Parker November cartwheeled into the city, a month of record wind speeds. I buttoned my coat higher and k ept walking. After my mental health had hit its nadir in college, this had been the deal I’d made with myself: that I would walk out into the world every single day for the rest of my life. Three weeks sequestered in my dorm room, surviving on spooned-out peanut butter, Cup Noodles, and delivered mozzarella sticks, pondering nonexistence, interacting with nobody exc ept my increasingly disgusted roommates: If this experience had taught me nothing else, it was that crossing the threshold of my front door could always make me feel more human. When I’d moved back in with my mother in Daly City for those first years after graduation, I spent my walks listening to indie rock playlists, until my jobs at H Mart and the neighborhood karaoke bar made the quiet feel so valuable that I began to walk in silence. I’d k ept that routine to this day, and it felt especially helpful on mornings like this, when I imagined my brain like an animal in a too-small enclosure, hurling itself against the walls. The Paris Review had published my story yesterday afternoon. Selina Chan’s response had been published this morning, and I’d read it over and over, working myself into a froth of indignation. I’d expected her to react with cold fury. Instead, I got this obnoxious equanimity, as though she had distance from even the most aggressive form of ridicule I could come up with. I’d wanted her to be devastated, not mildly amused. And the kicker: Thank you, she’d said, for a story with a real purpose.
What interdimensional chess game was she trying to play? Why had she complimented a story I’d written to insult her? I bypassed the park and the green bulbs of the subway entrance, the distant laughs of toddlers harmonizing with sirens. As I walked beneath the elevated train line, I saw the text stamped across my vision. The kind of intent I’ve wished he would bring to the page since his first novel. I imagined her crimson-nailed fingers striking the words into a laptop keyboard in a graceful blur, like a concert pianist knocking out a chromatic run, and here, on the other end, the phrase r eplayed over and over in my mind, like the strain of some unshakable melody. I drained the last of my coffee, crumpled the cup in a fist, and threw it in the nearest recycling bin. What did I care what she wished for? Surely I hadn’t wanted her to like the story—to be, in any way, impressed? You didn’t throw a punch in a boxing ring hoping your opponent would admire your form. Did you? When I got home, Arthur had a sloppy, overfilled grilled cheese smoking on the skillet. “Hey,” he called over the thrum of the ventilation hood. “Good walk?” I made myself smile. “Yeah. Solid.” “You want a grilled cheese? Mine’s burned, but I can make you one that isn’t terrible.” “Sure. Thanks, man.” “I’m going to take cooking classes one of these days, and then you’ll never know what hit you.” At the counter I sifted through Arthur’s stack of mailings. “Is this before or after the driving lessons?” “After the driving lessons, but before the Chinese lessons.” He scraped the spatula over the skillet with a sound like a sled getting dragged over asphalt. “And the personal training will go ... somewhere in there, I don’t know.”
I looked through the last of his mail. He’d circled three time slots on a brochure advertising bachata dance lessons—times that I knew he was not even a little bit free—and he’d scribbled a list of canvassing dates on some literature from Ziad Bishara for Congress. Arthur still hadn’t acc epted that spending ten hours a week volunteering with a Chinatown youth arts organization meant that he had ten fewer hours a week to do things for himself. Math was a cruel and inflexible thing. “How are the Chi Arts kids?” I asked. “Still writing poems about death and knives?” “Y ep. And broken glass. I’m thinking about banning the word ‘cruel.’” “That seems pointed.” “Not as pointed as the knives. Anyway, I wish I worked on books they had literally any interest in reading. They’re always saying, can you get us free books? And I’m like, yeah, I can hook you up with a five-hundred-page biography on Schopenhauer.” I knocked his mail against the counter to align the corners. “When you guys publish a Schopenhauer-inspired YA fantasy, you’ll finally be cool.” “Please, Parker, you know I’ll never be cool.” He whirled to face me so suddenly that I startled. “By the way. I read it.” “What? You read what?” “Your story. The Selina Chan fanfic.” “Oh.” I frowned. “It’s not fanfic.” “True. Hatefic? Anyway, I read it.” He snapped his head back like a baby bird about to feed and yowled out a laugh. “It’s so aggro. It might be my favorite thing you’ve written.” “It—wait, really?” “Yeah. There’s this snap to it, you know? Reminds me of the stuff you wrote in undergrad.”
“Hang on. You didn’t also read—I mean—” I set down the mail. “This morning, did you read—?” “Read what?” He mopped his dripping brow with a palmful of apron, clueless. He hadn’t read Selina Chan’s response. He’d arrived ind ependently at her conclusion, that my joke story had a sense of energy and lucidity that neither of my actual books had exhibited. “What’s wrong?” he said. “It was supposed to be fun to read, right?” “Yes. Yeah.” I tried to resurrect my smile. “Sorry, just—it’s hot in here.” He studied me. “That’s burning,” I said, pointing. “Oh, shit.” Arthur spun back around. I took the opportunity to jog down the hall, calling out something about hanging up my coat. I shut my bedroom door and pressed my forehead against the exposed brick wall. So much for gaining the upper hand. All I’d done by writing this story was learn three crucial facts. First, that apparently everyone from Arthur to The Paris Review preferred my writing when it was driven by hard-eyed loathing, slammed onto the page with a total disregard for things like beauty and civility. Second, that Selina Chan, cold and lethal though she might have been, was perfectly willing to write something positive—if she thought I deserved it. And third: that counter to everything I’d believed, I could impress her, or at the least surprise her. Pressing my forehead harder into the brick, my neck hot, my hands pushing de ep into my pockets, I told myself that this meant absolutely nothing to me. As all-consuming as the feud had become, Bill was right: It had given High and Dry an undeniable sense of momentum. Reviews had begun
to trickle in. Grant Kim at the L. A. Times had written a rave that should have had me buzzing, but it left me frustrated instead. “Bombastic and celebratory,” he’d said. “Ebullient, bighearted, adventurous.” And Steve Elgin at NPR, calling the book a “dark fairy tale,” “whimsical,” “fantastical” ... Somehow, they didn’t satisfy me. Grant Kim and Steve Elgin had loved my book, but they’d read a different book than the one I’d meant to write. The book I’d wanted to write had been the one Selina Chan described in City Magazine. The morning of Grant Kim’s review, I called Bill. “What if she’s right?” “Parker. What?” “What if Selina Chan is right, and High and Dry is an abject failure of a book.” “It’s not an abject fai— Parker, it’s a hell of a book, because you’re a hell of a writer.” “Good writers can write bad books,” I rasped out. “Happens all the time.” “Look. Where is this coming from?” “The City review. No one else ... I mean, Bill, she described exactly what I wanted to do with it. She—” I turned face down on my bed. The silence that followed was mortifying for us both. I muttered an apology to Bill and hung up, crawling back across the bed to my laptop. Rereading her Lit Hub interview, I could hear her smooth, contemptuous voice sliding through the air. I know what he wants: sympathy, not serious readership. So confident, so arrogant, as though she knew me better than I knew myself. I tried to focus on the good: that High and Dry wasn’t getting a critical drubbing; that, according to an email from Lauren’s
assistant, the book had already gone into a second printing. The best sign of all came early in the month, when I received an invitation from Kristen Keough—Coronation’s director of publicity—to speak on a panel at the Wiseman Foundation Literary Festival. Kristen had handled the launch for These Extraordinary Times, but High and Dry had been assigned to a publicity assistant named Amanda, who had never contacted me and who I suspected didn’t exist. Now I was back on Kristen’s radar. I know this is short notice, her email said, but the festival is at the Arnie Roe Convention Center in the Meatpacking District next weekend. Let me know if you can make it! Apparently, I had a functioning team again. Maybe even a real marketing plan. An hour later, Kristen had sent me a schedule with the panel’s information—The Future of the Novel, South Stage—and the stall where I’d be signing advance copies of High and Dry. I invited Arthur, but he had a letter-writing campaign uptown that afternoon, so I arrived alone around 3 PM, my exhibitor badge clipped to my jacket. The spine of the convention center arced gently above me, banks of LED lights zigzagging southward for half a block as a dull roar of sound echoed through the labyrinth of stalls. On the map in my hand, the space looked like a suburban neighborhood, but in the flesh it was a crush of bodies and bulging backpacks and, everywhere, phones—phones extended for selfies, phones aimed at displays, phones glinting under the harsh light. I ambled by the first row of stalls, where the Center for Fiction was handing out pamphlets about a new writing course, The New Yorker had a roulette wheel in volving its ubiquitous tote bags, and the booksellers— Mc Nally Jackson and Greenlight—were being swarmed by attendees who’d trouped over from a nearby stage. I gave the crowds a wide berth. The unfamiliar names interested me more at lit
fests and conventions. Every so often, lost in the sea of exhibitors, you’d stumble across something like a hyperlocal press that only published erotic fiction about Santa Claus, staffed by one wide-eyed, beaming person who wanted nothing more in life than to discuss their microscopic niche. I passed a stall for an indie press proudly displaying its inaugural hardback, then a graphic novelist who’d booked out a sliver of space and bedecked it with vinyl stickers of iguanas. As I approached Coronation’s booths, a nearby group of women glanced at me. I k ept walking, the back of my neck warm. Only around a fifth of people in publishing were men, and even fewer were straight or under forty. I was never as conscious of being single as when I went to events like this. Sometimes it felt like a trap, like if I spent too much time talking with any of these good-looking, well-read women, people would think I’d come here on the prowl. Even the idea was embarrassing. I checked my map and made a final turn. At a brightly colored kids’ booth, youth librarians with pin-studded lanyards were exclaiming over a fantasy blockbuster, and just ahead stood a romance imprint, Flutter, where a line had formed for T-shirts that read I . Halfway down the row, I reached Coronation’s booth. “Parker!” said Kristen, breathlessly surfacing from a cardboard box full of High and Dry advance copies. She was a fidgety, round-shouldered woman whose hunched posture always made her look like she was falling bodily into whatever activity she was doing. “Good, you’re early.” “Try to be.” “Yes! I remember from the last go-around.” For an awkward moment we faced each other across the displays for next year’s spring titles. I didn’t blame Kristen for anything that had happened with These Extraordinary Times, but it was uncomfortable to see her again, like
running into your ex- girlfriend in a grocery store. She edged around the stall’s front counter. “So, your panel is on the South Stage—just past those curtains over there. Walk with me.” We fell into st ep, the blue velvet drapes growing ahead. “Feeling ready?” she asked. “Yeah. A little nervous, I guess. I haven’t done an event since the whole feud thing started.” “About that. I wanted to warn you that they might ask about it.” “Really? But it doesn’t have anything to do with the Future of the Novel.” Kristen puffed out a breath that made her cheeks balloon outward. “Right, but...” We reached the blue curtains, and I caught a glimpse of a sectioned-off area where a hundred-odd chairs faced a modular stage. “Look, Parker,” she said. “We got some last-minute news. There have been a ... a couple of changes with the panel, and—” I pulled the curtain back, and she broke off midsentence. “Kristen,” I said. For once in my life, I wasn’t the earliest person to an event. Selina Chan, wearing a slim green dress and high-top sneakers, was helping a volunteer set the chairs into place onstage. I let the curtain fall and re volved on the spot, horrified, to face Kristen. She held up her hands. “Hey. Stay calm.” A strangled noise made its way from my throat. Stay calm? Selina Chan had probably been pr eparing all week to decimate me, to make some ironclad case that my books r epresented a danger to the Future of the Novel, while I wandered in blissful ignorance through my life, assuming I was going to have a normal conversation with another author, not someone who wanted to drain my blood from my veins like one of those dystopian torturers from Mad Max: Fury Road.
The audience was starting to take their seats. In fact, I realized, as I stuck my head through the curtain again, a long line had formed. They knew. They’d all known. I withdrew before anyone could see me and stripped off my coat. The exhibition hall was freezing, but sweat had begun to roll down my spine, and I assumed it wouldn’t stop until four thirty, when this panel was at its end and I could go back to my apartment to drown myself in the bathtub. “Parker, it’s going to be fine,” said Kristen. “Is it?” “I talked to the organizer. They’re not planning to do anything inflammatory.” “Right. Sure. Good.” “Listen”—she checked her phone—“I need to get back to the booth. I’ll see you there for the signing, okay? You’ll be great.” I couldn’t do anything but nod. As Kristen retreated into the crowd, I steeled myself, then slipped through the curtains and approached the stage. Selina Chan had vanished. The volunteer spotted me, rushing over with a hand outstretched, her lanyard bouncing against her neon T-shirt. “Parker! You found us. How are you feeling?” It would have been rude to say anything about throwing up or dying, so I said, “Great! Thank you! Sorry, what’s your name?” “Natalie.” We shook hands, and she lowered her voice. “Let me know if you need anything, okay? I know it’ll be a little awkward up there, but we don’t want any of you to feel uncomfortable.” She glanced toward another corner of the curtained area, where the final two panelists stood. I recognized both on sight. One, a white-haired woman in a canvas jumpsuit, was a National Book Award winner named Tessa Hargreaves. The other was a man in his fifties, slender and unsmiling, his hair slicked back from his prominent widow’s peak.
His presence erased any lingering doubts about whether the festival organizers had put this panel together as a publicity stunt. The man was Christian Gatehead, who’d raked Selina over the coals in The New York Times last year. I was beginning to wonder exactly how much blood would be spilled over the next hour when Natalie clapped her hands together in a kind of prayer gesture. “Look, I know this is ... but the moderator’s going to stick to the topic, all right?” Her anxious expression calmed my ragged nerves where nothing else had. Natalie hadn’t had any say in this deranged decision, and neither had our moderator, or National Book Award winner Tessa Hargreaves. They were d epending on me, Selina, and Christian to behave like civilized people. I would ignore Selina Chan for the entire panel. Couldn’t go wrong with pointed silence. “Absolutely,” I said. “It’s going to be great. Which seat am I?” Natalie indicated a chair on the far left, beside the chair where Selina Chan’s purse hung. Of course. I jogged up the st eps, cracked open the water bottle by the seat, and drained half of it in one go. When I surfaced, Christian Gatehead was standing before me, hand outstretched, wearing a grim smile. “Parker Navarro,” he said as I shook. “Nice to meet the only other person in publishing with the balls for some honesty.” “Hey, thank you,” I said, not completely sold on discussing my balls. That said, I wasn’t sure what else to say to Christian Gatehead, whose books I’d disliked in my teenage years and now hated. He always seemed to be trying to write something spare and incisive, but landed on cold and banal, like Yasunari Kawabata without the grace, or Raymond Carver but pretentious.
Guilt ran through me as I let go of Christian’s hand. He was a more important figure in fiction than I would probably ever be. Before I could conjure up something polite to say, Christian’s eyes strayed to the back of the seating area. He made a disgusted sound, then stalked to his chair. Selina Chan was sidling in between the blue curtains. She looked just as unconcerned as she had at Cipriani a month ago, eyes downcast at her phone. Fragments of her writing echoed in my mind as she st epped up the aisle. Thank you for an evening’s unexpected entertainment ... I know what he wants. At the bottom of the st eps, she glanced up and caught my eye. I set my jaw and held her gaze. She didn’t slow, didn’t falter. She glided up the stairs and into the seat beside me, where she looked out at the crowd with cool disinterest etched into her features. When I inhaled, I caught a faint grapefruit tang on the air. Her shampoo? Perfume? Something she’d massaged into her skin? I looked down at the double knots of her sneakers. She had a scar halfway up one of her shins. The hem of her dress had slipped an inch up her thigh, and her hands were draped over one knee. The gleaming ovals of her nails had been r epainted maroon. I settled back in my seat and forced my eyes away. It was bizarre to be this close to her after the past few weeks. Weeks of holding my phone inches from my face at two in the morning, scrolling through her press, checking her social media as though she were an ongoing breaking news story. While I stared ahead, her profile picture floated in my mind, the exact angle of her face in the studio light. Now, two feet to my left, she was taking her hair down from that intricate knot and letting it topple over one shoulder, black and smooth like water at night.
The audience filled to capacity, and a tech handed each of us a microphone. Finally, Natalie approached the podium, signaled to the videographer in the back, and said, “I think we’re about ready to start!” As she welcomed the audience, as she thanked the Wiseman Foundation, as she introduced our moderator, a mustached professor emeritus of English at NYU named Tony Gutierrez, my leg jogged and jogged and jogged. I was unrelentingly aware of Selina Chan’s total stillness to my side, as though she were a photograph of herself rather than the real thing. Everything she said was going to be a work of perfect accuracy, like a punch to the kidney, and I would have to sit here, defenseless, and take it. Tony Gutierrez took the podium to a round of applause. I brought my hands together a few times as he beamed at the audience. “Good afternoon, everybody! What a pleasure it is to gather on this blustery Saturday to celebrate literature together. It’s an honor to have this distinguished set of writers together on one stage, just a real honor.” He snapped out a page of notes. “Now! I’d love this conversation to flow freely between the four of you as we ask ourselves the question that’s gathered everyone here today: What might the future of the novel look like?” Eyes tracked from me to Selina to Christian. People in the crowd whispered. I wondered if they were voicing what I was thinking: That’s not what gathered anyone here today. They didn’t want to witness the civilized exchange of ideas. They wanted to see someone’s throat torn out. But Tony, who with his ponytail and his velour suit jacket looked like the coolest uncle at a wedding, betrayed no unease. He gestured to Tessa and Christian. “Let’s start with this side of the stage. Tessa, you first made waves with your novel White Haven in the early
eighties, and Christian, your first book, Arabella, was published in the late nineties. We can’t talk about the future of the novel without talking about the way books have changed in living memory. When you compare your older books to your newest, how would you say your work has reacted to our changing world?” “Oh, where do I start...” Tessa’s jumpsuit rustled, her free hand leaping emphatically as she spoke. Beside her, Christian was relaxed in an easy slouch, his elbow crooked over the back of his chair. They each spent a few minutes making comparisons between their novels, and Christian even allowed himself a smile when Tessa complimented his second book. My heart rate slowed. Maybe this panel would just be shoptalk, batting ideas back and forth with Tessa and Christian and Tony and our weird vestigial limb. This hopeful thought had just clawed its way through the thicket of my nerves when Tony said, “And what would you say is the biggest recent change in the way books are written, read, or discussed?” “Oh,” Tessa said, “I don’t think books are written so differently now than when I published White Haven. Longhand, typewritten, word- processed, it doesn’t matter. You put one word after the other and you try to choose the right ones. It’s as simple and impossible now as it has been for centuries.” Christian straightened up from his slump. “Well, I don’t know. When readers change, so do the writers. For instance, if you can’t assume a readership that can identify a work of any real intelligence, what does that do to a writer?” Clearly Tony smelled blood in the water, because he stilled behind the podium. “So, Christian,” he said, “you think the general readership has changed in the past few decades?”
“Of course it has.” Christian massaged the spot where his jaw met his ear, drawing the loose skin against his mandible. “Different appetites. And different levels of comprehension, obviously. A good writer wants to write for the good readers. The smart ones. But sometime in the past twenty years, the smart readers got clever, and that’s a different beast. You can’t write for a clever reader. They’re always above what they’re reading. For instance...” “When you say comprehension,” Tony broke in, but Christian rolled on. “—for instance, one of the readers here on this stage.” Something in the air sharpened. The rustles and sniffles of the audience went silent. Hundreds of eyes turned to Selina Chan. After a moment, Chan lifted her microphone. “Let’s be nice, Christian,” she said, smooth and quiet. “There’s no reason to insult Parker’s reading comprehension.” The tension snapped. The audience dissolved into laughter, and warmth rose into my cheeks, but I glanced out at the crowd and grinned. I’d take a mild dig if it meant all five of us edging past the el ephant in the room. “To your question, Tony,” Selina went on, “the biggest change over the course of my lifetime is the rise of the autofiction movement, although I think the trend may be behind us, for which I’m grateful.” Her voice sounded different than it had in the Cipriani library. She was barely murmuring into the microphone, her eyes fixed on the back curtains. “Not a fan?” Tony asked. “Well, some of my favorite books could be described as autofiction. But if a novel can pull off a Houdini-style es cape act, where you watch the author disappear through some trapdoor and leave behind nothing about themselves ... I’d love more of those books.” Selina stroked a loose strand
of her hair back behind her ear. “It’s also important to me that when the average person walks into a bookstore, they are not confronted with endless shelves of books about novelists.” Laughter rippled through the crowd. “A fair ask,” said Tony Gutierrez with a chortle. “Parker? I’m curious about your thoughts.” I lifted the mic. “Yeah. Yes! I—I’m liking all these ideas.” A quiet, scathing sound came from the chair next to me. I looked over at Chan. A foot away, her eyes bored into mine, disdainful, expectant. A novel in search of an idea, I heard her say. My eyes dropped to the corner of her mouth, which had drawn outward by a matter of millimeters. Anger made my gut contract. I looked back out at the crowd, feeling suddenly clearheaded. “I don’t know if I’ll ever write any autofiction. In my experience, a lot of authors come at writing from this feeling like—like you’re out of st ep with the world, like disjunction. Or maybe just loneliness. Anyway—I think, maybe, when autofiction is the prevailing form, it feels like a place you used to visit to explore and connect and wander and hypothesize, not just about yourself, but about all the types of mysteries around you, right, this place becomes a hall of mirrors. Which isn’t to say that there’s no interest or creativity in the skew,” I added. “Just that personally, I’d maybe want to walk out the door, into somewhere I’m not, like, always obliquely looking at myself.” I couldn’t help it. I glanced at Selina. She was looking into my eyes, point-blank, a furrow between her brows. Then she faced back to the podium, chin high. “Well, look,” said Christian, “I agree with all that. It was Faulkner, wasn’t it, who said a writer needs observation, experience, and imagination, and if one’s missing, the other two can rise up to cover the shortfall. But are we surprised that writers these days are banking more on experience than imagination?”
His voice had begun to harden. I could feel my pulse in my hands again. “I mean,” he went on, “you say you want writers to take a leap, Selina. But if they’re scared to risk writing something out of the box, why do you think that is?” Impatience flashed across Selina’s expression. “I don’t know, Christian, but it sounds like you’re itching to enlighten me.” “Okay, let’s—” said Tony, but Christian was already full steam ahead. “Yeah, I’ll enlighten you. I’ve been saying it for years. When some glorified blogger with a cult of personality can make or break a book, something’s rotten. And it creates a fear culture. And that’s creative poison.” He nodded in my direction. “Good thing Parker opened the floodgates. When every last warm body in publishing is overjoyed to see a hack finally get treated like a hack, you’d think that person might do some soul-searching.” The crowd’s scandalized silence rang out. I sat rigid, gripping my microphone, with no idea what to say. I started to lift the mic. Selina beat me there. “Tell me, Christian,” she said. “What about my reviews of your books, exactly, made you think I’d be interested in your thoughts or opinions?” Shocked titters stuttered across the crowd. “You—” Christian started, but Tony had found his voice. “All right,” Tony said firmly. “Let’s move forward here. We’ve talked a little about the past, a little about the present. Let’s look into the future, now...” Time passed uneasily. I didn’t think I was imagining that every time Christian spoke, Selina stiffened in her seat. I didn’t know what I would do if he went for her throat again. Technically, Christian was on my side, yet somehow, he’d put me in the ludicrous position of feeling like I needed to defend Selina Chan. A glorified blogger? You could find about two hundred unflattering adjectives for the woman beside me, but nobody could accuse her of
being unserious. Was that how I seemed to the audience, ready to make any claim about Selina to restore my own r eputation? That wasn’t what I’d been doing— was it? As the minutes ticked by, though, Christian seemed willing to stick to the subject. It was with obvious relief that Tony said, “It looks like we’re nearing our forty-five-minute mark here. Before we move into our Q and A, I want to close by asking you each to name a book you love. Parker, would you like to start?” “Sure,” I said, then immediately forgot every book I’d read in my life. “Um—I—well, this past week I read Aiden Linville’s Desperations, which was both prescient and terrifying.” For the second time, I heard a reaction from Chan. This time a brief, irritated exhalation. I didn’t look at her, paranoid that she would somehow read the truth on my face: that in reality, when I’d read her dismissive pan of Desperations, I’d found myself agreeing with her. But I said, “Yeah. Loved that book.” I lowered my microphone and looked at Chan, defying her to respond. She looked at me with disgust. Then she glanced to Tony. “I always like to recommend Asylum Piece, by Anna Kavan. It’s a criminally underread book about a narrator’s institutionalization in a Swiss clinic, shown through a series of fragmentary vignettes.” A red tint touched her cheeks. “The language is so sensuous and startling and, maybe even more rare for something that occasionally toes the line of surrealism, it’s so precise. Every sentence seems to walk down a passageway full of shadows. I really love this book.” Tessa began to speak, but I k ept looking at Chan’s profile, my defiance withering into disbelief. I’d never met anybody else who’d
read Asylum Piece, an obscure book I’d been trying to press on my friends since I was fifteen, a book that surprised me every time I opened it. I didn’t even hear Tessa’s answer. I could have said that, I was thinking. I could have taken a moment to collect my thoughts, to give my actual opinion. I’d said something nice. She’d said something honest. As I looked at Selina Chan, my dislike mingled with a strange, sudden envy. There was something pure and distilled about her, as though she had come from no place, influenced by no person, formed like a pearl in the heart of an oyster. I tried to imagine emerging that way from my childhood, from the fights over borrowed clothes and shattered glasses, from the yearslong feuds I’d moderated between my family, from being tugged in six directions every day of my life, trying to see every side, to satisfy every defendant or accuser, until I got out to college. And even now. Even now, when I picked up the phone. Of course this marble statue of a woman thought I was spineless and noncommittal. When you saw what a life full of objections turned into, you saw what it was worth to make yourself unobjectionable. But she made it look easy. She was straight-backed and calm, like she could say exactly what she wanted without an ounce of regret. She seemed so free.