Selina Outside the Dog’s Ear, the snowfall had worked itself up into a blizzard. Juliette, Parker, and I made it a block and a half before caving to the wind. “It’s freezing,” Parker called over the relentless blast of snowy air, like the steward of the obvious he was. “There,” I yelled back, pointing to a sliver of gold up the block, a window cut into the ground floor of a blurred brick apartment building. As we approached, the light shimmered into detail, revealing a decal curving over the window that read OLD JOHN’S. On the other side: square-paneled ceiling, saddle leather booths. I yanked the door wide, and Parker ushered Juliette inside. Bundled in her coat, she looked like she could have floated away with the wind, like a balloon spun out of wool. The door snapped shut. Everything quieted. We glanced around, breathing hard, our faces chafed red. We stood in an old-fashioned diner. Checkerboard tiles, a glowing drinks menu hovering like a cinema marquee over a small marble counter, menus clad in sweaty faux leather. The place was apocalyptically empty. One bundled-up man nursed a black coffee in a back corner. Christmas jazz whispered over fuzzy speakers, tripping from blue note to blue note. “Three?” said the host, a woman in her early twenties. “Three,” I said. She showed us to a booth, where we shed our layers onto the banquettes. Juliette and Parker took opposite sides of the table.
With the enormous coat piled on the seat beside her, Juliette already looked crowded, so I reluctantly slid in next to Parker. I caught that bittersweet scent. The dots of snow caught in his hair shrank, then melted to nothing. We ordered drinks. Trumpet runs flurried from the speakers, and under the onslaught of wind, the sheet glass windows hummed. “So,” Juliette said, “Ms. Undercover City Critic, did you enjoy the event? Good questions, don’t you think?” “Oh. I mean...” The words caught on the back of my teeth. “Yes?” said Parker. I felt the de ep urge to shove him into a snowbank. “... Yes. They were good questions.” I fashioned a bland smile. “Maybe you missed your true calling as an interviewer.” He exhaled through flared nostrils. Juliette, combing her dampened hair with her fingers, didn’t notice. “Speaking of your calling, Parker, what have you been working on recently? You have a new book due out soon, don’t you?” “Yeah, in February! High and Dry.” “Have you read it, Selina?” Juliette turned her smiling eyes on me. I wondered, yet again, how this had happened. Why had she assumed Parker and I were friends? I’d thought I had a talent for exuding the utter absence of friendship. “Yes,” I said, “I’ve read it.” “She didn’t love it,” said Parker, forcing a valiant laugh. “She, um—she thinks I have a tendency to overwrite.” “Ah,” said Juliette. “Well, the best friends are the ones who will be honest with you. Honest and kind, of course.” I opened my mouth and closed it again. “So true.” Laughter edged Parker’s voice. “Honest and kind. That’s really the key, isn’t it?” “I think I’ll have waffles,” I said. We happened to glance at each other at the same moment, and I fought the instinct to grimace. These booths were too small. Parker’s eyes were full of amusement. I
was close enough to see the freckle in his left iris. At that moment, the waitress arrived with a decaf for me, a chocolate milkshake for Parker, and a glass of house white for Juliette. I ordered my waffles and gulped coffee, burning every square millimeter of my mouth. My eyes watered as we looked back to Juliette. “Tell me: What’s High and Dry about?” she asked, and as Parker sketched the conc ept in a few sentences, she bobbed her head. “I see. I’ll be interested to read it.” Parker’s face went slack. He looked like he’d ascended into heaven. “Wow. Yes. Can I send you a copy?” “Don’t be silly. I’ll preorder it. You can send me a postcard to tuck inside, though.” Juliette spread her napkin in her lap. “Houston bus routes ... where did that come from? Are you from Houston originally?” Parker had just spooned about half a pint of milkshake into his mouth. He made a r epulsive gurgling sound and held his hand over his lips. I sighed. “No. He’s from the Bay Area. Daly City.” A confused flicker of Parker’s dark lashes. He looked my way, nodded. “And Selina? Where are you from?” I took another sip of coffee, feeling self-conscious. In my peripheral vision, Parker’s face was still angled toward me. “A suburb of Minneapolis.” “Really? I don’t catch a Midwest accent.” Juliette tilted her head, her silver-threaded hair brushing her collarbone. “What was it like growing up there, I wonder?” “It encouraged imagination.” Juliette smiled at Parker. “Cryptic, isn’t she?” “Tell me about it,” he said. “You value your privacy,” Juliette said to me. “Yes. Exactly.” “We have that in common. I’ve looked
around online, of course ... It’s interesting, social media, but I think there’s something religious about the urge to confess yourself online. Not for me, ultimately. And I’m very choosy with press, for which I’m sure Coronation despises me.” “What do you tell them?” Parker asked. “When they ask you to do interviews, I mean?” She regarded him with curiosity. “Well, I tell them no.” Parker laughed. “Right. Yeah. I should try that.” I gave him a disbelieving look, but he seemed serious. “You don’t enjoy interviewing?” Juliette asked. “No,” he said. “I think I kind of hate it, actually.” “Do you?” I said before I could stop myself. Parker’s brows furrowed. “Yeah. Why?” “Well,” I said, trying to file the edge off my voice, “press seems to come so naturally to you.” His frown de epened. I knew what he was thinking: Play nice, Selina, this is Juliette Liao. But I hadn’t even meant it as a veiled insult. “I’m serious,” I forced out. “You ... you have a very relaxed manner with press. Like you get along with them.” “Oh.” Parker’s frown faded into confusion. “Well, sure, I like meeting people, but the point of press isn’t to meet people, right? It’s to add something to my books. And I’ve never come out of an interview feeling like I’ve de epened or enriched anything I write.” He stirred his milkshake, the long spoon humming against the glass. “It’s like I go into a fugue state, and then a week later I have to reread what I’ve supposedly said, and it reads like some alien consciousness studied my life and gave an interview in character.” Juliette chortled. I examined Parker’s profile. Maybe he was just playing modest in front of his hero, but for some reason I didn’t think so. I remembered his jogging foot at our festival panel. The way he’d palmed the microphone from one hand to another. An excess of
energy, I’d thought, of enthusiasm. Maybe not. So? I thought, tearing open another sugar packet and snapping it into my coffee. Even if Parker Navarro wasn’t a media vulture, he was still the entitled man who’d demanded I apologize for daring to dislike his books. “Do you ever feel that way after interviews?” Parker asked Juliette. “No, I think our reasoning is quite different. I have no problem with what I say, but I do think excessive exposure distracts from my work.” “Got it,” said Parker. “So you’re like Selina.” I paused with my mug held an inch from my lips. “What?” “That’s why you’re so private, right? Didn’t I read that somewhere?” I hesitated. I didn’t think I’d ever admitted on the record that I thought a highly visible persona distracted from criticism. “Well, yes,” I said eventually, lowering my mug. “With very rare exc eptions, I think reviews are more meaningful when they’re not cluttered up with the reviewer’s biography. In an ideal world I’d be able to clear my background out of the room and focus on the book.” Juliette swirled her wine and sipped. “I don’t envy critics. I would find it extraordinarily difficult to set aside my own taste.” I crossed my arms on the table. “You wouldn’t have to, though. Your taste is still what makes your criticism.” “And what is your taste? What do you like?” “Wow. Hard question. I suppose my favorites tend to be books about people who feel lost, or people undergoing ego death.” “Well, and comedies,” Parker said, looking annoyed. “She likes farces and satires.”
I blinked at him, lost for words. “I’ve read a lot of Selina’s reviews,” Parker added to Juliette. “She wants to look so serious, but she writes about funny books like they reinvented the wheel.” Juliette laughed. “Selina, you’ve been rustled.” “Apparently,” I said. He was right, of course. A book without humor was like a full day without a smile. The night felt dreamlike all of a sudden, the fact that I was sitting here with these two people under a swing trombone cover of “A Holly Jolly Christmas.” “How about this one?” Juliette asked me, circling the point of her index finger in Parker’s direction. “What’s Parker’s style?” Parker’s shoulders tensed. “Well,” I said slowly, “I found out that he likes Anna Kavan, which is a point in his favor.” “Oh, what a wonderful writer,” said Juliette. “I know Ice has been gaining some readership recently.” “Finally,” said Parker. I glanced at him before I knew what I was doing. “There was a good article about Anna Kavan in Harper’s on Monday.” He gave me a startled look. “Oh. Um, I didn’t see it.” A beat of silence. Then the waitress appeared bearing enormous platters of steaming food. “All right! Waffles ... steak frites ... veggie burger.” As she set the burger in front of Parker, he leaned back to accommodate her. When she’d gone, we began to eat, fresh gusts of wind making the window wobble again. I glanced out at the nearly empty street. “Juliette, were you supposed to fly out tomorrow?” “Luckily, no. I’m staying with my sister until the twenty-seventh, just around the corner. But were either of you traveling?”
In the corner of my eye, Parker was watching me again. Warmth tickled my collarbones. I wasn’t ashamed of my life, but I remained acutely aware that it was not a normal life. “No,” I said. “I always stay in the city for the holidays.” I waited to see smugness on Parker’s face. Pathetic, he’d think. Terminally alone, like the woman in his story. Instead I caught fleeting curiosity in his expression. Feeling abruptly uncomfortable, I worked open the silver dispenser and drowned my waffles in syrup. Juliette said, “What about you, Parker? Traveling?” “I’m not sure. I was supposed to fly to San Franscisco to meet up with my family tomorrow morning, but Jet Blue canceled.” “Oh, I’m sorry.” Juliette set down her fork and knife. “What a disappointment.” “It was worth it,” Parker said quickly. “I mean, even if I’d known the storm was coming, I would have stayed for the event.” “Well, I’m glad you feel that way, but I wish it hadn’t compromised your plans.” “Yeah.” Parker picked up his burger, but he studied the grease-slick bun without biting into it. “What is it?” Juliette asked gently. “Oh, no, it’s nothing. I mean—” Parker’s eyes strayed to me. I sawed into my waffles and fixed my gaze downward, but it was impossible not to listen. “I just have a big family,” he told Juliette. “They, um—there are always a lot of moving parts.” “Ah,” said Juliette, “that sounds familiar. Worried about the chaos?” “A little.” We ate without speaking for a moment, our cutlery chiming
softly against the ceramic plates. Then he said, “But I guess it wouldn’t be family without something being kind of broken. Like you wrote about the family in your book. The longest uncompleted project of their lives, right?” Something warm darted down my back. I k ept eating. Juliette hadn’t written that phrase in House Hearth Home. I had, in my review of it. There was no reason to feel wrong-footed by this. Nothing was stopping Parker from continuing to read my criticism. It was discomfiting, though, to hear him recite my words that way, quiet and pensive. Even more so for him to misattribute them to one of his favorite writers. Juliette was chewing, clearly trying to remember when she’d written that particular line, but Parker, looking out the window, hadn’t realized. “I wonder what they’re doing now,” he said, sounding far away. I examined the compartments of my waffle, each glossy meniscus in each little cup of syrup. His strained words reached a remote, unfamiliar place in me. I wondered whether my parents had bought a Christmas tree this year, and whether they were planning to have Christmas dinner with the Zhous, an elderly couple who r epresented the other fifty percent of Chinese people in our neighborhood. I wondered if my parents had thought about me as often as I’d thought of them these past weeks. I wondered why I felt so afraid. “Isn’t it beautiful?” said Juliette, smiling out at the glittering snowfall, and for a while we sat there, unspeaking, watching the road turn cream under the streetlights, like an empty page. Parker and I should have taken the same train toward Brooklyn—he was a few miles north of Bed-Stuy, in Greenpoint—but once we’d all said
goodbye inside the restaurant door, he said, “I should deal with this,” gesturing with his phone. As I rode the subway home, I pulled up my father’s email for the hundredth time. Xiao Yan—We are sorry to hear about the fight ... Parker’s discomfort in speaking about his family had been oddly reassuring. Of course my own family wasn’t normal, the financial rupture, the years of resentment, but I didn’t have many points of reference for “normal.” Jacob and Cassie both hailed from perfect nuclear families who, every Christmas, pooled their resources to rent an enormous house in Vermont and spent a week in unrealistically photogenic happiness. I pressed R eply. Hi Dad, I apologize for my late response. I’ve been collecting my thoughts, but I appreciate your reaching out again. I thought of you and Mom over Thanksgiving. The ongoing argument with Parker Navarro has obviously r epresented a great deal of upheaval for my usual routine, but I’ve been handling the aftermath by working with City’s editor and our r epresentative at the parent company. I’m happy to say that this exposure has wound up being a positive for the magazine. My personal feelings, while complicated, don’t matter in comparison. In any case, rest assured that I’m doing well. Wishing you both a happy Christmas. I hit Send. I returned my phone to my pocket. I blinked back the burn in my eyes and rested my head against the vibrating subway window. My feelings were agitated, but as I thought of a soft piano rendition of “Silver Bells” and being shielded from whipping wind by thick glass, the taste of syrup on my tongue, my heartbeat slowed. I saw
the sway of Juliette’s earrings, the way she smiled at me as though there were nothing wrong with me, though, of course, she didn’t know me. And Parker, condensation trickling down his glass into his folded fingers, the instant of curiosity on his perpetually unguarded expression. This from someone who knew, at least a little, what I was. I found myself holding to that. I held on for minutes. Then the conductor announced my station, and I went back home to my life.