Page 110 of Bad Words

Scott settled back into his office chair, frowning. “Asylum Piece … the Anna Kavan? Marcy would have reviewed that … fifteen years ago?”

“Eighteen. I—I just wanted to tell you how much that piece meant to me. And that”—I cleared my throat—“that it still means everything to me to be here every day. No matter how different things look.”

Scott looked at me in astonishment. I ducked out before he could find his voice.

The difference in my departure time gave me enough leeway to beat the rush hour and nip into the Chinese grocery store a subway stop away for ground bean sauce. It would also give me enough time to steam the buns.

I found cooking meditative; it had never made me nervous before. Of course, I’d never cooked for someone who’d occupied my thoughts like this.

For that matter, I couldn’t remember even knowing anyone who’d occupied my thoughts like this. In the couple of faltering six-month relationships I’d had in my twenties and the endless stream of first and second dates in between, my interest in men had always been something slow and measured, something I could, to a degree, evaluate and control. This was different, this spiky, erratic feeling that had me distracted at work, that had me losing track of paragraphs halfway through a book, that had me staring into the darkness beyond the subway windows and thinking about the sight of him, messy-haired, in his apartment doorway.

I stirred the onions in the skillet, trying to steel myself. Parker was used to being liked; he was probably used to being wanted, too. The important thing tonight was to stay steady and professional. Not to show myself.

He buzzed two minutes before seven. My heart in my throat, I pressed the button with the open-door icon and flipped the dead bolt. I stood by the mat, thinking about Parker in the elevator, his hands in his pockets.

Two knocks on my door.

I tugged my hair down from its ponytail, then tucked it behind my ears. I forced myself to think of Emily, told myself that it didn’t matter how I looked, but I still glanced back at my dark reflection in the oven.

I pulled the door open. Parker had a bottle of wine in one hand and a finished hardcover of High and Dry in the other. His shoulders lowered slowly, as though he’d just drawn a deep breath, and it occurred to me that he might be nervous about what I intended to ask him. I wanted to reassure him. I wanted to look at him for a long time, the lapels of his wool coat, the corner of his jaw.

“Parker,” I said.

“Selina.”

When had it started feeling like this to hear him say my name, like a shot of adrenaline? Had that been true since October?

“Come in.”

“Thanks.” He slipped his shoes off inside, surveying the kitchen, the living area. I wondered how my home looked through his eyes.

“Anything surprising?” I asked.

“Yeah. Where’s the rack? And the iron maiden?”

I tried to suppress a smile. “They’re collapsible. They fold up into the wall like a Murphy bed.”

“Right, those classic Brooklyn space savers.” He was smiling, too.

I looked away. “You can hang your coat in the hallway. There’s a hook by the clock.”

As Parker took off his coat, I turned back to the steamer on the counter. I didn’t want to watch him, but when he emerged from the hall, I couldn’t help it. He wore a black knit shirt that clung to his shoulders, his hair falling over one side of his forehead.

“It smells delicious,” he said, scanning the table, the centered carafe, the reed placemats topped with symmetrically placed wineglasses, cups for water, and folded napkins. “This is way more than you needed to do. Not that I’m surprised.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said, handing him a corkscrew.

“What’s in there?” he asked, nodding to the bamboo steamer.

“Goubuli buns. My family’s from Tianjin, so—street food. If you’ve ever had pork buns from a dim sum place, those are similar.”

“Tianjin.” He twisted the screw into the cork. “That’s in the north?”

“Yes, a couple of hours from Beijing. Though my dad’s side is from Hong Kong, originally.”

“Do you go over there often?”

“No, I haven’t been in, I think, fifteen years.” I hesitated. Some part of me wanted to admit that without my parents by my side, I worried that I’d feel like a tourist in China, foreign to my own heritage, my own extended family, my own body. I considered admitting that these recipes, and Chinese books in translation, and even the language dying on my palate, sometimes made me feel like a tourist, too, as though these efforts to come closer only made me more aware of an unbridgeable distance. But to say any of this to him would have felt the same way: a painful try at closeness.