My mother was tired of me biting my sister, Ismene said, and perhaps because she thought I didn’t understand biting hurts other people, she bit me in the face, leaving a mark that was embarrassing to explain at school — I like not being seen, Ophelia said, that’s why I volunteer at Lighthouse for the Blind — my parents escaped from Laos and spent ten years in a refugee camp in Thailand, Joanna said, and you could tell which members of our family had been born into the camp because they were much shorter due to the food rationing (Joanna told Antonio her grandmother still helps North Koreans escape to Thailand by guiding them through the same trails her parents used to escape, so he asked her to please describe those trails to him, but she had been too little to remember them so he has come to imagine them as the insides of anthills or the dark subterranean passages for birds in the Seuss books he reads to his daughters — Joanna grew up in Kansas, Antonio writes, where she learned about the Flying Spaghetti Monster — dear Flying Spaghetti Monster who definitely exists — Joanna is a marine biologist, Antonio writes, and because of her autoimmune disease she approached our arrangement with abandon, as if sleeping with an unpublished older novelist had been on her do-before-death list—), and as Antonio rereads the few fragments he has managed to jot down from his arrangements so far (most mornings like this morning he’s too depleted from his arrangements or from soccer to thoroughly document his arrangements so most memories of them have already vanished from him), he receives a YSA message from Goth Raver, who wants to know if he would like to meet her tonight, and although she does look like a goth raver into psychedelics and bondage, and although it’s probably a bad sign that she’s not college verified and she has contacted him first even though he has no public photos and she hasn’t requested access to his private photos (Antonio likes to believe he has become an expert at filtering arrangements by their photos (if photo = too naked, delete indicator = 1) and by their messages (if first message = I know what I’m worth my exact compensation requirements are $$$, delete indicator = 1)), but of course his filtering system doesn’t always perform as coded, or it does but he makes concessions if that week he has no new arrangements in the queue (an arrangement who’d failed both the photo and message filters but was too striking to skip told him she’d been arrested by a policeman who’d posed as an SD so before entering Antonio’s apartment complex she asked him if he was with law enforcement because according to her if you are with law enforcement you can’t say you aren’t), or he’ll make concessions if on the same morning he receives a message from both Goth Raver asking him if he would like to be her SD and Ron the Bail Bondsman informing him the private investigator has found his sister in a jail in Milwaukee, and although Antonio would rather exhaust himself at the soccer field tonight, Goth Raver looks so striking in her photos that Antonio agrees to meet her tonight at 9:30 p.m. at Salt Air, and fortunately she looks as striking in person as she does in her photos (unlike his arrangement the previous week who’d claimed to be a poet and a model and turned out to be a tedious tech writer with a cake blog), and so Antonio orders the usual bottle of Cava and the usual tray of oysters and does the usual toast — for not being dead — thinking life is unbelievable and beautiful, unconcerned about the photos with blood coming out of what looks like a knife wound on her chest that she’s sharing with him, unconcerned about her telling him how she’d been approached by a wealthy tech entrepreneur at the San Francisco airport and how he hired her to be his secretary on the spot and of course she knew why he hired her but she was not going to give him what he wanted, and as usual a black car transports them to The Other Home, where she undoes the white ankle straps of her stilettos and places them on his windowsill, which surprises him because most arrangements who come with stilettos know to leave them on, not that he minds how on the windowsill the stilettos are facing each other like spectators who are too shy to look toward his bed, where he’s pecking her feet with his lips, suppressing an impulse to bite her calves because he’s too drunk for the right calculus of teeth, rubbing his cheek on her black leather miniskirt as if putting himself to sleep — goodnight cow under the moon — osculating her thighs that even in the dark he can see have glitter and bruises on them (he will have to make sure there’s no glitter on his face tomorrow morning — why is your face sparkly, Tata — no it isn’t did you see that platypus over there?—), but as they entangle each other further, outstretched on his bed, his hands on her legs, her breath on his neck — the sea / the sea — she jumps up and informs him she needs to use the bathroom, where she stays for too long, and when at last she’s done he hears her opening his file cabinets in the kitchen but he doesn’t rush to ask her what does she think she’s doing because that might sour their arrangement, and when she returns to the living room she’s holding the card that says I am sorry you hurt your foot Tata and the photo of his daughters and his former wife that he keeps hidden on top of his fridge, a card and a photo she drops on the floor because her hands are jittery, although she doesn’t seem to mind them and of course he’s not going to ask her if she injected herself in his bathroom, motherfucker, she says, as if he’s slighted her somehow, as if someone had pressed a button requesting a pantomime of horror but she didn’t understand the complete instructions, please, Antonio says, calm down, terrified about waking up his neighbors because it’s past midnight and she’s almost screaming that she needs to leave, don’t come near me, motherfucker, she says, even though he’s nowhere near her or making any attempt to come near her, order me a car now, she says, and so he, dumbfounded, orders her a car, and she, dredging up more bile, curses at him and conducts an uneven performance of storming out, returning to pick up her stilettos from the windowsill and concluding her uneven performance of storming out, but it isn’t over yet because she’s still downstairs, screaming so much that Antonio, three floors up, can hear her, so he rushes downstairs and she screams where is my car, motherfucker, please, Antonio says, it’s coming, showing her the screen of his phone, which he’s holding with both hands in case she tries to snatch it from him, and the trajectory of the Prius on the screen culminates with the Prius picking up this barefoot pantomime of horror, and fortunately there are no neighbors carping at him from their windows, or at least he can’t see any of them, but unfortunately it isn’t over yet because at 5:30 a.m. she sends him a YSA message saying unless you bring me five thousand dollars by noon I am contacting your wife, who I’m sure will be thrilled to receive screenshots of your YSA profile and photos of me in your foul bathroom, so here it is then, Antonio thinks, at last my turn has come — I don’t want to listen to your family constellations conjectures right now — if a family member is ejected from the family system — I’m not your intergenerational if / then puppet — I’ve always despised plot, Grace Paley says, the absolute line between two points, not for literary reasons but because it takes all hope away — unfortunately my son is not giving himself the opportunity and prefers to follow the path of his father — but I’ve done nothing wrong, Antonio thinks, unwilling to give in, moreover, I could press charges for extortion, and yet despite having done nothing wrong, if Goth Raver contacts his former wife, his so-called stable family life will be upended, for how will he explain to her the existence of Goth Raver from Your Sugar Arrangements, and so Antonio calls Nicolas, his one college friend, a wealthy Chilean who’s also a member of Your Sugar Arrangements but in New York, explaining the Goth Raver backstory and asking him for the name of an attorney, verga, Nicolas says, that’s heavy, but how would she even contact Ida did you like lend that raver your phone or tell her your real name, she was going through my stuff and maybe she found my name on one of my utility bills in the kitchen or maybe she did a reverse photo search online, Antonio says, mira, Nicolas says, my friend is an immigration attorney but what you need is a criminal attorney let me ask my friend for a referral but text me a photo of Goth Raver or no deal ha ha, and while Antonio waits for a referral from Nicolas, Antonio tries to contain his panic because it’s 9:30 a.m. already — breathe, motherfucker — no, he will not wait for Nicolas, who has always been unreliable in any case, he will search online for a criminal attorney with good reviews, and once he finds one that can see him at 10:30 a.m., he cancels his meetings at Prudential Investments and rushes to meet this random criminal attorney he found on the internet, are you sure you didn’t do anything to her, the criminal attorney says, you have to trust me and tell me the truth or I can’t help you, nothing, Antonio says, showing the criminal attorney her photos and her messages, Goth Raver, the criminal attorney says, examining her photos as if they were assignments from a class on American pornography, I know, Antonio says, has she contacted you again, the criminal attorney says, yes she texted me at 9:45 a.m., Antonio says, showing him a message that says I know you read my message on the site if you don’t deliver the money by noon expect to see me and my boyfriend at your doorstep, and so what I want to know, Antonio says, is whether I should press charges for extortion before she contacts Ida or wait to see if she’s bluffing, and clearly the random criminal attorney from the internet doesn’t know the answer because he says let me check with my colleagues, calling one colleague, two colleagues, okay, the criminal attorney says, we don’t want to alert the police since she might be bluffing, so don’t press charges, stay put, print her photos and messages, place them in a folder with a note I will write for you and carry this folder with you at all times, pay me two thousand now and two thousand later, that way you’re protected if she contacts your family or if the police have to get involved, but Antonio decides to wait before signing any contracts because Nicolas has finally messaged him a referral, and so he leaves the office of the random criminal attorney from the internet and calls Nicolas’s referral, explains the extortion backstory, and the referral says she’s too busy for his case so she refers him to another criminal attorney, who has time to meet him in two days, meanwhile, the random criminal attorney from the internet messages him to say on second thought I need the full four thousand now, which confirms Antonio’s suspicions that the random criminal attorney from the internet is trying to scam him, meanwhile, back at his desk at Prudential Investments, it’s 12:00 already, 12:05, 12:10, but his phone doesn’t ring, 1:30, 1:45, but he receives no YSA messages from Goth Raver, no texts, but what if Goth Raver and her boyfriend are already waiting outside my apartment, Antonio thinks, so that night he decides to sleep at the apartment where his daughters live, as he’s allowed to do three times a week at most, standing by the window of his former wife’s bedroom to check if there’s any strange cars outside his apartment, three doors down, why are you standing by the window, Tata, Ada says, I am waiting for the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Antonio says, let’s play Monster, Ada says, who can tell me which Dr. Seuss book contains underground tunnels for birds, Antonio says, oh I know, Ada says, running to the living room and returning with I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew, which he has read to Ada and Eva many times before, read it, Tata, Eva says, I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew by Sandra Boynton, Antonio says, come on, Tata, I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew by Dr. Seuss, I was real happy and carefree and young and I lived in a place called the Valley of Vung, Antonio reads, and nothing, not anything ever went wrong, is he a cat, Tata, Eva says, an invented Seuss creature I think, Antonio says, he looks like a cat, Eva says, no kitten around, Ada says, and the Seuss kitten escapes from the Poozers by jumping into Vent #5, well, that vent where he went was sort of a funnel, Antonio reads, that led him down into a frightful black tunnel, with billions of absurd birds clogging the tunnel with tubas, skateboards, cactus, look, Tata, Eva says, the fish from The Cat in the Hat, I was down there three days in that bird-filled-up place, Antonio reads, and the next day Antonio avoids his apartment again, unable to sleep because what if his former wife receives a message from Goth Raver and decides he shouldn’t be allowed to see his daughters again or what if his daughters open his backpack and unearth the Goth Raver Extortion folder he has been carrying with him at all times, until at last he’s sitting in front of the criminal attorney referred to him by Nicolas’s referral, I represent thieves, he says, arsonists, murderers, what the hell are you doing here, so Antonio shares the Goth Raver backstory and hands him the folder, Goth Raver, he says, examining her photos as if they’re part of an art project he’s expected to admire (he does), I know, Antonio says, I hear about these scammers on these sugar daddy websites all the time have you heard from her again, he says, no, Antonio says, and you won’t, he says, if you haven’t heard from her by now you won’t hear from her, there’s nothing for me to do here, be more careful next time, don’t take them to your apartment because if they see you have a nice apartment they will be more tempted to scam you — my extra-small studio apartment is a filthy nook, Antonio doesn’t say — and make sure they’re over eighteen because I’ve encountered cases where they organize group sex sessions and sneak in an underage girl for extortion purposes as well, now get the hell out of my office, the criminal attorney says, handing back Antonio’s folder, I have criminals to represent, and so Antonio exits the criminal attorney’s office, wondering where he should hide the folder he has been carrying at all times, and how long he should keep it (just in case), and whether he will keep his promise to quit his beloved website later today (perhaps tomorrow?).