“—but I have money of my own.” She has twenty-three dollars in a wallet someplace, and—what’s the date?—at the first of the month, a princely sum even by San Francisco standards, rent-free obviously, that nonetheless always peters out. She tips big, or, more accurately, forgets her cash on the counters of bars. Her credit digits are zipped tight into these phones the Vic keeps giving her—the newest rectangles, shined up in cases that look like riot gear—so cash is the only way, probably, that she buys things that the Vic doesn’t know about. The spending is harder to sneak than the case of wine, behind the forgotten Italian motorcycle with its dusty, ghosty helmet in the second garage. Eventually everything, everyone, can become ordinary. He pauses in the doorway, a famous person, and blows her a kiss like an ad. It makes her feel famous too. She listens to him unlocking the car with a signal from his phone. Her phone can do that too, at least the last one did, if she had a car. It’s not feeling famous in a good way, if there’s a good way to feel famous. “Kitsune School makes me feel famous,” is in fact the slogan of the Vic’s school, chartered or founded under the education umbrella of the pile of companies, the lingering influence of dead Maureen. It’s something one of the kids said, the Vic had a few quotes he showed Padgett over gin and tonics (four for her, sort of one for him) and she chose the famous one. Later, over dinner with two spectacled tech guys whose partnership was professional or romantic or both, the Vic had referred to her as a consultant.

Kitsune spits up on Padgett’s shoulder. Padgett sympathizes but puts Kitsune down anyway, safely on the carpet in the room. What is this room, really? It’d had an exercise bike, a very new model, but it’s gone. Silly bookshelves, so modern they’re just hyphens on the wall, two tables with sharp corners that will bruise you in a drunken stumble, and doesn’t Padgett know it. Two vases from Mexico or wherever, or maybe not vases. She scours the room for a target, a hook to hang her somewhat rage. She’s always looking for this around here.