Page 41 of Bad Words

Selina Chan paid you $5.00. “Your next advance.”

I stopped in the middle of the subway platform. Someone knocked into my shoulder, and I hurried into the shadow of an I beam.

I knew I’d started this round, baiting her with the tip jar, but it still felt bizarre to see a private message from Selina Chan sitting in my palm. As I jogged up from the platform, filtering between a group of backpacked women speaking French, I pulled her up on social media.

@SelinaChan: You can now leave tips on your favorite articles at the @CityMagazine website. To clarify, these tips don’t drop into the writers’ pockets, but they’ll contribute to the magazine’s ongoing health.

@SelinaChan: @JohnDreyfus: Still developing my opinion.

@SelinaChan: A list with some interesting choices (#4, #27) and a number of glaring omissions (Bolaño, Ward, Cusk). [LINK: The 50 Best Novels of the 2000s]

I shook my head, hoisting my backpack up on one shoulder as I emerged in the Flatiron District. Had any non-robot in the history of social media ever sounded so aggressively unavailable? Her posts were so removed, so distant, as though even her own feelings were items that she had to reach into a glass case to access.

But I knew better. She might have liked to pretend she was above the rest of us mortals, but I’d caught her in the bar, staring into the book she was reading as though it exerted a gravitational pull on her. In that moment she’d been present, immediate, reachable.

An email had arrived while I’d been underground. I paused on Fifth Avenue to read, loitering by the window of a flagship clothing store, where dozens of spidery mannequins were drowning in their expensive coats.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Blast from the past

Hi Parker,

How are you? I’m not sure if you remember me, but we went to Jefferson together. I was pretty good friends with Tyler Pressman, and if I’m remembering right, you and I bumped into each other a few times when he had those astronomy parties senior year, haha.

I’m emailing because I’ve joined the editorial team of The Bay Now, a newish arts and culture magazine based in South SF. Obviously, we’ve all been following your feud with Selina Chan, and I watched the livestream of that festival on Saturday. I could just see the story there! I’m champing at the bit here to do a profile.

I’m sure you have lots of demands on your time, but it’d be an honor to have you in our pages!

Take care, and say hey to Tyler for me,

Brian

I lowered my phone and watched a passing biker nearly mow down a couple of tourists, who leaped coltishly back onto the sidewalk while he yelled obscenities over his shoulder. None of this really registered with me. I did remember Brian, an easygoing eighteen-year-old with a holographic-stickered longboard and an infectious laugh. In the past couple of weeks, the feud’s exposure had died down, but that petition about the short story was still doing the rounds among Selina Chan’s fan club, and Bill was sending me a digest of media requests every few days. I couldn’t answer everything that came in, but turning down someone I knew from high school seemed callous.

In any case, there was no time to respond now—I’d be late to meet my editor. I starred the email for later and turned from the sunlit avenue onto a narrow street, dim even though it was high noon, with blue shadows strafing down the buildings from the scaffolding. Halfway down the block I shouldered into a Greek restaurant decked with iron café tables, where live vines spiraled around rafters painted sunrise yellow. The stone ceiling was curved, cavelike, and mosaics underfoot surged into curling cobalt waves.

“Parker!”

I saw a hand waving from the window and hurried over, my mouth immediately dry. I hadn’t seen Lauren since These Extraordinary Times had bombed. She gave the impression of a sculpture someone had built out of wire and silk thread: a delicate, almost fragile person whose fine silver hair formed a thin layer over her skull. She treated me to a brief, incongruously brutal handshake. “You’re early.”

“Yes, sorry, hope that’s okay.”

“Of course it is. Sit, sit … I’m happy to see you,” she said to her menu, peering through her reading glasses at the appetizers. “Before we toast to your successes, I do have a question about current events. I assume you’ve been following the petition that’s been circulating online?”

“Definitely, yeah. Bill and I are keeping an eye on it.”

“And what do you think?”

Lauren’s eyes were still roving over the soups. I realized what her studiously casual attitude meant: Coronation was afraid that I was about to get taken to court.

I laughed. “No. It’s—nothing’s going to happen. Selina Chan isn’t going to sue me.”

Lauren’s eyes flicked up. “You don’t think she has it in her, hmm?”

“That’s not it. Just—” I struggled for words. “It’s not her style. She already wrote that letter to the editor. She’s not going to do anything else.” I paused. I didn’t know how to explain why, having had exactly two blistering conversations with Selina, I somehow knew that she was about as likely to sue me as she was to make a post saying, Parker Navarro wounded my tender feelings!