Selina The City office reopened on January 3, for which I was grateful. In the past two days, I’d checked my phone so often for a r eply from Parker that by the time I went to sle ep on Sunday night, I was fighting off embarrassment. But the next morning, my routine came back to me like a faithful pet. The blare of my alarm, the whining of the subway as I read my way into Manhattan, the bleary welcomes of my City coworkers. I was happier than usual to see Kellie swinging around the doorframe of my office, and to engage in the usual polite script. “Did you have a good break?” I asked. “Spectacular. My partner and I went to Iceland and saw the Northern Lights. I bet it’s the feeling astronauts get when they see Earth from orbit.” She jerked back, eyes wide, as though she’d been caught in a searchlight. “Flattens you. How was break for you?” “Uneventful.” “That’s all I get? You should work for the CIA.” “Conflict of interest. I’m already working for MI6.” Kellie laughed. “That tracks. By the way, Mike told me the anniversary party is black-tie this year.” “What? Why?” “To justify the hundred-and-twenty-dollar tickets, obviously. I’m trying to figure out how to tell Nextward Capital Associates that they don’t pay us enough to expect floor-length gowns.” I smiled. “What?” she said. “Nothing.” I turned back to my computer. “It’s good to be back.” I made my now-routine morning pass through social media. Random House had won a bidding war for a novel imagining the life of Milly
Bloom, the daughter of the main character of Ulysses. A blockbuster romantasy author had been given her own imprint at Bloomsbury. I clicked over to my mentions. @Lola Xu: @Selina Chan Got my hands on this. It’s everything you promised and worse, lol. She’d attached a photo of an advance copy of High and Dry. I winced and hit R eply, but after several minutes of halting beginnings, I still hadn’t found what to write. This was my mistake. I’d stoked Lola’s investment in the situation with Parker, and I’d never responded to that petition in November. I’d assumed my silence would make it clear what my thoughts were, but maybe I should have been explicit that I didn’t consider it a prosecutable offense for a fiction writer to write a piece of fiction. Before I could decide what to say, my phone chimed in my desk drawer. My personal email. I pulled the drawer open and grabbed up my phone—but the email wasn’t from Parker. To: selinachanlikesbooks@gmail. com From: Charles. Chan111@gmail. com Sent: Jan 03, 9:18 AM Subject: Re: Author fight Happy New Year Xiao Yan. Yes we had a very nice Christmas. We used your mother’s i Pad to call your Yeh Yeh. Then Lao Lao and Lao Ye. All healthy. Auntie Sylvia is spending some time in Tianjin until end of CNY. then back to Seattle. All asked after you. We were happy to pass on how you are doing well. But, your mother has been reading the posts you make online recently. Is this really part of your job, to make people so angry? Is it not better to solve arguments in private? We were always afraid of this, in such a negative job. What will happen if you say something you cannot take back? From Dad and Mom.
I read the email twice, feeling as though I were shrinking. In that moment, I was standing on the porch st eps of our house in Minnesota, duffel bag on my shoulder, gathering the courage to ring the doorbell. I was twenty-eight, visiting home for the first time in eight years. I would leave again two days later, promising myself never to return. Yet here I was, somehow surprised. I wondered why I still cared about my parents’ opinion of my work. I felt as though I’d spent my entire adult life waiting for some scrap of validation from them, and that was childish, wasn’t it? To continue to care? Earlier on, their worries about my career had at least made sense. After Columbia, I’d strung my life together on freelance article writing and waiting tables at a French bistro, which combined had me earning $45,000 a year—just about enough to cover my debt payments and Brooklyn’s cost of living. I was paying $750 in rent to live with three roommates in a semi- functional garden apartment in Crown Heights. Not that I ever admitted this to my parents, but my so-called career had felt aimless and frightening then, an ever-turning carousel of rejection—a threat that my mother had been right. But small st epping stones led me through my twenties. At twenty-four, I landed a part-time assistantship at a now-defunct literary magazine called The Long View, and at twenty-five I had my first real break as a critic: I sold an essay to Guernica reviewing a small run of nonfiction books about gun violence. That day, I spent an extravagant twenty-one dollars on a bottle of wine and texted my parents in triumph. Their muted response maddened me. But I could feel the momentum building that year. I found new rhythms in my writing. I finally felt that I’d read enough books to have a real intertextual well to draw from. Several months later I placed a review in Ploughshares, and the following year, when I was
twenty-six, City acc epted one of my freelance pitches for the first time. Soon they added me to their bank of contributors, and when I was twenty-seven, Joyce emailed to tell me that an assistant editor position had opened, and that, if I was interested, she would pass my resume to Scott. My parents and I were in one of our periods of closer contact, then. When I got the job, I texted them with something between joy and spite. I used exclamation points. I had won. I had won; so why, every time I spoke with them, did I still feel so defensive? It was in this state that I’d planned the trip home. In my mind, working for City would fix everything. They’d wanted stability? Here was stability. They’d wanted an impressive career that they could mention to the extended family? Here I was, writing for one of the best magazines in the country. But I arrived home in Minnesota to a barrage of doubts instead. Was I sure this magazine was a safe bet? Was I still living in that tiny, run-down place in Brooklyn? They k ept reading about newspapers shutting down. What if I used these skills to transfer over to something more reliable? It astonished me how they couldn’t admit that they’d been wrong, that I’d done everything I’d meant to. And now, six years later, here was the same relentless quest to poke holes in my life. I read the email a third time. Of course they’d made no acknowledgment of the feud helping City—the main point I’d conveyed in my last email. If I r eplied I would become bitterly angry, I could feel it already. We would fall into this again: that they still couldn’t conceive of the person I’d become, as though they still saw some veil hanging in front of me and, projected onto that veil, a glowing vision of what they could have had.
I was a fool for failing to anticipate this. I never should have taken my father’s call in that bar. I dropped my phone back into the drawer and closed it. Three days since New Year’s, then four. I waited for the anticipation of Parker’s next message to fade, but the feeling stuck in the back of my mind, an unreachable itch, and by the time the weekend arrived, I felt de eply irritated with myself. I’d known that my back-and-forth with Parker had an expiration date: the moment when the people whose company we enjoyed reentered our lives. I hadn’t expected this problem to arise: that I did enjoy Parker Navarro’s company. That, in fact, I found him consistently funny and his opinions continually surprising. That the idea of never learning more about him frustrated me. That Saturday, Jacob and Cassie invited me over for brunch. Usually I could count on these to be calming experiences. Cassie would sing along to Japanese pop music while cutting strawberries, and Jacob would thumb through their bottomless catalog of teas. We’d chat about some movie that Lyra had watched six times on r epeat, or about the interpersonal politics of Cassie’s lab, or about the megalomaniac director at Jacob’s nonprofit, whom Jacob steadfastly described as “not that bad.” This week, I knew the conversation would be different. “So,” said Jacob, the syllable loaded with suggestion, over the rim of his coffee mug. “Jacob,” I said, warning. “No! Details!” Cassie demanded, brandishing a yogurt-covered spoon at me. “How did this happen? What happened?”
“Look. I ran into Parker at Juliette Liao’s event right before Christmas. Juliette insisted on treating us to dinner afterward, which was extremely uncomfortable, but I mentioned an article to Parker about a book we both like, then followed up with a link afterward.” I folded my arms. “We exchanged a couple of emails, and I realized he was alone on New Year’s, which seemed sad. That’s the entire story.” Cassie scoffed. “Well, you left the party together, so it’s not the entire story.” “He walked me to the train, Cassie.” She and Jacob exchanged a sk eptical glance. “What’s with the sk eptical glance,” I said. “Oh, nothing,” said Jacob, lifting Lyra onto his lap. Cassie heaped raspberries into a bowl. “The sk eptical glance, Selina, is because it was cool to see you talking with someone who could ke ep up with you. Like, he didn’t do the rabbit-in-the-headlights face.” “No,” I admitted. “And I’m guessing he didn’t do the thing you hate where people close off a topic by saying ‘Fair.’” “No. Sure. After drinking half our weight in alcohol we were able to carry a conversation. Amazing.” Jacob bounced Lyra gently on his knee. “So ... how many emails is ‘a couple of emails’?” “Like—I don’t know, maybe—” Cassie laughed. “Oh my God. Dude. You are so full of shit. It wasn’t a couple of emails.” “What?” I said, but now I could feel it: My face had flushed. “Fine! Okay. We sent a number of emails. Because he was stranded in the city, Cassie, and everybody besides me was with their families at Christmas.” “Right, so that’s why he was emailing you, supposedly. Why were you emailing him?”
I made an irritated sound and looked out the window, but Cassie wasn’t the one I was annoyed with. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “He thinks I’m a terrible person, remember?” “Didn’t seem like it. Seemed like he was hanging on to everything you said.” I flicked my hand. “He’s an author. Authors do outrageous things in the name of having experiences to r epurpose later. They’re like magpies. Or weird neurotic squirrels. Anyway, since New Year’s, we’ve stopped speaking, which is exactly what I expected.” Cassie sat beside Jacob and set the raspberries and yogurt in the center of the table, looking unconvinced. “What do you mean, ‘stopped speaking’?” “I mean we—” I cast a despairing look upward. This was going to sound so adolescent. “I mean, Cassie, that I texted him, and he didn’t text me back.” “Oh, so you’re texting now! Like normal people! Not just emailing!” “I have literally just told you that we aren’t texting.” She stuck out her hand. “Give me the phone.” Jacob finally broke. “Yeah, okay, I’ve got to see this.” My face burning, I opened our conversation and shoved my phone into Cassie’s hand. “There. Enjoy.” Jacob, grinning, craned his neck to see the screen as Cassie muttered the messages aloud. “Offensive messages, our entire thing ... Selina.” “What?” “There’s nothing here to r eply to. It’s not like you asked him a question. You just, like, made fun of him and didn’t say anything else.” My cheeks warmed. “That’s kind of the way we interact.” “Problematic,” said Jacob. I glowered at him. “You are extravagantly unhelpful.” Jacob chortled and tossed a few raspberries into his mouth. “If you want to ke ep talking, just text him and ask him
something,” said Cassie, handing my phone back. Coming out of her mouth, the suggestion sounded casual and ordinary, which disturbed me, because in my head, the idea of contacting Parker without any pretext felt distinctly uncasual and completely out of the ordinary. It made me feel panicky and defenseless, the way I felt in the doctor’s office rolling up my shirt sleeve for a jab. “Mm,” I said, trying to maintain my composure. “What do you think, Lyra?” Jacob bounced her on his knee again. Lyra looked up at me with solemn eyes and said, “Da.” “Means ‘yes’ in Russian,” said Cassie. “Traitor,” I said to the one-year-old. I arrived at our pitch meeting the following Monday to discover that Hayden had returned. She was sitting in her corner for the first time in a month, her laptop perched on a lapdesk, and when Scott strode into the library, he didn’t address her reappearance. Something about Scott’s demeanor made me uneasy. He was cordial, asking us all how our weekends had been, but his effortful smiles shrank as soon as they’d formed, like elastic dough that couldn’t hold shape. Eventually he lifted one palm toward Hayden and said, “We have some new plans from upstairs.” “Hi, everyone,” said Hayden, still typing. “I hope you all had good holidays. Mine was great ... I went to Italy. Such amazing food!” She finally lifted her eyes from her laptop. “So, exciting news. I’m here to unveil a new content strategy I designed over the New Year.” The library stilled, exc ept for Joyce, picking at the fibers of her cardigan. Beside me, even Kellie had gone stiff, like a hunting dog on the scent.
“Everyone at Nextward agrees that we have some important lessons to learn from fall. Mainly that this magazine benefits from being more up to the moment.” Hayden chopped the side of her hand into her opposite palm. “People want to see City as contemporary and accessible. No elitism, no navel-gazing. So, our new strategy is going to re volve around grabbing more headlines. Getting in on the ground level on anything buzzy or controversial in media. We want your hottest takes. Your edgiest ideas. I’ve already talked to Scott about opening up space in most of your schedules so we can get more coverage on this side of the culture beat.” She turned her laptop outward to show us a spreadsheet. I gazed into the scattering of multicolored cells, then lifted my eyes to Hayden’s relentless smile, feeling farther and farther away from her, as though my chair were being tugged slowly backward through space. No, Hayden and I didn’t like or respect each other, but I’d thought we’d at least understood each other. I’d thought we’d reached an accord: I would play by her rules, and she would not take City Magazine and saw open its surface and gouge out everything inside. Why had I ever believed this? My sudden feeling of naivete startled me. “Sandro”—Hayden turned to Sandro Nuñez, our film and television writer—“I’ve been thinking, like, why aren’t we talking more about big moments in TV and movie news? In December, Marvel announced their first trans superhero. The engagement was out of this world. Huge opportunity to add our voice. Why didn’t we?” Sandro blinked rapidly, at an apparent loss for words. He spent most of his time editing Life Offscreen, our bimonthly interview series with everyone from Hollywood directors to camera crew, an industry mainstay that had been running since the sixties. We used to have more day-to-day
film coverage, but Nextward had fired both of our junior film writers last August, leaving Sandro to manage a stable of freelancers who were paid $150 an article. “And Kellie!” said Hayden. “I have a list of bestsellers on the doc for you to tackle. There’s one called Devil’s Diary that had the whole internet on fire last week. Something about incest? I don’t know. Could be a really juicy article, anyway. The author was just blundering her way through responding to everything, which, I mean—that’s exactly where we want to be.” “Hayden,” I said. “Yes, Selina?” “I’m sorry. I don’t understand how this ... this content strategy squares with what I’ve been promising our readership for the past three months.” “What don’t you understand?” she asked, still smiling. “I’ve been telling people that City r epresents something that’s disappearing.” My eyes prickled. Alarmed, I straightened in my seat. “I’ve been saying that in a world inundated by articles that are superficial, or reactionary, or essentially regurgitated, we’re different. This—” “But City isn’t different,” said Hayden. Silence rang throughout the library. “What?” I said. “City doesn’t exist in a world of pure, untainted ideas.” Her voice sharpened. “Like every other publication, it exists in the real world, which includes overhead costs and infinite online competition and a dozen other high-minded journals that are all eating into the same tiny demographic that’ll pay for the kind of writing you’re describing.” Hayden closed her laptop and rose to her feet, her eyes never leaving mine, and I had the sense of our arrival at the center of something. “Look around, Selina. You’re sitting in the most expensive city in the country, in a legacy office that’s just dying to be rented out to a tech company with millions of dollars of seed funding pouring out its ears. Do you want City to stay in business? Then you need to e volve.” “But I thought that in December, everything was—”
“What you thought isn’t my problem.” Hayden shouldered her bag and went for the door. “Thanks for your input, but I wasn’t asking for a debate. I was breaking the news. I’ll send you the details by email.”