Parker “I’m so glad you two are on better terms now,” said Emily. I smiled across the table. “Yeah.” “I did tell you at the lit fest she probably wasn’t that bad.” “Yeah, you did, yeah.” “That must mean no more feuding, right? What a relief with the book launch coming up, huh?” A small, artificial laugh es caped me. “My publisher will probably ask me to start a second round for sales. But yeah. You’re right.” Emily touched my shoulder as she headed to the bathroom. She shut herself in and the silence enclosed me. I sat motionless at the table. Had Selina Chan really just knocked on my apartment door at 9 PM, out of nowhere? Had that actually happened? I gripped my mug and stared forward, not seeing the beer bottles on their coasters. I saw Selina’s face. Her instant of surprise when she’d heard Emily’s voice. Why had I felt so embarrassed, so exposed, like I needed to explain myself? Emily jogged back down the hall and put on her coat. “I’ve got to get back for my roommate’s birthday thing, but I had a lot of fun. Do you want to hang out again next week?” I collected myself and rose from my chair. “Yeah, um, I’m free,” I said, walking her to the door. “Wednesday?” she said. “I get off at eight thirty—we could do a late dinner?”
“That sounds great.” On the doormat she rose up on her toes and kissed me, her lips cool and soft, and I felt that pleasant buzz in my fingertips, the same thing I’d felt an hour ago, when, lying on the sofa, she’d turned to me halfway through Roman Holiday, and I’d dipped my face to hers and kissed her with a kind of determination. Once she’d gone, I washed out the beer bottles, wiped down the table, and opened my laptop. After one look at my draft I shut my computer and pushed it away, disgusted, for some reason, by the sight. Arthur slouched out of his room at eleven and crossed into the bathroom. “What’s up,” he said, emerging with his toothbrush sticking out of his mouth. “You have a good night with bookstore girl?” “Yeah. She’s nice, it went well.” “Thought so. Heard the movie going.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “What’s her thing?” “Um, she’s from Michigan and studied English in college, and she has two sisters. She’s into the indie rock scene. She plays guitar, which is cool.” “Cool, yeah.” Arthur went into the bathroom and spat. Lying in bed an hour later, inhaling the floral hint that Emily had left on my T-shirt, I tried to think of her. But it was Selina’s instant of surprise that k ept intruding into my mind. I’d never so much as taken Selina’s hand. For God’s sake, she’d never so much as given me an indication that she liked my company. Didn’t she? said some idiotic part of me. We’d sent 128 emails over a week. Then New Year’s, and our conversation while I was in California. Did all this sum to anything besides Selina being pleasantly surprised that she didn’t hate me?
I passed a restless weekend on my laptop, trying and failing to write. In cafés and libraries, I tried to write. Deleted. I wondered if, rather than self- identifying as a writer, I should tell people I was a deleter. Wednesday night, I told myself. A second date. This was going to be fun. Why couldn’t I have fun? Maybe High and Dry’s upcoming release was making me in capable of recognizing and appreciating fun. Selina didn’t message me about the Lispector. On Monday night, I began to wonder if that book had been the real reason she’d come. I knew the question was trouble as soon as it occurred to me, but I couldn’t put it back in the box. Doubt began to eat up minutes. Swaths of minutes. Why else would she have visited my apartment? I ruminated on her cryptic expression in the Book Bar. You don’t ever have to apologize to me for your opinion. How long had I looked at her after that, feeling as though she’d reached forward and taken some vulnerable part of me in her hand? Wednesday came as a relief. That afternoon, Bill called to tell me that I’d been invited to be the keynote speaker at a book festival in Seattle, whose chair had, apparently, adored High and Dry. I felt steadier than I had in days as Emily and I walked from Word to a vegetarian restaurant a block away, then settled into a corner where we could look through a glass window and see a brick oven in the kitchen. “So, besides the good news, how was your day?” Emily asked. “Not that productive. I mean, I spent about seven hours trying to write a paragraph, then got rid of the paragraph.” “Ah, I’m so sorry!” she said. “Are you okay?” “Oh, yeah, of course. I bet most people would be horrified at the amount of time authors spend failing to write.”
“It must feel so cool, though. I mean, doing the thing you love.” “It does, yeah. I’m beyond lucky.” The words came easily. I’d said them before. I poured her some water and asked, “How was the store?” “Pretty good, pretty good. Had a lady doing that thing where she asks for a book she saw four months ago, but she doesn’t remember the title, author, or genre.” I laughed. “Did you figure it out?” “I don’t know!” She laughed too. “Like, we tried. She bought this book, and she was like, I’m pretty sure this is the one. So, I hope it was the right one.” “Yeah, hope so.” “Right?” “Yeah.” I took a quick drink of my wine. She was watching me, smiling, in a way that reminded me of Kate, this pause a gentle prompt that she was ready for a segue. “You, um—are you ready for your sister to visit?” “So ready. We’re looking at doing Ellis Island. She’s never done the tourist stuff before. I mean, neither have I.” “Oh, yeah, it’s a cool museum,” I said. “You’ve been there? How was it?” “Um, thought-provoking.” I hesitated. “It felt sort of ghostly to me. Not in the sense of anything paranormal. But there’s something about the architecture, or maybe, like, the pilgrimage aspect of taking the ferry out there, that put me in this mindset of ... I don’t know. Being more aware of the people who passed through a hundred and fifty years ago than any of the people who were physically there with me. Maybe that’s just the sign of a good museum? I don’t know. I’m not sure if that makes sense.” “No, for sure!” Emily took a drink of wine. “That sounds so interesting. I’m excited to check it out!” I asked about her parents, who were vacationing in Florida. She asked about my siblings, and I described their jobs. I k ept waiting for
some engine to start, something that would propel us into some different territory, but I couldn’t describe that other place. If someone had asked me what I wanted from her, from this, I wouldn’t have been able to answer, and so I sat there feeling as though my restlessness and dissatisfaction were completely unfair to her. After we’d finished eating, she reached out and took my hand. I smiled instinctively. “I listened to that band you mentioned,” I said. “Hannah and the Peach Trees. I liked their first album.” “No way!” she said. “What’d you think?” “Cool sound. I liked how that distorted guitar ke eps punching into the first half of the album, and then the second half has that rougher edge.” “Oh! Yeah. What’d you think of the lyrics?” I hesitated. “I’d have to listen again. With the filter on the vocals, I didn’t hear a lot of them. Are they—do you listen to them for the lyrics, mostly?” “Yeah, their lyrics are so good.” Oh, God, I thought, why am I having such a bad time? I looked at her hand in mine and tried to focus on it. The little tattoos on her knuckles. I’d asked her about those last Friday. I squeezed her hand and let go. “Hey, I’m sorry, I should be getting home.” “No, totally fine! Me too. Um—” We sidled around the table and bundled up in silence before moving toward the door together. “Listen,” I said once we’d exited onto the sidewalk, “I ... I don’t think we should see each other again.” “Oh.” Her lashes fluttered in surprise. “Sorry, I just—” “Did I do something? Or, like, say something, or—?” “No, not at all. I think you’re really cool. And beautiful. It’s just...” I balked. She was going
to get upset, or angry. What was I doing, ending things with somebody so completely my type, because of—what? Some inarticulable feeling of discontentment? I could have gone on another date like this, a dozen more, and told Arthur they’d gone well, and I wouldn’t even have felt like I was lying. What did I want, if it wasn’t this? “Hey. Parker.” Emily raised her hands. “It’s okay. I know this is sort of a weird time, with the book coming out so soon.” “Right, yeah. I really am sorry. I probably shouldn’t have said yes, with everything that’s been happening.” “No worries.” She opened her arms. “Hug it out?” I hugged her, then watched her go with an immense, miserable feeling of relief. By the time I arrived home, Arthur had shut himself in his room, and I could hear the guttural exclamations of a video game bleeding beneath his door. I stripped off my drizzle-dampened outerwear, took a long, hot shower, and slid between my bedsheets, and as though I’d always known I was going to get home and do exactly this, I navigated to my text messages and opened my conversation with Selina. January 10. Her curt, inexplicable signoff. City is OK, really. Good luck with your brother. I began to type. What do you think of the Lispector? Before I could think myself out of it, I hit Send. My pulse began to sound in my ears. My gaze flicked from the phone screen to my darkened bedroom window, which looked out the back of the building, past the fire es cape. Tel ephone wires laced the stars. It was almost eleven o’clock, and I hadn’t texted her for more than two weeks. She would probably r eply in the morning, if at all.
The phone buzzed in my hand. I felt a hit of energy like a pistol had just popped at a starting line. Hard to process the imaginative power of a 21-year-old writer who somehow seems to know everything about being alive. I know, right? I wrote. I’m so glad I didn’t read this when I was 21. I would have broken in half. Agreed. Thanks for the loan. The ellipsis appeared as she k ept typing. Then it vanished. I waited. Nothing. I said, No problem. I paused, then typed, But you didn’t come over on Friday to borrow that book, did you? My neck was prickling. I shifted between my sheets, overwarm. I hit Send. No, she said. Then why? Her ellipsis appeared. My eyes started to burn; I didn’t blink for twenty seconds, thirty. She was going to say something mundane, I told myself, something impersonal. Don’t anticipate. There was nothing to anticipate. A wall of text appeared, and adrenaline shot from my chest to my extremities. I came by to apologize for not pushing back more forcefully against City assigning me High and Dry to review. To tell you the truth, when my editor assigned me the book, I expressed my doubts multiple times because of the way my previous review had been received, but he overruled me. That said, I suspect I could have argued with more conviction and passed the review on to one of my colleagues. I’m sorry I didn’t take that st ep. It would have been more ethical, more professional, and a kinder thing to do. The adrenaline faded. I felt as though I were sinking into my mattress, the comforter weighing me down, the darkness of my bedroom pressing in on me and my phone.
I was filled to my farthest reaches with absurd disappointment. I closed my eyes and turned off the phone screen and rested its warm edge against my forehead. How could I be unhappy with an apology, the thing I’d craved since the first time we’d met? The disappointment curdled into shame. I knew why. I’d wanted her to have come over for another reason: just to see me. Like a masochist, somewhere between the hundredth email and the walk home on New Year’s, I’d begun to want this from her. To want her. But why would she want me? Some writer whose work she didn’t even respect? Of course she’d been focused on the things she’d always cared about so passionately: critical professionalism, moral correctness. Meanwhile, some self-important part of me had wondered if she’d seemed off-balance because she’d seen Emily and me together. Obviously Selina Chan didn’t care who I was in volved with. On New Year’s, the instant I’d said something borderline suggestive—about what she might want—she’d left. She’d probably been embarrassed that I’d been drunk enough to say something like that. I turned onto my back and stared up into the dark. I saw Selina, hovering ghostly against my vision, the shine of navy blue silk against her thighs, the set of her chin and the wine-reddened creases in her mouth. I closed my eyes and the vision clarified, and then, in my mind, I was sliding my hand over the side of her neck and leaning forward and tasting her lower lip. Drawing her through the door. I rocked onto my side again. I turned on my phone and tried to focus. Selina had obviously put a lot into this message, this message that r epresented such an astonishing disappointment. Thanks, Selina, I typed. An apology is a valuable thing, coming from you. I should also say I’m sorry for cornering you at the
Maynard-Roth party to yell at you. Oh, it’s nothing that every author hasn’t fantasized about. Fantasized about. And now I was seeing her in the glimmering green dress she’d worn that night. I was feeling her fingertip impact my chest, remembering how, even then, I’d wanted to run my hand through the dark silk of her hair. I’m a lucky man, I said, hating myself. You are. I saw your post with the Anna’s Book Club special editions yesterday. Has your hand recovered from signing all those tip-ins? Absolutely not. Five sprained knuckles and a broken wrist. Wow. How do you sign your books? With a solid punch? I began to smile, even as the embarrassment and disappointment compacted into a painful little stone in my chest. Uppercut-right hook combination, I said. It’s good luck. I don’t think you need luck, Parker. You have something much better: months of rage-fueled publicity. How does our truce factor into the rage-fueled publicity? I was wondering the same thing. If you’d like to write another insulting short story, I can edit it for you this time. Very sneaky, I said. You know, a couple of my friends asked if our initial fight was staged. Ha. Why? They thought I was too mild-mannered for it to be real. It’s like they don’t even know you, she said, and for some reason I imagined her low, amused voice saying the words directly into my ear, and I turned over in bed with an aggravated noise. This was seriously bad. It was obvious to anybody with eyes that Selina was beautiful, but until now, she’d seemed so distant, so untouchable—too far away to envision any of this.
But now some floodgate had broken, and some part of my mind had realized that the idea of touching Selina Chan was thrilling and transgressive, the hottest and most confusing thing I could possibly imagine. As we texted, I battled image after image. Selina pressing me hard against her friends’ plate-glass window, her lips ghosting over mine. The idea of gripping her waist, lifting her onto my kitchen counter, sliding my hands up under her dress. Selina touching my chin to ke ep my eyes on hers, wearing her heels. Nothing but her heels. It was long past midnight by the time I managed to get my imagination under control. As exhaustion dimmed the fire of my thoughts, I thought back to the bookstore, to what Selina had told me about her parents. Did your parents ever email you back? I asked. I wondered if she’d dodge the question, but she said, Yes. Then: They were upset by my posts online and asked, for roughly the millionth time, whether I regretted picking the wrong career path yet. You didn’t pick the wrong career, I said. She didn’t say anything. I added, Selina, I might never have met another person who’s more obviously in the right career. Thank you. That means a lot. After a moment she went on, I try to imagine doing anything else and it’s like trying to imagine living in somebody else’s body. When did you start writing? I asked. In high school. You won’t be shocked to know that I was a weird kid. We joke about my not having friends, but that was pretty much true back then. I hesitated. When I’d probed in California, she’d pulled away, but this seemed even more like an opening than her reference to City had been then.
When you say ‘back then,’ I said, you don’t mean your entire childhood, do you? For a moment, no response, and I thought I’d struck the wall again, some barrier of privacy that she’d never allow me through. Finally, an ellipsis appeared, and a minute later, the message: Well, the experience wasn’t as dramatic as that sounds. I was a borderline silent kid with weak social connections that didn’t transfer over between schools. In high school, I was on the periphery of a group for a while, but I discovered after a couple of years that they’d spent a lot of time privately making fun of me. Which at the time was upsetting, but pretty soon felt unsurprising more than anything else. It wasn’t as though I ever felt in st ep with any of them. I sat with this message for a minute, trying to pick apart the swirl of scenes it conjured. Then anger rose in me. Jesus, I said. Selina, you don’t have to describe that like it’s acc eptable. They sound terrible. They weren’t, though. They were just normal high schoolers pointing at the nearest abnormal thing. Tale as old as time. I can’t believe you feel rage about reading a bad book, but not about this. She laugh-reacted to this. Well, the experience led me de eper into reading and writing, so, it was worth it. My journal entries back then were more like lists of observations than essays or reviews, though. I think they gave me a sense of control, like the world wasn’t just something happening to me but something I could catch on to, or observe de eply enough to understand it. Participating without participation, I said. Yes, exactly, she said. What about you? I started writing in high school, too, I wrote. For fun. To explore. To hear how the words crashed into each other. To open up space.
Space for yourself? Yeah. She asked me how my family was, which was how I knew she understood what I’d meant, and one in the morning passed, and she told me how nighttime sounded in Minnesota, and it was with her crickets in my ears that I fell toward sle ep, miserable and buzzing, imagining her somewhere across the city, pillow against her cheek, curve of cell phone light upon her dark eyes. I woke up to learn that Selina had panned the book of the season. The book—Next Time Lucky, by some Booker-shortlisted Brit named Martin Mac Enroe—was a multigenerational family epic, which Selina described as “Tolstoyesque, if Tolstoy had assumed a readership with the attention span of fruit flies.” I read the review with an escalating sense of guilty amusement. This woman. My social media had grown correspondingly loud. 3 m ago @Parker Navarro Writes I thought you’d be interested to see Chan yet again showing off how bad of a critic and person she is 4 m ago @Parker Navarro Writes @Martin Mac Enroe Books you two should be friends lol 6 m ago @Parker Navarro Writes Must be a day that ends in ‘y’.... Selina Chan is being an intolerable literary hipster again...... . I watched the posts unroll, realizing that I disagreed with every single one. I hit R eply on the post calling her an intolerable literary hipster, but I remembered this user. She’d tagged me in the days after the video with her sympathy. I’m so sorry this is happening to you Parker! I preordered your book and I’m really really excited to read it!! It seemed so hypocritical to turn on this person now, to chastise a stranger, when not even a month ago, I’d thought the same things about Selina.
Even as I exited the app, my phone buzzed. New Messages in Chan Pan Support Group Aiden Linville should we add Martin Mac Enroe to this chat?? poor guy Jenny House I met Martin at a launch last year. He was lovely! Of course, that doesn’t mean anything to Selina Chan. Carla Lew I am FUMING Carla Lew Just picturing her stupid smug face in front of her laptop as she thinks ‘oh I’m REALLY going to torture somebody today, ha ha ha’ J. J. Purnell It would be one thing if she were supposedly a nice person, but by all accounts, she’s even worse in real life. I heard from a couple of friends of mine that she iced them out at an event. Superiority complex. Aiden Linville in the immortal words of Maya Angelou, when someone shows you they’re a soulless bitch, believe them the first time Aiden’s text drew me up short. Messages continued to materialize, rapid-fire, my throat tightening with every bubble, every swooshing alert. Maybe we’d grown too loyal to each other in this group, defensive to a fault. I couldn’t imagine Aiden calling Selina a bitch when we’d first started chatting. I should have said something weeks ago. I began to type. Parker Navarro Okay, wait, confession. I did this event at the Dog’s Ear right before Christmas and Selina Chan showed up. We talked afterward, and she isn’t that bad.
Carla Lew WHAT???? parker ......... you’re not serious right ............ J. J. Purnell Isn’t that bad in what way? Aiden Linville if selina chan is holding you at gunpoint, try to secretly share your address. we’ll save you Parker Navarro She just takes her job very seriously. Parker Navarro She actually apologized to me. She said City shouldn’t have assigned her my second book and she shouldn’t have taken it on to review. Jenny House Well, that’s the least she could do. Aiden Linville i’m glad she wasn’t terrible to you for the millionth time, parker, but that’s not really a consolation, lol. an apology to one person doesn’t magically undo years of being publishing’s resident harpy. Carla Lew I’m with Aiden on this. Yeah, she SHOULD have left your second book alone! What is she going to DO to make up for what she did? Like, I’m noticing she hasn’t admitted fault publicly (because it would make her look bad) or backtracked in any way (because I DO think she’s a narcissist who’s in capable of exhibiting humility) J. J. Purnell You’re a sweet guy, Parker. Just make sure you’re not being played, okay? Jenny House But we support you even if you’ve been brainwashed by the Chan cult! Aiden Linville liked Jenny House’s message Carla Lew liked Jenny House’s message J. J. Purnell liked Jenny House’s message After typing and deleting a few beginnings, I hit Like on Jenny’s message, too. I was never going to convince these four to feel
anything positive about Selina. This would have to be good enough. My heart rate settling, I switched over to my conversation with her. We’d talked so late last night that I’d woken up past 10 AM again, which meant she was in Manhattan now, in the City offices. When I was a kid, I’d envisioned the world within every book so vividly. Any old story could paint a full-color picture with a few vague words. Now, it was a rare book that excited my imagination that way. But I typed, I saw the review. Have you been hunted down with pitchforks yet? People love that book. And she said, almost immediately, Sorry, can’t talk. Being burned at the stake. And I saw her there, at a desk that I imagined was spotless smoked glass, and I pictured her hair bound in a knot at the base of her skull, and I saw her in that silken navy dress she’d worn when she’d come to my apartment last weekend, and its neck was open, and there was a seed pearl necklace sinking into the dip between her collarbones, and she had that secretive half smile on her lips as she looked down at her phone. My imagination was so full of her it felt halfway to inspiration.