—but nobody dialed it down, because that would mean admitting you wanted to talk.

"What is this shit?" she said. She walked in wearing tiny shorts, a halter-top, sunglasses, high heels. It was an extremely trashy outfit, because...who was it for? Like, this wasn't Miami, nobody dressed like this. There was no plausible deniability here. Mona didn't dress to look good—she dressed for the male eye.

She slapped the speaker. "Turn this shit off."

"You know how to turn the volume down," Jack said.

But she followed the power line and literally ripped the cord from the wall, making the music terminate in a sudden, electronic crunch.

"Well I told you to turn that shit off."

The party started up again, but now it was the Mona show. The moment anyone got any traction, started to talk, she'd descend on them, say some stupid shit, talk about how she had syphilis, and say "I'm not joking", when people laughed awkwardly.

Jack was sitting in his living room with Alvaro: a hugely chubby guy with a big beard and wide eyes, who didn't have that undercurrent of anger that most guys had (that Jack himself had!)

Alvaro was the only guy who was really comfortable around Mona, because she was so far out of his league that even being in the same room as her was a gift. For her part, Al was the only guy-friend of his whose name she admitted to remembering.

And now, when she overheard Alvaro saying, "Oh yeah I'm still living with my parents...gonna move out eventually..." Mona actually swept in, appeared over him, said, "Don't say that."

"What?" Alvaro looked up, blinked, at this slender terror in her tall heels.

"Don't say you live with your parents," she said. "That's not true. You're paying rent. A thousand dollars in rent! I've seen your bedroom! It's shitty—they could never get from anyone else. Your dad is sick. He's not working. You're doing a good thing, Al, living there. They couldn't manage without you—like, with money, I mean—how would they manage? And you're letting them keep their pride too! That's a good thing! But you don't have to pretend around your friends..."

"Whoah...hey, that's really cool," said one of their friends, Jess. "I didn't know you paid anything..."

Immediately, perceptibly, there was a change in Alvaro. He drew himself taller, the other guys stopped boxing him out. It had nothing whatsoever to do with him supporting his family (which was all true), and everything to do with him being validated by Mona.

Watching her sashay around the room and stir up trouble, Jack started to actually enjoy himself. She was a joy to watch, not just for her looks, but for the way she operated, the little decisions she made—the way you could see how every second, every interaction, she was at the very peak of her performance.

She dumped herself into his lap, swarmed over him, sending all her electrons rubbing against his, and then rushing away, exploding in some other direction, daring him to chase her, run her down, get embroiled in some game with her.

With Mona you never knew if you'd fuck or not. If he wanted her in bed, he would need to put something into her—he would need to display some energy that attracted her at this moment—and then maybe, at the end of some period of maneuver, then maybe she would drag him into their bedroom at 10 o'clock, with everyone still there, so she could moan theatrically and have everyone think it was fake—but it wasn't fake! It wasn't fake at all! She was just genuinely enjoying the performance of owning him and making his guests uncomfortable.

Or maybe she'd do something different. Or nothing at all. Or even go home with another guy (though she had to know he wouldn't let her come back if she slept with a friend of his.) It was all up to her, really.

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VI.

At the same time, he'd brought Mona here to break up with her (sort of). To do that, he'd need to get her alone somehow.

With that as an objective, Jack suddenly felt on surer footing. And now he understood why he'd invited his friends here. He needed them as pawns in a game designed to get Mona alone in a room with him, so he could get her keys. He understood precisely how the game was played. He imagined it was akin to how other people understood chess. You had certain moves, certain pieces, certain objectives, and the combination of those things resulted in certain tried-and-true strategies. In this case, he didn’t exactly have a "get a party girl alone for long enough to have a difficult conversation" strategy teed up for her, but he and Mona had been playing long enough that they understood the various options available to them.

Jack did not accept the framing that he was a sociopath, by the way! He was very aware that some people might regard some cold-hearted recitation of his thoughts and feelings as being sociopathic, but Jack didn't agree. He cared about people. He felt empathy. He felt fear. He felt shame. He enjoyed spending time with Mona and thought she was a beautiful and fascinating person. She was difficult to know well—difficult to connect with—but he understood the reasons for that, and he couldn't genuinely say that he would've rewarded any attempt on her part to get to know him. With him and Mona, he really felt like it was a relationship of mutual respect—not sociopathic at all.

At the same time, it was a relationship between two people who didn't want to work for a living. One of those people had a considerable, though not infinite, sum of inherited wealth, but Mona didn't totally understand that fact. Like...she knew he had this house, but not that he owned it. She just thought, you know, he was somehow allowed to be here. That it was some scam or grift on his part. And he had encouraged her in that belief, because...well...if she knew he was rich, then it would've really altered things between them. She would've understandably thought, hmm, maybe this is the guy! I like him, and he has money, so...that's the dream.

And Jack was pretty sure that Mona wasn't the girl, because...she didn't earn money. Like, yeah you could say it was because she was trashy, drank alot, etc. But it really came down to money—he wanted a partner or whatever—but he also didn't want to work. Cynthia kinda seemed like she'd let him do whatever he wanted, and why not? If he brought his own house into the mix, that was way beyond what any of Cynthia's friends had—none of their boyfriends owned houses. So nobody would look askance at the fact that Cynthia would basically support him financially.

That was the dream, anyway. Which was why he now needed to break up with Mona. And he realized all this would've sounded so absurd to anyone if he talked about it—just so many castles spun in the air. But he had already experienced, with his rich gay uncle, the fact that you could actually turn financial / familial / friendly entanglements into...real money. Lucre.

Without even feeling bad about it!

So he played the first move in the game. He just mentioned—not to Mona, but to another person at his house—that he had seen Cynthia yesterday.

Mona interjected, "Oh that girl? Your ex? How's she doing?"

These words were broadcast from across the room by the way, but at a volume just south of the level where it'd seem histrionic.

"She's good," Jack said.

"Can't believe how much she wanted to be done with you," Mona said. "If she wants you back, she's welcome..."

Jack really appreciated Mona's approach. Very respectful of his own ability to play this game. Because she definitely could've played herself as the hysterical, crazy party girl, slowly causing more and more drama. But he wouldn't have responded to that, because he didn't really believe that Mona wasn't in control of her own emotions.

She was in a losing position, and they both recognized that. So instead she just played for time—she was already on her own, chatting up other guys, looking for someone who'd whisk her away from here (preferably with suitcase in tow).

And then...somehow, he wasn't sure how...he felt her demeanor slip.

"Oh," she said.

The whole room went quiet. Alvaro's little fingers were scrabbling like a hedgehog's. He burrowed himself further and further into the lazy-boy. "Oh..." he said. "Oh no...oh..."

"What is it?" Jack said.

"You own this place?" Mona said. "Like, it's yours...?"

"It's just...I don't know the details," Alvaro said. He must've let something slip about Jack's uncle and the inheritance.

"Yeah...what'd you think?" Jack said.

"Hmm," Mona said.

And for the rest of the night, he saw her locked in, thinking about him. She pushed on him, kissed him a little, but she must've guessed he didn't have the energy to find another girl (which in turn meant she didn't have to fight for his attention) so when the night was getting late, around 1:30 AM or so, she said, "I'm going to bed."

He went up after her. She was getting undressed, taking off her face.

"Hey..." he said.

"No," she said. "Not today."

"We've gotta talk."

"I'll be out in the morning," she said. "Just leave me alone tonight."

"Fair enough. But..."

Then she turned—her mascara was already wiped-off, and her face looked wan, tired. "I'll go. Trust me, I'll go. Just give me a little space, alright? I'm tired of leaving my shit behind in suitcases. Of not knowing where I'm going. I'll make it easy on you, but just...trust me, I'll leave."

"Oh...okay," he said.

VII.

The next morning, Mona appeared in sweatpants and a t-shirt, with her hair tossed in a lazy bun. Sort of an imitation of a college girl on a weekend. She was fully made-up, of course. She put on her makeup every morning as automatically as breathing. But she didn't look full-on seductress, smoldering. And today was...Jack needed to look up the actual day of the week. It was Thursday. So...what were Mona's plans? Who was gonna come out here to pick her up at 9:30 AM on a Thursday morning?

"Just give me two hours," she said. "I've got a guy coming. That's not a lie. Just...let's be real."

"Who is this guy?"

She shrugged. Then she narrowed her eyes a little. "Some guy I met at a club. I've been talking to him a little..."

"What club?"

They sat chatting, absorbed, as Mona gave Jack his first-ever look into how she thought.

The guy, so as he could tell, basically just had his own apartment. If you had your own place, without roommates, you were a god in Mona's universe.

"A guy can tell you he's rich, but does a rich guy really want someone else in his business all the time? You will never convince me that someone who's got money is gonna be living with someone else."

"Oh yeah I mean...people have different values, sure. But if they want a girl like you—then yeah they've gotta have their own place."

"Fuck yeah," Mona said. "Of course! Anyway...this guy, he's not the best prospect. I don't know...he's okay. He's a guy, what do you want me to say? I like you better, but..."

"I just want to know the details. What do you tell these guys? Do you tell them it's love...or...?"

"What did I tell you?" she said. "You were one of them. So tell me, what'd I tell you?"

"You never asked me to pick you up from some other guy's apartment at 11 AM, you're not in a dress, you've got fucking suitcase. Like...what is this guy gonna be thinking?"

"Ehh," she said. "It's something new I'm trying." She pouted. "Let's see what happens."

"But he knows what's coming."

"How can you know?" she said. "Nothing is ever like anything else. I mean 'pick me up. My boyfriend is kicking me out. I need a place to stay for a few nights.' What picture does that make in your mind? Tell me, what do you think he knows?"

"So...I mean Mona, are you in..."

The question was Mona, are you in trouble? Mona, are you in control of this situation? But Jack didn't know what to say. Mona wasn't a superwoman! She was like him, an average person with an above-average quantity of wits.

"The problem is," Jack said. "You're not giving him a lot of room for pride. He can't say to himself, oh yeah this girl, she's just hanging out, but she's definitely got another place to live. I mean...I knew you really didn't, but I think you respected that I acted like you did."

"Well you see where that got me," Mona said. "I mean what do you want me to say? Look where my pride has gotten me. Speaking of which...here." She opened her bag, took out stack of bills. Jack's eyes went wide. Where could Mona have gotten this kind of money!

The bills were mostly twenties. Some fresh, but most of them pretty old. Not grimy, but they looked like maybe they'd been in an envelope or something for a long time.

"Here," she said. "You've got this shitty guest-room, but if you wanted to rent it out, that would be the first and last month's rent."

"You're kidding. Where did you get this?"

He saw her eyes go a bit narrow. "Here and there. I picked up shifts."

"Mona!" Jack said. "Come on..."

"Okay fine, I got it from...the usual places. But do you want it? Do you want a roommate? No friends with benefits. Just a straight-up roommate. I get my own door. My own key. My own bathroom."

"Umm, how much?" he said.

"Seven hundred."

"For a real roommate?" he said. "No. That wouldn't be worth it. Like...you know the shit I'd take from Cynthia—or well, she wouldn't go for it. If you were living here, Cyn and I would be done. But what about any other girl I brought back? What would I tell them about you? I'd need it to be more money just so it's believable!"

"So what's believable?"

"In terms of...what's a believable amount to where I'd have you around just for the money?"

"Yeah."

"Thirteen hundred a month," he said. "That’d be enough to maybe pay my property taxes."

"Huh," she said.

"And I'd want a lease," he said. "I wouldn't want you here today, gone tomorrow. And with a real security deposit, at least two month's rent."

"I don't have twenty-six hundred dollars!" she said.

"Okay...but you're asking me what it would take..."

"Don't be stupid," she said. "Look, I'm gonna give you fifteen hundred dollars. You know how much that is for me. You're saying my fifteen hundred dollars isn't enough of a bond for you? That you need it to be twenty-seven?"

"I mean...is the choice between that or you go live in some strange guy's apartment?"

"You don't get a choice," she said. "You're a landlord, so all you know is the offer. Is that offer okay to you? Fifteen hundred down. Eleven hundred a month."

"Uhh, I think I said thirteen hundred a month."

"Eleven fifty a month."

"Thirteen..."

"Eleven seventy-five a month."

"Uhh...okay."

"Great. Then let's get breakfast. I'll pay, since I know you're a fucking asshole about that."

VIII.

The money wasn't actually enough to justify taking a roommate who’d ruin his romantic life. But Mona knew that. And it was an up-tick from what she'd paid him before, which was nothing! The idea that she might, even temporarily, give him money was just so insane. This is definitely how people get scammed—he knew that—and the fact was, he was pretty certain Mona couldn't pass, like, a credit check. This girl didn't have credit! But with her around, he couldn't really...he just couldn't think. Couldn't think it through. Like it probably made no sense, right?

"Okay so I'm gonna tell Ned not to come," Mona said. "You have my money. We'll draw up a lease or something, but I'm telling him not to come.”

"Umm, wait..." He looked at her. "You've probably already texted him, huh. Then never mind..."

"It doesn't matter what I texted him. You tell me what you're trying to say."

"Just...I should be able to give thirty days notice too. Like, I'm just agreeing for thirty days."

"Thirty days? No," she said. "Year-long lease."

"I...I can't do that," Jack said. "Like I can't kick you out for a year? No way."

"Hmm," she said. "Three months."

"That's how long you think it'll take?"

"What?" Mona said. "Take what? For me to find a job?"

"No you're not gonna work! That's how long you think it'll take, I mean, for you to convince me to marry you?"

"Hmm," Mona said. "No. That's just how long I want to stay here without having to think of the next thing."

"I don't believe you are going to pay me eleven hundred and seventy-five dollars in thirty days," he said. "So to me, this money you've given me is the only money I'll ever have from you."

"Fair," she said. "Three months lease. Or I'm going with Ned."

"So you haven't texted him yet? He's still coming?"

"Doesn't matter," she said. "Three months, and my promise that I will pay you in thirty days from today. My promise that I will pay you in full for every month. And that if I can't pay, I'll just go—disappear—no traces."

"No," Jack said. "No deal. I want at least some notice if you're leaving."

"So you want me to know thirty days in advance if I'll have money for you? How can I know that?"

"I don't know. People do usually know these things! But...those are my terms."

"Okay...okay," she said. "Let's write them up. Get out that phone. Text them to me."

"You know leases..."

"I know leases don't get texted, asshole," she said. "But I trust you, and I want a picture at least, so you know what you agreed to!"

They spent the next thirty minutes wrangling over the details. When he asked Mona if she needed to talk to the other guy, she said, "No, no, he was definitely real. But...it wasn't...like...he wasn't actually in his car or anything. Fuck that guy!"

"Yeah...okay," Jack said. He'd spent about half his morning negotiating this extremely silly deal, but...what else was he gonna do today? He didn't think any of it would actually hold together. He was pretty sure all he'd agreed to was that Mona was now his girlfriend. That this fifteen hundred dollars security deposit somehow symbolized her trust in their relationship.

But then they got home, and she said, "Well...thanks." And she went upstairs, and she locked the guest-room door.

IX

It was a very strange experience having Mona in his house, but not...available to him. Like, not catering to him in any way.

Now it was the middle of a Thursday, and he had fifteen hundred dollars he hadn't possessed the day before. He was going to put the money into his safe, but he couldn't remember if Mona had the combination—and he also couldn't trust himself to change the combination to something he could actually remember.

So he went out to his bank, which had been his uncle's bank too, where his uncle had known all the managers. And he said, "Can I deposit this money?"

Then he spent a few hours downloading a lease, filling it out, giving this deal some kind of shape. His uncle had used to say, "Maybe you can rent out some of the rooms and make a living that way." The rent on the guest-bedroom didn't totally cover it, but he also had this den space right next to the piano. He could put up walls: it was a pretty good bedroom. He started doing calculations: one thousand for the den, eleven seventy-five for the guest room, and two thousand for the basement. Well...that was starting to look like some serious money.

Obviously, it’d take some effort to make some of those things happen. Like, he texted Alvaro about renting the den area, but he seemed hesitant, Oh yeah, living with you would be amazing! But I'm trying to really save up money...

Jack wrote: You'd be paying me just what you're paying your parents now.

Well yeah, but that den isn't really a bedroom.

Okay, so I'll make it a bedroom.

Yeah...

Jack was impressed by how hard-headed Alvaro was being. He'd thought the guy was just a nerd, could be bullied into taking a bad deal—or, not bullied exactly—okay, well yes it'd been bullying, but he could only admit this to himself now that the attempt had failed.

Anyway, Jack spent a fair amount of time on these calculations over the next day or so.

Meanwhile, Mona mostly wasn't in her room. They really were like roommates, the two of them. The next night she waved goodbye and went out, all dressed up. He thought about taking LSD, but didn't want to be up all night, so he just drank instead, activating one of his morose subroutines. But he didn't contact Cynthia. Because...she would probably just appear! Like, she'd come over, and they'd have sex, and then she'd rightfully say, what the fuck is going on with you and this girl, Mona—this is messy as hell. Cynthia wouldn't want any piece of that.

He'd more or less understood, and he assumed Mona understood it too—that when he agreed to let her stay, he was choosing her over Cynthia.

When he tried to explain all this stuff to Alvaro, the man said, "It sounds like you have a lot of expectations and stuff. Have you talked to Mona about that?"

"No."

"Like, maybe she doesn't see you the same way. Maybe she's looking to get a new start in life."

"Alvaro," Jack said. "I love you. And these are definitely words I could imagine a dumbass saying to me in this situation. But...I don't know how to explain this to you..."

The two of them were at Alvaro's place, and it was late on Friday night. They were drinking liquor and red bull. They'd started off playing video games, but by now their coordination was so bad that they could barely stand.

"I don't know how to explain this to you," Jack said. And who knows how much of this he was actually conveying in words, versus just what he thought he was saying. "But I know Mona. I know you love her. I know you worship her. But...she does not want to work for a living. And I am the same way. We just do not want to work! But Mona doesn't have any money. She didn't go to college. I think she graduated high school, but it's not like I've ever asked. She has family in Vallejo. That's like the end of the earth! She’s definitely not going back there. Mona came here maybe a year ago, and she's just never really had to leave since. She could've found some guy who would support her, maybe, but she didn't want to be tied down. She's definitely not a hooker or a stripper, because those things would be work! They'd be labor! She just wants to leave things undefined, because she doesn’t actually want to think about the future. There is no way that this girl is going to keep paying me eleven hundred and seventy-five dollars, month after month after month. I know you want to believe that'll happen. But she knows it's not gonna happen. And she knows that I know it! I just want to see what'll happen instead of that. I mean maybe she'll just take advantage of me and bring people over and trash the place and she'll basically dare me to kick her out, but...there's a good chance I'd do it! Like...what? Is she gonna take me to court for evicting her? I have her money! She gave this money! Why? To what end? That's the crazy thing!"

"She's really in your head."

"Oh yeah...she's way inside there. Way inside."

"Maybe she's just...trying to turn her life around or something. Like...maybe she just wants somewhere to live."

"That's totally possible. Or maybe she doesn't even know? It’s so confusing!"

"Maybe you should, like...figure that out."

"I guess that's what I have to do. Like, figure out her intentions, to the extent she has any..."

How much of this was actually a conversation with Alvaro versus just totally in his head was not something Jack could say. Alvaro was the only person who really knew how Jack thought about things, but Alvaro was so...well, you want to use the word 'square'. But that obviously wasn't true—Alvaro was like an incel, but not that angry. Maybe he was genuinely asexual, though from the way he looked at Mona this seemed highly unlikely. Jack would've liked to believe that Alvaro just never thought of himself at all—however Jack knew this was also a convenient fiction that allowed him to avoid thinking too hard about what Alvaro might want or need from this life.

X.

As the weeks spun out, Jack saw that the drama he'd fomented with Cynthia and Mona was really only a distraction. He wouldn't go broke in the immediate future. His situation was pretty unstable, but only in a medium-term frame. And probably that was true of everyone! Who really knew what they’d be doing in a year or two anyway? Really, his own obsession with securing his future, with pinning down Cynthia, that was just a nesting instinct. Same as for anyone else—he was done fucking around. He wanted security.

But...he just thought he could do a little bit better than being Cynthia's slacker husband.

Which was always the truth wasn't it? You always thought you could do better. At some point you just looked around at the available options and were like, I cannot actually do better! This is exactly what I am!

Obviously he didn’t actually want to be supported. He didn’t want to be a deadbeat who was too good to work, who lived forever off the estate he conned out of his dead gay uncle. What he would like was to feel some kind of love for either of these two women. To feel like whatever sacrifices he made on their behalf would be...somehow meaningful in themselves? He wanted to want to care about any of it! He was pretty sure that romantic love would provide some kind of meaning and motivation. And he felt himself being willing to love.

But not Cynthia. Fuck that bitch.

The thought came to him suddenly. Fuck that bitch. He was angry with her. She abandoned him. She left him alone in this fucking house. She was setting boundaries with him—fine. Great. But she was not that interested in his emotional life. And, frankly, she didn’t really seem to need him. You know what? He could justify it to himself, but...he just didn’t want to be with her. With her it would actually be transactional. Just for the money. Like, he didn’t know when it became transaction and when it became love. He was pretty sure most relationships were a mix of both. But you did need love to predominate, and with him and Cynthia, it didn't.

With Mona, he didn't know. Too many unknowns. Like...did she actually want to settle down? She might think she wanted to, but he had a hard time imagining she did. Not to mention—there was no way they could have a life together where neither of them worked.

The weird thing was...he'd heard jokes about pimps. And he was pretty sure this was how it happened. Someone like Mona would never have sex for money just on her own behalf, but she might if she thought it was helping him.

Like, he could definitely imagine a scenario where he maneuvered her into having sex for money, and then giving him the money.

It would not be particularly difficult, he thought. It depended on the long game. What would happen on the first of the month. This was kind of how capitalism worked, right? Jack had put Mona into a situation where, no matter what she said, he knew she couldn't pay. That's the thing, he knew she couldn't pay! So...how was she gonna make money fast?

She probably wouldn't do it just because rent was due. But what if he started telling her about how his house has all these expenses, and how Cynthia was really gonna bail him out, and now Cynthia is gone because he took a chance on Mona.

Obviously he'd need to be really subtle about it. He'd have to slowly play her, over the course of several months, and maybe in the end neither of them would fully admit that he was her pimp—maybe she'd even see it as an empowered relationship. Like...she was a sex worker. He was her manager. They owned this house together. She had this great life, that she could afford by having sex for money. His role would be laundering this relationship, performing some emotional labor, pretending to people on the outside that it was normal.

There were infinitely many variations on this, depending on how much plausible deniability they both wanted, but they’d all amount to the same thing: she'd have sex with other men and give him the money. All he needed was to make it happen.

One morning he was sitting in his living room, hungover, drinking a bloody mary.

"Hey," she said. "Don't just keep drinking. You've gotta stop drinking."

He blinked. She hadn't been around much lately. Normally she just hopped out the door and barely said hi to him.

"I don't mean stop forever," she said. "Just...for today. For a bit."

"Oh yeah?"

"You're a mess!" she said. "Talking to Alvaro about how I, me, Mona, can't make rent. Look at you! You're drunk in the middle of the day on a fucking Tuesday. What're you doing?"

"It's a point," he said. "It's capitalism, I guess. I own...yeah, you know..."

"Yeah," she said. "Okay. So...am I drinking with you or what?"

They spent the day drinking together. The day wasn't that warm, so they went out to the library, where they snuck nips from a quart of Jim Beam until they got scolded for the third time by the harassed librarian who told them, essentially, you guys are too good for this! Or, rather, you aren't homeless enough to act like this! If you have money, please do this somewhere else.

"What counts as having money though?" he said. "I just don't know...I really don't know..."

Mona had hatched a plan that the three of them should go to the beach. Three because they needed Alvaro, of course, to drive. They'd go to the beach and make a bonfire. And she'd find some girl, some nice girl for Alvaro. Not tonight, someday though. He was such a beautiful guy. “I'd fuck him,” she said.

"No you wouldn't," he said.

"I would. You don't know me. I would. I'd fuck him tonight."

Oh...and that's how it would go. You could play it a lot of different ways, but basically she fucks Alvaro, and the next day Jack gives her some money (maybe even enough to pay her next month's rent), and she's offended, and he's like, "What! That's what Alvaro paid me!" And there's just this big coarsening effect, because she did genuinely like Alvaro and had maybe on some level considered him a prospect, because Alvaro did actually have a job, and she liked spending time with him, so he was better than nothing.

Jack went out to the beach with her, but he was so deep inside his head that he couldn’t really think of what to say. And then, suddenly, he was pinned down underneath her on the beach, and she was saying, "What? Why are you so sad! Come on, Jack. What made you so sad!"

"Just...it wasn't good to do."

"What? What wasn't good?"

"It wasn't good," he said. "To put me in the position where you were asking me to trust you. And...you haven't actually gotten a job, you haven't done anything to save money for next month."

"I'll do it!" she said. "I've got it. Fuck you, we're having fun!"

"But...you don't got it," he said. "And you're not thinking. And it's two weeks left, and it's not that easy to get a thousand dollars! Like, what is your plan?"

"I dunno, I have a friend who said I could pick up shifts at—"

"Mona! You haven't even walked into this place yet, and they're gonna pay a thousand dollars by two weeks from now?"

"I'll get it."

"Mona, your plan is to just have sex for money," he said.

Her face went slack. Then she pulled herself upright—the two of them were on a blanket (not their blanket certainly, though nobody else was around). But she didn't rush off or get mad. They were alone out here, with just the waves and the rushing wind for company.

"Well, what?" she said. "What am I supposed to say?"

"I just...I'm kind of curious about the details?"

The plan was very well-thought-out. She had a contact with an escort agency. There was a client booked for a week from now. She'd obviously thought about this for a long time. He didn't totally know if she would've gone through with it, but if he'd put more pressure, given her more plausible deniability, she probably would have.

"Alvaro flat-out didn't believe this."

"You told Alvaro!"

"I mean I told him you had no way of coming up with this money. He didn't believe me. He said you'd never lie to me."

"So you didn't tell him you thought—this stuff about me doing—because I've never done that before!"

Jack didn't totally believe that. But he definitely believed there was a version of reality where that was true. Which was to say, there was a story about that $1500 where she'd slept with guys to get it, and a story where she hadn't. And both of those stories might describe the exact same events, but...the interpretation was a bit different.

"So...what?" he said. "What now?"

"What do you mean?" she said. "So I do it. And then I give you the money, and you're fucking happy because that's our deal, asshole."

"Well yeah," Jack said. "Sure. I mean...yeah. Look, if you wanted to do that, you could make so much money, Mona. You could be so rich, you know that. I don't know how long it'd last, but who cares? Ten years of fun, then you're dead. You wouldn't need me along at all! You could stay with me a few months, save up money for a deposit, go out and find a real apartment. Get an accountant, pay taxes, have social security when you're done. There's a whole path, I bet. But...isn't there something else we could do?"

"Well...you could get a job!" she said.

"And you'd be...what? My girlfriend?"

"Lot of guys would love that," she said.

"But...I mean...what would you do all day? You'd just fuck other men. I mean, how could you not? You're so hot!"

"Huh..." she said. "I dunno. That's tough for you. I guess you don't really...you don't really make enough money, huh? Like...make enough..."

"Yeah, not enough to the point where some other guy couldn't make you a better offer. Which he would at some point!"

"But what if I want an offer from you?" she said.

"Well yeah, but...I dunno. I'd want more from you. Maybe it's not fair, but I just need more."

"More than the twelve hundred dollars?"

"Eleven seventy-five," he said. "But...yeah. I just...I dunno. If having sex with guys for money is the plan, then...no thanks. I'll give my three months notice. You can have the three months, save up something, and then be on your own. I just...no thanks."

"You are an asshole," she said. "What makes you so great? You've got nothing. Just a fucking house."

"Yeah," he said. "Believe me...I know."

But then of course they were still stuck out at the ocean with each other. They could've kept drinking, he supposed. That's likely what would’ve happened even a year earlier. But instead they got up and hunted around, looking for their things. She got a bit panicked, thinking she'd lost her phone, "This never happens! Never!"

"Just relax," he said. "We'll find it."

They retraced their steps. He had his phone, and he used it to call hers. She said hers was probably out of battery. "Oh my god, this never happens," she said. "It never ever happens. It never happens. Did someone take it?"

"Oh it's probably in the car. Let me call Alvaro..." He’d disappeared hours ago, and Jack guessed he must’ve gone home.

They called him, and Jack ordered him out of bed to go search the car, where he duly found her phone. And that of course gave them a good excuse to ask Alvaro to pick them up. Which he did.

"I have to work!" he said.

"I'm sorry," Jack said. "We're sorry. It was important, man. We're sorry. Say you're sorry, Mona. We were having serious relationship talks."

"Oh," Alvaro said. He blinked a few times. "Oh okay."

Jack had the dim awareness that Alvaro wasn't actually happy and asexual or any of that other shit. He was an incel. And they'd probably turned the key in him that would someday lead him to pick up a gun and kill them all. Or maybe not—it was really up to him.

After they’d gotten dropped off at Jack’s house, he and Mona showered, and then they dropped, exhausted, into the same bed.

Jack started laughing.

"What?"

"You really would've fucked Alvaro tonight if I'd been like oh hey that's a great idea."

"Shut up," she said.

"You would've done it, oh my god. Do you think it would've been good for him?"

"I don't know!" she said. "That's why guys like that don't get laid, right? You want to! You really want to! But then you're like...what'll happen if I do? Can I take whatever he does next?"

"Oh no way. No fucking way! Al would go nuts! Can you imagine—if you spent twenty-five years as a lonely virgin, and then the first time it was just...you?"

"I used to fuck virgins!" she said. "I did it all the time. Like one year, I said I'd fuck every virgin I met—it was maybe fifteen guys! But yeah, it was too much. They didn't get it. They wanted more! I don't know—it's a shame. Because I love Alvaro. I'd fuck him like every month, just to keep him happy."

"That's prostitution," Jack said. "That's all it is! You're just describing it again as if you invented it. Oh my god, you are amazing."

"Shut up," she said.

Now it was dawn, and he was looking into her almond eyes, and he had the almost irresistible urge to tell her, Hey don't worry about it, baby. Like, this night, this experience of being with her, over the last eighteen hours, it'd been one of the most exhilarating experiences of his life. He just wanted it to go on forever.

But...it couldn't.

Why not?

She was on top of him.

No, he said.

And then they had sex. Normally when he had sex, it happened for a while, and then it was done. Sometimes maybe it went on for an hour or two? Of time you could conceivably call sex? This was not like that. It went on for...days, he was pretty sure. Like, actual, calendar days. They took substances. There were beatings, chokings, degradation, because that's how things are these days. Most of it, he hoped, wasn't stuff they were totally into—he honestly didn't know what he was into. He felt like before being with Mona, he'd just wanted girls because you want girls. Now he saw it was something more—that some desire of his own, some desire to change the world, or be a new self, could be incarnated in this action.

They were taking a lot of LSD during these two or three days of intercourse, but he came at some point to realize that his own hesitancy, his own feeling of having nothing to give, could be embodied in their sex, and that it was somehow very complementary with her own ravening desire to be wanted and her simultaneous hatred of that desire. For once in his life, he could stop being the cruel, detached guy he thought women wanted and needed him to be, and he could think...well...win me over! Convince me that I actually want this!

And everything came together in that totality—the whole of society and of their monetary relations, the whole of their past, and of their psychic self-worth.

And if I was to describe this to you, well...it'd just look like two people having sex! She was like, "Suck on my clit," and he was like, "I don't know how."

"I'll show you."

And after a few minutes, he slowly took her wrist and pinned it up above her head. He kept her on the edge for a few minutes, and he finally brought her over, and when she was done laughing and crying, suddenly she wanted to go down on him, and now he said, "N—no."

"Come on."

He was revolted by the sight of his own body, so flabby and airless, like a big flightless bird. And instead of forcing him, she looked into his eyes and said, "What're you thinking about?"

Just totally normal things! Nothing special about this at all. But...it worked. It just kept going. And he realized...it doesn't have to stop.

Like this incredible sex would obviously stop, because it was an unrepeatable, once-in-a-lifetime experience. But, corny as may sound, the sex itself was great because...the two of them were great together! Because they trusted each other and loved each other.

And, yeah, he knew it was not supposed to be like that. Great sex was supposed to be reserved for crazy one-off chicks. But in this case he wasn’t even sure he'd ever had great sex before. Nor could he imagine ever having it with someone he wasn't so well-matched with. And yeah if he told anyone about this, it'd sound sappy as hell, but...whatever. He liked her. He just liked her a lot. He wanted to be with her.

XI.

Obviously all the previous considerations still applied. Neither of them wanted to work. And there was a lot of arguing and maneuvering. Finally, he was like, "What's the minimum rent you could pay without doing something...you know...something I wouldn't like."

"Well what wouldn't you like?"

"I don't know...things that would get you in trouble."

"But why should I pay anything when—"

"Just give me a number."

"Three dollars."

"Okay, fine...three dollars."

"Fuck you! Three hundred dollars."

"Great. Let's do that."

"So...what? What now?"

"Now we're like...in a relationship, I guess. You are my girlfriend."

"I am!"

"Yeah of course you are. And you're not having sex with other people. If you have sex with someone else, at send me a break-up text first."

"Fine," she said.

And that's what they did! They just started living. At some point she opened his mail, and she learned about the property taxes being past-due. She started calling up the city, and they told her about these programs to forgive past-due folks, especially if they were living in the place themselves (as opposed to renting it out). She went to these city agencies and came back saying oh but they didn't want to talk to her because she wasn't on the title. Jack was like, "I'm not gonna put you on the title to this house! But you can tell them we're engaged, if that helps."

Apparently it did. She went around to City Hall—his property tax arrears disappeared. She could definitely be conning him, but, you know what? They liked spending time together, they hung out most evenings, they were fairly open with each other. At some point he did start thinking…like what if she left me! She might say, maybe I’m due a piece of this property, just because of what I’ve put in. And she'd be right. She was contributing a lot, and he was doing nothing.

But instead of fighting about it and trying to put her in her place, he cleared out the garage, trying to turn it into a real rental. There were some pretty ugly fights with potential tenants who were horrified he was even showing a place that was so dank and cold and unfinished. And Mona got upset with him about another potential tenant, saying that guy is creepy—I don’t want him sleeping downstairs from me.

She managed to pay Jack the $300 most months, but it was kind of a chancy thing. Like, she always claimed she was gonna work—But she just hated working. She'd try something, and make the money in a few days, and then she'd quit—next week it'd be another scramble to pick up shifts somewhere.

She kept talking about electrolysis or phlebotomy or all these other kinds of work, and finally he said, "Mona, yes, I know that there are jobs out there that people get paid for! And if you wanted to do any of these jobs, I am sure you could. But...do you actually want to do them? Do you want to be jabbing people in the arm?"

"No," she said.

"I totally get that. But can you do something to help me out here? Something that's not just a scheme? Is there something you actually can do?"

Well, she took a few weeks, and she came back to him being like, I want to try being a phlebotomist. The idea seemed so comical to him. Mona jabbing people with needles for a living? But that would be amazing, if she could do it.

She started school for it. She went to school, she stuck with it. They still got drunk all the time, they still took mushrooms, LSD, molly, ketamine, Adderall, even cocaine when they were feeling flush. But...you had to be pretty steady on your feet to jab people with needles. One morning Mona came home in tears, saying, “I was too sick. I shouldn’t’ve been there, it wasn’t safe!” And afterword she said, "I don't think I can drink like that on a day before my classes."

Well he'd seen how that went with Cynthia—how they start being like, oh no you can do your thing, but I just have to be healthy for class in the morning. What the fuck! It turned out he was the problem the whole time. Jesus-fucking-Christ, he had literally done this once before! How had he forgotten? Holy shit! Cynthia had been exactly like Mona! Sure, there were superficial differences, but not enough to matter. She'd been exactly as fun and crazy as Mona, and yeah getting into college had made her a bit more uptight, but mostly she'd just sort of hardened herself against him. At some point she'd realized she was too good for him, and she'd left.

He sat around all day, after this realization, being like, Wow, I am a piece of shit, who just ruins these wonderful girls. Mona will get herself a good fucking phlebotomy job, and she will leave me! She will decide I'm not worth the trouble! And she'll be right. Jesus Christ! I've gotta shape up.

Part of him felt a little betrayed, honestly. Like...Mona was really gonna start working for a living? But he'd put so much pressure on her to do precisely that.

He decided that if he fixed up and rented out the downstairs then probably that'd put him in a better situation and make him look better in Mona’s eyes. But he had no idea how to do that stuff. He didn't know about tools or things. He asked Mona for help, but she said, “Huh, maybe we should leave that for later.”

“Fuck you!” he said.

"I just mean you don't know much about that stuff," she said. "I'm sure you can do it. I just mean...you know?"

So he had to go out and find some man to advise him. Some man who knew stuff about things. An adult man who understood how to fix places up. He had an assortment of male figures to which he could look for advice—lots of people in his family and in Mona's family who'd be only too happy to stick their noses into his business.

He asked Alvaro if he knew about anything, and Alvaro said, "That sounds like a 'you' problem, bro."

So he literally had to go and get that piece of paper on which his uncle had written his last thoughts. The piece of paper he'd been fixated-upon and avoiding four years.

He went to the safe. For a moment he thought the piece of paper was gone, or it'd disintegrated or something. But finally he found the envelope, and he forced himself to fully read the fucking thing.

Dear Jack,

It's been such a joy having you in the house for these last few years. Thank you so much for coming into my life. I am sorry that I abandoned your side of the family—I should have been a bigger part of your life growing up. I wanted to do that, but I didn't know how, or if it would even be welcome, or what it would look like! I really had no idea how to have a relationship with you when I didn't have one with my own sister, who, as I think you know by now, is a huge bitch. She is your mother, and she loves you very much, but she's so difficult. Good luck dealing with that for the next thirty years!

In any case, thank you so much for coming into my life. You will inherit my home and all its contents. I suggest you sell the piano, haul everything else to the dump, and list the house for whatever Leo thinks you can get. Please use the proceeds either for education or for a place of your own that’s to your liking. I would really prefer that you don’t just use it for living expenses.

Leo will help you with selling the house and managing the proceeds. I've told everyone that you're to be my heir, so hopefully they won't be too catty about it. I know you're very sensitive, but please do ask them for help. I've put some numbers on the other side of this sheet, but I've also told them to reach out and be proactive. I’ve been part of a community here in San Francisco for a long time. Some people might be upset that I've willed my property to birth family instead of them—people get so touchy about these things, as you know. But, if I'm being honest...although I love the gals, they are not here. They are not in my home. These are the years when I've had to face the prospect of...maybe being alone. I might find another partner, and I might not. I don't know.

But I just see so much of myself in you. I have no idea if you are gay or not. But I know that regardless of your orientation, you are queer. You are different.

Please know that to be true, Jack. I've seen you try again and again to be like other people, but you are not. You are not like them! Other people want to reduce you, to brutalize you, to make you into some stereotype. Or...they don't want that for you precisely, but somehow they force you into that mold anyway, and it takes all your courage to fight your way out.

Jack, I've gotten calls every month from my horrible sister—your mother—asking why I'm enabling you. And I keep telling her that you are on a journey. Just like I was on a journey.

She tells me We are all on a fucking journey. But that's not true. Forgive me, I don't know how to put this. But when we were young, I always thought your mom was going straight to hell, and that's indeed where she ended up. You are so different. You have so much light. You are so much better than her. I wish that I could convey how different you are from both of your parents. I don't know if these are the right things to say...maybe these aren't the right terms. I don't know the terms, I don't know how to get through to you! I've tried, believe me. Though maybe you haven't noticed. I don't know...I've seen you trying to reach out to me too. Who knows? Who knows? This letter is starting seem very meandering, isn't it? I'll probably tear it up. But wouldn't it be so funny if I died and you found it? I think you'd laugh.

Please, Jack, I wouldn't give you this property if I thought you were going to use it to be unhappy or to be ordinary. Go out and do whatever you want, as long as it's what you really want. I trust you.

XII.

So Jack called the numbers on the back, and he called in these favors with his uncle's grumpy exes (who he'd spent four years ignoring). Leo busted his balls and said he didn't have time for this shit. But Jack turned on the charm, and he apologized, and he offered to put in the effort himself. And when Leo came over, Jack showed up sober and ready. Leo went through, giving him a bunch of different pieces of homework, and Jack took notes. After a few minutes, Leo said, “I’ll come over next weekend with some carpeting. I want you here, sober, ready to help.”

“Okay.”

“Great,” Leo said. “Let’s take it slow.”

Just as Leo was about to leave, Jack said, “Hey, umm, can you take a look at something upstairs?”

“I’m not your handyman.”

“Just…it’s the piano? I…don’t know if it works still or not?”

“The piano! Christ,” Leo said. “I don’t even want to see this.”

But he came upstairs. He looked at it, and he frowned. Then he sat at the bench and played a few keys. “What’s the problem?” he said.

“Does it work?”

“Sure. It’s out of tune, but it works. The finish is still good too.”

Then Leo turned and looked at the stairs, where Mona was standing there in her hospital scrubs. The attempt at respectability seemed a bit much, since she wasn’t working today, but it must’ve made an impact, because Leo visibly exhaled.

She pointed at the piano. “I kept this asshole from putting drinks on it,” Mona said.

“Good,” Leo said. “It’s a good instrument. The secondary market for pianos is shit, but I could maybe help you find a dealer…”

“Oh no, we’re keeping it,” she said.

When Leo texted him later that evening, the man said Looks like someone’s got their hooks into you. Guess it all makes sense now.

And Jack laughed about it later, because, yes, that's exactly what'd happened. Someone got their hooks into him. He could say it was better or more extraordinary than that—that their love was truer than other peoples. He didn't know! Probably there was nothing whatsoever that was special about him and her. But was that really the criteria by which we ought to measure a person? Like...it'd taken him almost thirty years to figure out how to live, and it'd taken all of his grit and gumption and desire, and the process still was only half-way done.

And if it took every single person that much effort, then wasn't that just all the crazier and more extraordinary? But he didn't want to undersell himself—he and Mona were pretty great. Like, he didn't need anyone else to buy into that concept, but he and she both believed, and would keep on quietly believing, that the two of them were not the least bit ordinary.

Afterword

In an ideal world, this story has circulated beyond my initial subscriber list, which means at least a few of you don’t know who I am. I’ve published four novels with traditional presses and had more than sixty short stories in a variety of literary and sci-fi journals. But throughout my career there’ve been other stories—less traditional stories—that I’ve consistently failed to get published. Almost inevitably when I send one of these stories to an agent or editor, they tell me something like, “These are great characters and a decent plot—now you should go out and use them to write a real story.”

Fiction writing in America tends to be very dense, with a lot of focus on visual and tactile detail. But if you look at the history of fiction, that’s not how things have always been. Jane Austen has very few sense details, very few images. If you go back even further, to the Icelandic sagas, the stories are even more stripped down—they’re a strict recitation of dialogue and events, without analysis or direct reporting of thoughts.

Personally, I think the density of modern fiction writing has real consequences for the kinds of stories you’re able to tell, especially at the level of the short story. When you’re required to add so much detail just to sound like a real story, it really limits the flow, slows the pacing, and decreases the number of characters and scenes you can include. As a result, stories tend to be somewhat limited in scope (relative to their length).

Because of these frustrations, I started experimenting with publishing these stripped-down fictions (which I call ‘tales’) on Substack. Most of them are under two thousand words, and they tend to be a mix of fiction, parable, and essay. Often, I use them to illustrate some point about contemporary culture or about the writing world.

At the same time, I don’t think this style needs to be didactic in tone—I think it’s actually very versatile and can be used to tell a variety of stories, in a variety of registers. I’ve been experimenting for some time with writing longer tales that would combine the broader scope of the tale with the specificity and moral ambiguity of traditional fiction. And this is my attempt to do that.

Writing for Substack also allows me to be more uncompromising in my subject matter. In this story, I didn’t need to have a lot of hedging where I was like, “Oh, this is a bad person, who doesn’t think about women using the right terms, and you ought to hate him.” You’re definitely allowed to hate him! But I, personally, do not hate him.

Being uncompromising in that way means I likely couldn’t get this published by a traditional press or literary journal. Certainly there’s no way that my last publisher, Feminist Press, a non-profit associated with CUNY, would publish this story. Like, can you imagine Feminist Press publishing a story about a guy who considers pimping out his girlfriend? The idea is laughable.

Anyway, I think this story is of high literary quality. Certainly I’m excited about the style—it’s the direct outgrowth of twenty years of experiments towards a more flexible, playful writing style. But…I don’t expect you to walk away being like, “I’ve read the next Raymond Carver.” My intention was just to write a story that was entertaining and that would hold your interest. I’ll allow its literary merit to be determined by the ages.

If you enjoyed this story and want to read more of my work, please consider subscribing. I publish critical essays every Tuesday and I publish short tales (usually about a tenth the length of this one) on Thursdays. If you feel the need to give me money, you’re welcome to become a paid subscriber! I keep my prices as low as Substack will allow me to, and every two weeks I put out a paid post that’s usually a bit spicier or more personal in nature.

But really the thing I’d most appreciate is you just…restacking, sharing, forwarding this story. Most short fictions—even those published in, say, the Kenyon Review or Missouri Review—are read by well under a thousand people. At the time of publishing, my email list is already over two thousand people. If enough people share this story, maybe a few thousand other people could read it, and that would, quite frankly, be an immense number for a literary story (particularly one of this length). That’s really the aim. I just want people to read my work, that’s all.

To my existing subscribers, I know this story was quite a bit longer than the usual tale. I hope some of you read it, and I hope the ones who read it actually enjoyed it. Thank you so much for your time, interest, and forbearance.

P.S. I owe a special thank you to

Rose White

for reading and giving comments on a draft of this post.