Selina For half an hour, I stood in the shadow of a USPS mailbox, shivering, looking through the window of Word. The image was a perfect, glowing diorama, the bookstore lights shining on Parker’s messy hair, his smile. The audience was around two-thirds full. For that much, at least, I was grateful. I’d worried nobody would come. Of course, if nobody had come, maybe I would have been able to make myself go inside. Maybe I could have convinced myself that he would rather have seen me than no one at all. But I should have known that Parker would have a crowd of friends to support him. Friends who embraced him, friends who insisted on photographing him with his stack of books, even as he protested. His family even seemed to have flown in, his four siblings bookended by his parents, in whom I could see Parker’s features. He looked exhausted but happy. After Emily’s introduction, he did a short reading, then closed the book and started to speak. I wanted so badly to know what he was saying. But I heard, for the thousandth time in the past three days, This is all happening because of you, and I wasn’t selfish enough to ruin a celebration with his friends and family simply because I wanted to hear his voice again. I made myself turn away from the window and walk down the block, my breath clouding in front of me. The train was southward, but I turned west, toward Jacob and Cassie’s place. On Saturday, Jacob had texted our group chat, saying, Are you okay? We saw the profile. And you going to bat for Parker. I’d said, Yes, it’s fine, I shouldn’t have gotten in volved. The idea of telling them what Parker had been to me, even for just a few weeks,
had felt excruciating. But at this moment, the idea of returning to my apartment, filled with memories of him, felt worse. A minute later I was buzzing and saying, “Hi, it’s Selina, can I come up?” I hurried up the st eps. When Cassie opened the door, the sight of her worried face made something in me wobble. “What’s wrong?” she said. My hand flew to the bridge of my nose. My eyes burned. I let out a sob. “Selina?” Her voice was sharp with alarm. As I st epped over the threshold and she wrapped me in a bear hug, she called back into the apartment, “Jacob!” I held my eyes shut, enveloped in the scent of Cassie’s coconut conditioner. I heard quick footst eps and the door closing, and Jacob saying, “Oh, man. What happened?” “I don’t know.” “Selina? Hey.” His hand touched my back. I looked up, crying, my hand still over my nose and mouth. “Hey, did something happen to you?” “No. It’s—” I tried to breathe. “Just ... Parker.” Cassie and Jacob exchanged a look. Then Jacob guided me toward the sofa, and Cassie hurried to the kitchen island to run me a glass of water, and soon she’d pushed it into my hand and was crouching by my side. “Wh- where’s Lyra?” I said, glancing around. “Asle ep,” said Jacob. “She’s a little sick.” “Oh, no. When did—” He shook his head, settling beside me. “Don’t worry about it. She’s okay.” “Hey,” said Cassie, rubbing my thigh. “Hey. Tell us what happened.” And I did, although I had to stop intermittently to cry. I didn’t know how to do this. I had never done this before. I told them everything, described every lovely facet of the fragile thing I’d broken. I couldn’t believe how little I cared, anymore, about what Parker had said to
some two-bit r eporter or what insults toward me he’d let go unchallenged. He’d been willing to look past what I’d done to his career. How ludicrous, how prideful, that I’d thrown that grace away. “His book launch is happening right now,” I cried. “I went by. Past the window. I saw him.” “Selina,” Cassie said quietly. I put my face in my hands. I couldn’t say it, it was too humiliating, but I couldn’t believe that I’d ever had someone like Parker, that a person so kind and good had ever wanted me. It hurt so badly to have had him for that short moment. Now the moment had become a snapshot in time, like Juliette had described in her book, an illuminated window that I would look back on for the rest of my life, as it grew smaller and smaller behind me. Two sobering days passed. While commuting I k ept my face angled toward the windows in the train’s sliding doors, trying to look out at the blurry details of the subway tunnels and not at the harshly lit reflection of my own wan face. After work, to the gym. After dinner, to the Slippery Cork. On Thursday, Nadia asked me, “How are you, sweetheart?” “I’m okay.” She glanced down the length of the empty bar, then tossed her rag down. “I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you, but people online don’t know how to act.” I glanced up quickly from my drink. “You...” “I saw that video that went around in October. I gave you a follow.” For a long moment I sat there, jarred. Of course, Nadia had read my name off my credit card biweekly for the last five years and could, at any time, have Googled the antisocial creature who crawled into her bar to read. There had been no reason to assume distance between us. In the face of her reassurance, I wanted to feel closer to her. Instead I experienced a feeling of suffocation, that even here, in this place I’d
come to feel like a safe, anonymous, perfectly scripted version of myself, I couldn’t es cape the mess of who I actually was. But I said, “Thank you, Nadia,” and she gave me a pat on the wrist and comped my drink. When that unending week finally drew to its close, the discourse online had mostly burned out. I’d been wondering if Nextward would fire me on the basis of the hit piece. Hayden had reassured me by email that they didn’t mind the controversy, but that Friday, the City staff came in to find her at our morning meeting, looking grave. “So, not great news,” said Hayden. “We got word from the Densmore Foundation that they’re considering pulling support for the upcoming year.” “What?” said half the table. Hayden’s eyes strayed to me. “Because of the profile,” I said. “You’d think,” said Hayden. “No, it’s because the head of their board didn’t love how you dealt with the Parker Navarro controversy this week.” “They’re pulling support because I wasn’t angry enough about High and Dry?” “Selina, you’re a public figure. You have forty thousand followers and City Magazine on your profile. You can’t just say whatever you want.” “What’s the point of having a social media account if I don’t say what I want to say?” “I don’t know. Let’s think. You support Parker Navarro when he has the popularity of Jos eph Stalin, partially thanks to your own review, and you’re shocked there’s a ripple effect?” Hayden turned to Scott, her lips pressed together. “I’m trying to ke ep the conversation open with them, but between this and the rent situation, we need to start thinking about the office.”
Silence spread from bookshelf to bookshelf. We were reaping what we’d sown. That felt patently obvious now: I should never have stoked the fires of the feud, never caved to my base instincts, no matter how good it had felt at the time. “Why did you stick up for him, anyway?” Kellie said. For once there was no bounce in her inflection. I let out a leaden-sounding laugh, but I couldn’t make myself answer. At least, now, I would never have to explain anything to Kellie or anyone else on staff. The people online who had already been circling the idea of Parker “sle eping with the enemy” would never be vindicated. My credibility, I reminded myself, was the cornerstone on which my life was built. Maybe I had nothing else, but I still had that. The shreds of my privacy. The idea of myself. A door I could ke ep locked forever. I stopped by Jacob and Cassie’s apartment that afternoon with a gift, wanting to thank them for dealing with my outburst. They were scheduled to fly out tomorrow afternoon, so I expected to find a half-disassembled apartment. When Jacob opened the door to the loft, though, I found no sign of disorder. “Hey,” he said. “What’s up? You okay?” “Yeah. Just wanted to drop this off to thank you both for Tuesday.” I handed him the small gift bag. “You didn’t have to do that.” “Yes, well, it was an embarrassing night, so.” I frowned up at his disheveled hair, his red-rimmed eyes. “You’re sick.” “We all are.” Jacob’s laugh sounded hoarse. “Lyra’s thing turned into a fever, and Cassie caught it, too. She had to call out sick today.” “Wait. Your trip...” “Yeah. We canceled everything.” “Oh, Jacob.” I felt a pang of sympathy. I couldn’t imagine Cassie’s disappointment. Even Jacob would have a hard time bouncing back from the prospect
of Lunar New Year in a tropical paradise. “I’m so sorry.” “Yeah, thanks. It sucks.” “It really does feel like forever since you two got to live your actual life.” Jacob’s gentle smile made him look even more tired. “This is our actual life, Selina. Neither of us would trade it.” He fished around in the gift bag and drew out a Fresh Linens–scented candle in a frosted glass cylinder. His eyes brightened. “You know what, this is perfect. We can just light this tonight and lie in bed and watch a movie.” “None of you can smell anything,” I pointed out. “Don’t use logic on me when I have the plague. Rude.” He lifted the candle to me like a pint in a toast. “But thanks, seriously. We’ll see you when no one’s contagious.” “Perfect. Let me know if you need anything.” When he’d shut the door, I heard Cassie, muffled, calling to ask who’d buzzed. Jacob’s congested voice trailed back to her, into the quiet reaches of their home, and a moment later I heard them laughing. Of course they wouldn’t trade this, even for freedom. That night, with a tight, r epetitive ache in my chest like a muscular cramp, I spent two hours rereading my emails with Parker, and then our texts, all the way down to the end. Selina, please pick up. I have to talk to you. Please let me explain. I pushed my phone under my pillow and lay in bed, watching the radiator. My eyes leaked, my nose burning. He had come over to fix things, and I hadn’t let him. No wonder that, by the end of the fight, he’d realized the truth. I didn’t want to look at his social media. It didn’t sound or feel like him. Instead I rose unsteadily from my bed and knelt by the radiator. On the second shelf from the bottom were the N authors. Parker’s books sat wedged between Katie Navan and Curtis Nelson.
I tugged them out and let the new hardcover of High and Dry fall open in my lap. My throat constricted when I saw the title page. In his slapdash hand was written, to my well-k ept secret. yours, Parker I touched the bleed of the ink and felt that pressurized pain in my chest again. When I opened These Extraordinary Times, I found the same inscription. I hugged the books into my bed and turned on the reading lamp at the corner of my headboard. Shut off all other lights, so I was enclosed by a sle epy amber cone. Then I opened These Extraordinary Times and began to read. I read fifty pages, then seventy-five, with increasing disorientation. I could see the book I’d read four years ago. They were of course the same words in the same order, and I could identify the same lack of focus, the same jarring and evasive turns, that I’d criticized before. But I could no longer tell what I thought. It was as though I were standing six inches from an impressionist painting, gazing into the fine textures of the brushstrokes, too close to contextualize shapes or colors. In every sentence I could feel Parker’s care or his joy. During a scene I’d insulted in my review, where the grandmother loses her makeup case in a bucket of fish at a sea lion performance, I heard Parker’s voice reading to me, his low and smiling voice, like we were sharing a joke, and I imagined him awake in Daly City in his terrible studio apartment at six in the morning, squeezing in these words before his shift at the H Mart, cheap kettle gurgling in the background. I imagined the way his lower lip folded between his teeth when he worked. The makeup case toppled in among the fish,
rouging their scales, and he overdescribed it, because he wanted to make sure I was right there with him. He was playing around, dreaming, toiling, feeling free. I couldn’t s eparate any of it from him. I loved it, I realized. I loved these pages just because they had him in them. I closed the book and stared down at the messy scrawl of its cover art, feeling adrift, disturbed. What was I without my ability to see clearly, think clearly, judge clearly? How could I fix this? How to get my perspective back? I let the book open to the inscription again. yours, Parker My disturbance stilled like the surface of a lake after rain. This was how it felt, then, to love someone: To sacrifice clarity. To let go the illusion of objectivity. To give every word the benefit of the doubt. And with Parker, if I had to choose between a clean and confident judgment and this—this mess of contradictory feeling, this stew of complication; if I had to choose between the neat and comprehensible outside and the inexplicable inside, then, for the first time in my life, I chose the inside. I would love him right into my own uncertainty. And even though he didn’t want me back anymore, he’d given me this much. This understanding. It was something I’d never lose. To: Charles. Chan111@gmail. com From: selinachanlikesbooks@gmail. com Sent: Feb 19, 10:23 PM Subject: Re: Author fight Hi Mom and Dad, I’m not sure if you’ve seen the article about me in a magazine called the Bay Now, but unfortunately it mentions your names. I can’t say how sorry I am. Over the past month, I’ve thought a lot about your last message. I’m not sure I’ve told you this, but I’ve understood your worries about my
career for years now. Criticism can be a volatile and thankless job, and you’re right: Sometimes you say things you can’t take back. But whenever we’ve spoken about my work, you’ve always brought up my future. You worry about stability. Longevity. I don’t know if you’ll understand, but even if my career ends tomorrow, I’ll still be proud to have spent my life building it. Something doesn’t have to last forever to matter. You asked in November if I’d call you back. Maybe we could find a time for that soon.