Summary

In Chapter 1, Marina reflects on the few facts she knows are true from Spinks' life. Walter and Charlotte Spinks were his biological parents, not his adopted ones. He did publish a sci-fi magazine called Pickman's Vault. He wrote the Erotonomicon and became a champion of making literature more wholesome. Marina suspects that Spinks knew of Barlow but probably did not meet him. She believes that Barlow's life in Mexico (one of adventure and homosexual sex) was exactly how Spinks wanted to live, hence the obsession.

Marina attempted to return to her life in Chapter 2, but it was difficult for her to focus on her patients. She began to have a sense of paranoia that somehow Spinks was possessing her, and her therapist wanted to try to get to the bottom of this fear, but Marina felt like...