Page 9 of Bad Words

“I’m serious,” she said. “Don’t start this conversation. Walk away.”

Her voice was exactly what I’d imagined: a cool, crisp alto. She seemed to use her tongue and teeth more actively than most people, reminding me of a snake’s hiss, a cat baring its gums before it spits.

On any other day, I might have taken her advice. But I could feel the liquor in my blood now, in my capillaries, rolling close to the surface of my cheeks.

“No,” I said, stepping deeper into the library. “I think you owe me an explanation.”

“The only thing I owe you is an honest evaluation of your books. That’s my job. And your job is to react professionally to reviews of your work, which means turning around”—she nodded to the door—“and leaving.”

Something began to beat rhythmically in my gut. “You want to talk to me about professionalism after what City published this morning?”

Chan dropped her phone into her purse with a casual flick of her wrist, then turned from the window to face me. Under the black satin blazer was a green dress that shimmered when she moved, and as the light played over her features I was disgusted to realize how attractive she really was, even more attractive than the evidently unphotoshopped picture on her City Magazine profile. How was this fair? Why was the worst person in the world allowed to look like this?

“So,” she said, “you think my review was unprofessional.”

“Completely.”

“Okay. Tell me: What should I have done differently? Should I have lied? Should I pretend to enjoy every book I read? Is that what you want City Magazine to turn into?”

“No. Come on. Obviously not.”

“Then what do you want from me?”

“I want to know what your real issue was with my books!” I said, my voice rising. “I’ve read your other reviews, and—”

“What, all of them?”

“Yes. All of them.”

For the first time, Chan looked surprised. Her eyebrows flinched toward each other.

“And,” I barreled on, “you didn’t write about other people’s books like you wrote about mine. I want to know why.”

In the small contractions of the muscles around her eyes, I could see her deciding whether or not to give me a real answer. I felt a pulse of impatience, hating her composure. The slight tilt of her chin. For a single bizarre moment, I imagined reaching out, disrupting the perfect sweep of her hair.

Finally, she said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Bullshit.”

She shrugged. “My reviews speak for themselves. Obviously you can hang pretty little sentences on every paragraph just because you feel like it, but don’t expect to earn my respect like that.”

“I’m not trying to earn your respect!”

“Fascinating. Then why are you still talking to me?”

I set my empty glass on a desk with a clatter. “Maybe I want to know how you sleep at night. Maybe I want to know if you ever take a single second to think about the actual people writing the books you read.”

“Oh, here we go.” Chan snapped her purse shut, slung it over her shoulder, and stalked toward me. “Yes. Since you ask: I think about authors constantly. I think about what you say and how you say it. I think about what you wanted to accomplish, and how you failed to accomplish it.” She stopped feet away. Her eyes, as cold and dark as deep seawater, utterly devoid of remorse, bored into mine. “I don’t do retractions. If you tracked me down looking for an apology, it’s not happening.”

I’d never been a confrontational person. Growing up, I’d been the kid hiding in the back of the neighborhood bookstore, having slipped away from my parents’ dinner-table arguments, and well into my twenties I’d hovered around the fringes of every social circle, dancing out of my friends’ personal lives. The idea of me picking a fight was ludicrous.

But as I stood there, staring into Selina Chan’s eyes, loathing her with an almost nuclear force, I suddenly understood the appeal. In that moment I detested her in such a pure, uncomplicated, almost exhilarating way. It was an anger that gave me a clear vision of myself. No, I wasn’t a saint, but at least I wasn’t this: a condescending narcissist who apparently thought that being intelligent and beautiful gave you license to look down your nose at the rest of the world. At least I built things rather than knocking them down.

“You must be such a miserable person,” I said, my voice shaking, “to get this kind of joy out of ripping people’s work to shreds.”

“Joy? You think I got joy out of your books? I was assigned to them.”

“But you could have said no to High and Dry!”