I refresh my Gmail and check my DMs to see if I have any requests for readings. Nada. So I post an ad for chart readings on my Instagram page, which normally opens the floodgates. My rent is $750 a month, a major steal thanks to ten-plus years in a rent-controlled apartment, so I need to do only four readings to make rent. I am starting to relax. I can do this. I’ll cut down on expenses. No spending money at Mirror Box. I won’t buy weed; I’ll just smoke Thomas’s. I will eat very little and lose a lot of weight. Maybe I’ll get so thin I’ll be discovered on the street and cast in a movie, just like I was discovered on that playground. I take a deep breath. Things are going to be okay. Ever since I saw Beau’s birth chart, I’ve been convinced the universe is looking out for me.

The only expense I won’t give up is my three-dollar daily coffee from Subtropical. I need to go to keep an eye out for Beau, and I once watched a hot waiter kick someone out for not ordering anything. Also, the exercise is doing my body good. I am starting to feel less tired all the time. My skin is getting some color. And I’ve been more creative; my followers are steadily climbing again.

I grab my headphones and laptop and start walking to Subtropical. Hopefully by the time I get there, I will have some reading requests. On the walk, I listen to Precious Starlets.

Hazel booked an off-Broadway play, something written by a Mamet. She is blasé about the whole thing, despite, according to earlier episodes, being cast in a Mamet play was all she ever wanted, the only thing that would make her not blasé. I’m reminded that getting what you want isn’t necessarily all that great. Maybe if I booked a Darren Aronofsky movie I would be depressed because it would mean that someone as lame and talentless as me could be cast by a legendary auteur director, and everything I previously believed would be a sham.

I understand where Hazel is coming from, and I’m grateful that she doesn’t pretend to be grateful. Gratitude is for cucks like Thomas, for whom everything is “sick” or “bomb” or “dope.” He has no critical faculties whatsoever. I’m reminded why I didn’t go to college. Thomas has one of the least impressive brains I’ve ever encountered and I’m pretty sure he went to Penn.

Camilla is in a fight with her brother, a communist who lives in a van. She thinks he is a cliché, and he thinks she is being cliché for being a judgmental urbanite. I wish I had a brother with whom I could argue over who is being more cliché.