Selina The articles had begun to appear late last week, mixed in at the bottom of our front page, like arsenic in the sugar bowl. A scan over our titles went like this: “Borges Spoke to Me in Winter—Essay” “The Plow and the Mountain: Jennifer Croft on Translating Nobel Winner Olga Tokarczuk” “Ranking Kendall Jenner’s Beach Reads” “Scenes from 1810 s Munich in Newly Unearthed Lithographs” In the days since, Hayden’s requested articles had cr ept higher and multiplied. By January 21—the day of City’s anniversary party—the piece just below the masthead was “10 Bookish Gadgets Under $15 on Amazon That You Have to Try!” I found myself wondering what Parker might think. I had to wonder. Since last Monday, we hadn’t spoken. That night, I’d considered telling him about Hayden’s new directive, but he’d been shouldering so much in California. I hadn’t wanted to pile my own issues onto him, too. I couldn’t understand what had happened. He’d seemed strangely intent on turning the conversation to me, as though his problems and feelings were barely worth the few sentences that he’d taken to describe them. I’d thought he might text me the next day to restart the conversation. Instead, silence. “Why didn’t you invite him to this?” Jacob asked while he, Cassie, and I walked toward the City anniversary venue. The magazine had booked our
usual event space in Greenpoint, a five-hundred-person hall not far from Jacob and Cassie’s apartment. “Because,” I said, “I only get two comp tickets, and I invited you.” “One of us could have stayed home,” Cassie said. “Could’ve saved on the babysitter.” “I don’t even know if Parker’s back from California.” “You could have—” “Jacob, I wasn’t going to uninvite one of you just for an excuse to text a man who doesn’t want to talk to me.” Cassie straightened her sequined suit jacket with a convulsive shiver. Jacob settled his arm over her shoulder. “Well,” said Cassie, “his loss.” I laughed. “What?” said Cassie. “Nothing,” I said, but I was thinking about all the people Parker had described to me over the last few weeks, the dozen childhood friends who now lived in the city, his siblings and parents and roommate, the authors he’d befriended recently, a constellation of people loved by him. The idea that I could somehow r epresent a loss in his life was laughable. “Is everything booked for February?” I asked. “Did you decide where to stop in Thailand?” “We are booked and ready,” said Jacob. “The hotels are so cheap it feels criminal.” They outlined their plans as we walked through a melting world. The past few days had seen temperatures in the forties, and the last of the Christmas snowstorm was finally trickling from roofs, dripping down stairways, sliding off banisters, rolling down the gutters in long glittering snakes. We passed by the glowing window of a laundromat, its white-blue interior deserted exc ept for one woman hauling armloads of linens out of a dryer.
The venue stood on the next block, an artful spike of gray stone with a line of rideshares standing out front. A measly little red carpet spanned the six feet of sidewalk between the road and the heavy driftwood door. Just inside, a table was laden with extravagant party favors. City- branded tote bags had been stuffed with signed copies of Pathogenius— Joyce had pulled a few strings—as well as City-branded pens, not epads, and postcard books featuring vintage City covers. “Are we allowed to take these?” said Cassie. “Or are they for the people who paid for tickets?” “Don’t be so loud about it,” said Jacob, helping himself to a bag. “People will hate us.” As we moved into the venue, past flower beds that had been raised out of the concrete floor, into a sea of bare twinkling bulbs, I spotted Scott in a tuxedo, Kellie in a cream linen dress, Hayden wearing crimson. “Selina Chan,” said a low, cordial voice. A slender, de eply tanned man in a canary-yellow suit had sidled up to us. “Anthony, hi,” I said, shaking his hand. “Jacob, Cassie, this is Anthony Villano. He writes for The New York Times Book Review.” “And I’ve been trying to poach Selina for years,” he said confidentially to Jacob and Cassie. “What do we think? Is this the year?” He leaned closer, his smile turning to a sympathetic grimace. “It can’t be long now for City, right?” “What do you mean?” “Oh.” Anthony thumbed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Well, I know you’re not responsible for the, ah ... change in direction of the coverage.” He let out an apologetic laugh.
My face warmed. The New York Times Book Review had presumably never posted anything as degrading as “10 Bookish Gadgets Under $15 on Amazon That You Have to Try!” “Yes, we’ve had less creative control recently. But City is perfectly healthy.” I waved to the elaborately decorated railings on the mezzanine. “I’d think that was clear.” “Really?” said Anthony. “I thought this was compensating for something. I mean, that ticket price...” His eyes strayed to the opposite side of the room. “Oh—I’m sorry, I have to catch Simon. Simon!” As he hurried off, my cheeks continued to prickle. I scanned and spotted Scott again, near the musicians. “If it’s okay with you two,” I said to Jacob and Cassie, “I’m going to have a word with Scott.” “Sure thing,” said Cassie. “We’ll see who we can offend the most by not knowing who they are.” By the time I reached Scott, the warmth in my face had spread down to my neck. I unwound my scarf. “Selina,” said Scott. “Love the dress.” “Thanks. Listen, Scott, I just talked with Anthony Villano, and he was acting like it’s obvious that City is about to—to—I don’t know.” I dropped my voice, looking around at the glimmering formalwear. “Go bankrupt.” Scott buffed out a smudge on his wineglass instead of r eplying. “Scott.” My voice rose. “That’s not happening, is it? Please tell me it’s not happening.” “No, no.” He raised his hands. “Well, not imminently.” “What do you mean, not imminently?” Scott set his wineglass on a high-top. “Hayden got word over Christmas that the rent on our office is hiking in March. Something to the tune of eight percent.”
I couldn’t speak. I didn’t know the exact rent on our office, but I knew eight percent r epresented tens of thousands of dollars a month. “So ... yes. The ticket prices, the new ‘content strategy’ ... these are Hayden’s last-ditch efforts to ke ep us solvent. In her way, I think she’s trying to help.” Around us, the string quartet’s melody floated up to the high stone reaches of the room. The City Magazine banner on the wall rippled as a small group of people passed beneath it, laughing and sipping tomato-red cocktails. Pretty sounds circulating through this hollow structure. I watched with disbelief. “Maybe this strategy of hers will work,” said Scott. “Maybe. Yeah.” I tried to collect myself. I knew that whatever I was feeling, Scott must be feeling it tenfold. “I guess, let’s not assume anything catastrophic will happen.” “Exactly.” I excused myself and moved through clouds of perfume and cologne, holding up the navy silk of my dress. But the more I looked for Jacob and Cassie, the less I wanted to find them. They’d spent so much of the past four months worrying about me, my r eputation, my position. I missed the days when I was nothing to worry about, for anybody. I was attracting a number of nods and polite hellos, which I returned. Then a hand brushed my shoulder. A red-haired woman in a group of five. I recognized the long narrow slope of her nose, her downturned eyes. “Selina, hi! Mary Clark.” “Right. The Guardian,” I said. “It’s good to see you.” She waltzed through a few niceties about the party, the drinks, the lights. Then, with relish, she said, “And it’s been so fun to follow along with this feud between you and Parker Navarro.”
“Oh ... Thank you,” I said, thinking of Parker standing alone in a convenience store. His family. His inexplicable silence. “I k ept wondering, you know—what on earth is she going to say tomorrow?” Mary laughed. “What part of this man’s career is she going to end next?” “I’m a photographer,” added a man beside her, rocking backward and forward on his heels as though pr eparing to take a leap. “And I’ve got to say, it’s fascinating to get a peek behind the veil. These author-critic relationships, obviously I know they’re not friendly, but...” “... but you really think he’s the scum of the earth,” said a woman across the circle. They all began laughing again. The smile was frozen on my face. I remembered Hayden saying, It’s a feud, Selina. It’s all about you. She’d been right. Even among other journalists, nobody had cared about my high-minded ideas of proving the value of our work, defending our history. That was never going to save us. People had followed what I’d said because they were finally getting access to the things I’d tried to ke ep hidden my whole career. My personal frameworks of opinion. My private biases. My petty cruelty and—in this moment, it seemed perfectly obvious —my profound shortsightedness. “Selina?” said a voice at my shoulder. Jacob and Cassie had found me, Cassie finishing the dregs of a cocktail. She took one look at my face and said, “Maybe we should think about heading out.” “No,” I said immediately, “we can stay.” “We were actually getting texts from the babysitter. Sorry to steal her,” she added to Mary’s group. Then she casually took the coat from my arm, draped it over
my shoulders, and steered me toward the door. “We can have a night cap at ours or something,” said Jacob, flowing along at Cassie’s side. “Thanks for the invite, by the way. Great wine.” I nodded, mute. When we were out in the night, returning down the sidewalk into the relative quiet, Cassie said, “What were they talking about?” “Nothing. The feud. Parker.” “Must be weird, now that you don’t hate him anymore.” She paused. “You don’t, do you?” “No,” I said quietly. “No, I think I seriously misjudged him.” “You sure?” said Jacob. “I saw the video. He wasn’t exactly Prince Charming, with the yelling, and the calling you a monster, and everything.” “Well, no, he shouldn’t have confronted me. But it was questionable of Scott to assign me his second book, considering what happened with the first one.” I buttoned my coat and folded my hands beneath my elbows. “The thing is—I thought Parker hunted me down because he was this shallow egomaniac. You know, some of these writers, they love writing so much less than they love their own image. Their end goal is to charge seventy-five-thousand-dollar speaking fees and never talk to somebody outside publishing again. And some of them do come from these backgrounds where they’re just drowning in money and entitlement, and I thought that was Parker, but—” I glanced into the laundromat again, now completely empty, an oasis of light glancing off steel. “Turns out it’s not?” said Jacob. “No. It’s not.” I looked down at my shoes. Embroidered flats. The heels had really taken it out of me on New Year’s Eve.
The thought of New Year’s made me slow, then stop. “Hey.” Cassie gave me a bracing squeeze on the bic ep. As a rock climber she was probably unaware that her bracing squeeze felt like a normal person’s death threat. “This is a good thing, Selina. It’s a positive development to realize somebody’s not as bad as you thought they were.” “Right. Yes. But I’m still the person who’s been going after him and his book, r epeatedly, for—I mean, for what, then? To try to turn things around for City, like that was a realistic goal?” My parents’ email floated across my mind. “To get the last word?” Jacob and Cassie exchanged another look. A weight was accumulating in the pit of my stomach. I’d been called a bitch since I was fifteen years old, and twice as often since I’d entered the disproportionately male sphere of criticism. Parker had even said it himself, though not in so many words, called me arrogant and cold. Maybe his story in The Paris Review had shown me as I really was. Whereas maybe he had always just been a kind, intelligent person who deserved an apology. “Hey,” said Jacob. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Criticism is your job, Selina.” “I know that. But taking on his second book ... it felt like punching down. Part of me even knew that. I tried to tell Scott and Hayden, but they overrode me.” Cassie raked her fingers through her ponytail. Where Jacob had softened under my distress, she’d firmed up. “Well, if you feel bad about it, you can always apologize now. Right? Hey.” She waited for me to glance over at her. “Right?” “Yes. That’s true.” “There we go. Let’s get home, I’m freezing my ass off.” She moved into the crook of Jacob’s arm again.
I watched them arranged like subjects in a painting, Cassie’s black hair spilling messily past her neck, Jacob’s eyes pushing up into crescents as he smiled, his hand dappling Cassie’s cheek with shadow as he brushed back her bangs. They glanced over to make sure I’d fall into st ep with them. I wanted to say, I love you two, do you know that? And do you know how much? But I’d have needed a lifetime to articulate it. An hour and a hot cider later, I left their apartment into the cold, dripping night. Wet gusts traced my forehead, my cheeks. Halfway to the train, my st eps slowed. I came to a halt beside a halal cart and looked up the street toward Mc Golrick Park. After a week of silence, texting Parker an apology felt faintly desperate, as though my only reason for apologizing was that he wasn’t speaking to me. But he’d said his apartment was beside the coffee shop opposite the park. He was virtually on my way home, and while 9 PM was late, it wasn’t inappropriately late for a five-minute talk. Before I could think about it too hard, I was heading up the street toward the shouts and laughs emanating from the bar on the corner, toward the whisper of naked tree branches rubbing against each other in the wind. I turned up my coat collar and wiped a trickle of snowmelt from my brow. Two identical brick apartments flanked the coffee shop. The second, beside its column of buzzers, listed NAVARRO / LEUNG on the ground floor, 1 E. The lights were on. His roommate? Or was Parker home from California? I didn’t buzz. I turned back toward the park, flexing my fingers inside my leather gloves. I didn’t have to do this; our truce could be enough. I didn’t technically owe Parker this conversation.
But I remembered the way he’d looked at me in that subterranean maze of shelves on New Year’s Eve, the heat that had stirred in me when he’d said, That’s not what you want, is it? Did he talk like that to other people? Why did I want him to ke ep talking like that to me? To ke ep messaging me late into the nights? Why did I want to tell him what had been happening with City since the New Year? Why did I feel that he would immediately understand the gut- de ep, almost irrational fear that the idea of the magazine’s bankruptcy induced in me? I stood on the st eps for minutes, silent, trying to decide whether to retreat or move forward. Then the door of the building swung open and a man in his sixties held it open for me, and I said automatically, “Thank you,” and walked inside, feeling as though the choice had been made for me. I passed the dented mailboxes set into the foyer wall and entered an antechamber out of which led an old wooden staircase with a carved banister. I faced the door marked 1 E and tugged off my gloves and, wishing I weren’t wearing a floor-length silk gown, worked a few tangles out of my hair, trying to feel more pr epared. Go, I thought, and rapped three times on the door. The muffled sound of a male voice. Then footst eps, growing closer. I swallowed and found my mouth dry. The rattle of a lock, and the door swung open, and Parker was there in front of me, dressed in dark jeans and a LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS T-shirt, his hair messy. He froze. For a moment we just stared at each other. It occurred to me how beautiful he looked, this rumpled, private version of him. “Selina,” he said. “Parker. Hi.” “Hey.” His eyes strayed toward his apartment. So did mine. In the visible wedge of the place I caught
the corner of a ceiling-high bookcase, a rug with blocks of geometric color, a modestly sized television paused on the acting credits of a movie. Two art prints in thin black frames above a saddle leather sofa. “Um,” he said. “Why are you—sorry, I—” I’d never seen him so flustered. I searched for some on-ramp into the conversation, something that wouldn’t just fling me headfirst into the apology on his doorst
Ep I wanted to go in, for us to find that compulsive New Year’s rhythm. Jacob would have called me predictable, but yes, I wanted to do this right, or not at all. But before I could speak, a high, sweet voice came from behind the door. “Parker? Who is it?” Parker glanced back and eased the door wider. A dining table came into view. Standing at its far corner was Emily from the festival. Easy-laughing, kind-faced Emily. She held two stacked plates in one hand and a pizza box in the other, clearing the remains of dinner. When she saw me, her brows flew high. “Oh my gosh! Selina Chan, right?” “Yes,” I managed to say. “I’m Emily Shapiro. I saw your panel with Parker at the Wiseman Festival. It was so interesting!” Parker looked back to me, unreadable. The heat had leached from my face. I felt strangely distant. Two empty beer bottles stood on the table, and Emily’s coat dangled half-off one of the chairs, as if it had been flung there. “Thank you,” I said. “You’re a bookseller, right?” “Yeah, I work at Word. It’s about twenty minutes that way.” She pointed through the wall behind her.
“Right.” “Sorry, I interrupted,” Emily said, making to retreat with the dirty plates. “I can—” “No, please, you didn’t.” My own voice sounded smooth and blank. “I was just leaving City’s anniversary event around the corner, and I remembered. Parker mentioned a while back that he had a copy of Clarice Lispector’s first book, and the library hold list is seven weeks long, so”—I made myself look back to him—“I thought I’d ask to borrow it.” “Right. Of course,” said Parker. “Let me ... yeah.” He left the door hanging open and jogged de eper into the apartment, down a hallway I couldn’t see. Emily set their dinnerware on the counter. “Do you want a cup of tea or anything? I mean, it’s Parker’s tea, but I’m sure he—” “No, thank you. I appreciate it, but I’m on the way to the train.” Parker’s footfalls again, still quick. He wanted this over with. He reappeared holding Near to the Wild Heart and held it out. “Thank you,” I said, taking the book. “Sure. Of course.” His eyes fell to the cover. “I, um, I hope you like it.” “Yes. I hope so too. It was nice to meet you, Emily.” I lifted a hand. “Have a good weekend.” “You too!” Emily said with real enthusiasm. Parker nodded, but I couldn’t look at him. I didn’t wait for him to shut the door. I turned and headed out of the darkened foyer and into the eye- watering winter cold and it was only halfway down the block that I began to feel my hands again, and to realize that I was blinking unusually fast, and that my breaths were uneven. I walked more quickly toward the train, yanking my gloves on, the world a blur around me. I could only see Parker’s shock, his disturbance to find me on the threshold of his life. Mortification and realization were moving through me in slow, sickly, alternating waves.
Somehow, despite his text silences and our whole acrimonious history, I really had fooled myself into thinking he could be interested in me, purely because he’d been drunk and lonely on New Year’s Eve. And maybe that night, if I’d tried to touch him, he would have reached toward me out of morbid curiosity, in the way that men used to, before I grew tired of feeling like a foreign land that people were always trying to document and interpret. But of course in his right mind he would search for someone sweet and kind and open, because everybody wanted to be liked in uncomplicated ways, and I’d never loved anything without twisting it into knots.