Page 134 of Bad Words

I watched Joyce and Mike haggle over a first edition of Kindred. The light through the mullioned windows tumbled off the dust in the air, disturbed by fourteen pairs of hands. The room had grown darker and darker as the colorful spines disappeared into boxes.

I wanted to say something intelligent and restrained. Instead, when I opened my mouth, a dejected sound slid out.

“There we go. I know.” Kellie gave me a bracing pat on the knee. “But all is not lost, right?”

“Yeah.” I turned over a translation of Beowulf in my hands. “How are you always so unfazed?”

“Unfazed? I’m plenty fazed.” Kellie took the Beowulf from my hands and tossed it into her own box. “Ask me how fazed I am. Do it. I dare you.”

I managed to give her a sidelong smile, and I asked her.

At the end of the day, Scott gathered us at the round table. “Now, on Monday, we’ll probably hit some bumps in the road, but we’ll figure it out. Just think of the time and money you’ll save commuting.”

Some appreciative murmurs, a couple of chuckles. I didn’t join in. Of course I recognized the convenience of remote work. It wasn’t even that I believed the magazine’s operations would necessarily suffer, conducted over text and video. Having lost the Densmore Foundation grant, we were probably lucky that Nextward had decided to try this instead of bumping us into a coworking space and putting us through another round of layoffs. Still, it seemed to me that in losing this place, we’d lost a part of what we were, failing the decades of writers who’d come before us.

I lingered so long in my office that by the time I emerged into the hall, the whole floor seemed to echo with quiet. I was the last one here.

When I got out to the fourteenth-floor landing, my steps slowed. Parker was waiting across from the elevator, one hand in his coat pocket, his head bowed over an open paperback.

“Parker,” I said, hurrying up to him.

He looked up, smiling. “Hey.” He bookmarked his page and kissed me. “Surprise.”

I kissed him again, my hands loosely encircling his wrists. “Thank you for coming.”

“Of course. How was it?”

“Terrible. In all the ways I imagined and some others I didn’t prepare for.”

He looked toward the sheer face of the oak wall, CITY MAGAZINE carved in deep. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I know you loved this place.”

I reached out to touch the edge of the C. “I remember my first day here. I got out of the elevator and saw this, and I felt like it had been here forever.” My hand lowered. “Like it was going to be here forever.”

Parker trailed his hand over the wall, too. I wondered what he was thinking, if, someday, I would see this moment crystallized in something he wrote.

He approached the glass door. I followed, and we stood looking through at the bare walls. The tessellated carpeting.

“The framed covers used to hang down this side.” I pointed. “And that’s the library at the end.”

“Any chance of a goodbye tour?” Parker said.

“I think I can arrange that.” I opened the door, and we stepped through. “Why? Do you want to see the office where I spent hours seething over your press clippings?”

He tucked my hair behind my ear. “Maybe I just like getting to see your sentimental side.”

“Don’t tell anybody I have one.”

“Your secret’s safe with me.”

That night, we took the train to South Slope, where Scott lived, and where he’d decided to host what we’d called the Out-of-Office Party. Parker and I walked up a long line of row houses in the cool March dusk, the air laced with a drizzle so fine that I could barely feel it on my skin. We pushed through a waist-high iron gate and rang the old, glowing bell at Scott’s home, a brownstone that had been in his family for a century.

“I wonder if Jacob and Cassie are here yet,” I said, listening to the chatter seeping through the door.

“Arthur’s coming too. He’ll probably be an hour late, though.”

The door swung open, and noise, light, and music enfolded us. “Selina!” said Kellie. “And Parker Navarro. Hello. Hi.”

“Kellie, right?” said Parker, shaking her hand as we stepped in.