Page 23 of Bad Words

Parker Navarro

11:42 PM

Thanks, guys. You’re the best.

Parker Navarro

11:43 PM

I don’t know why I let Selina Chan, of all people, get in my head

Parker Navarro

11:43 PM

I guess I’ve just got to remind myself: I might have bad reviews, but at least I don’t have to wake up in the morning knowing my broken personality will alienate everyone in my life

Aiden Linville laughed at Parker Navarro’s message

Jenny House laughed at Parker Navarro’s message

J.J. Purnell laughed at Parker Navarro’s message

The messages kept arriving as I sat down at the table, but I lost track. I opened my laptop, and there was the interview again, still glaring out at me from my most recent tab.

That might just be because he lacks the conviction.

I’ll show you conviction, I thought, tossing my phone into the sofa. Looseness spread through my body, the kind I hadn’t felt all night, and a thrilling clarity pierced the rubbery surface of my drunkenness. At last I was alone. Alone, I could say something. I could speak to her.

With a gray haze eating into the edges of my vision, I opened a blank document and began to write.

I awoke the next morning to find that I’d dragged my laptop into bed with me.

When I moved, the screen lit up, showing me what I’d done last night. I reread, my eyebrows slowly drawing together.

Then I called Bill.

Chapter SixSelina

@ParkerNavarroWrites: The news is out … excited to share my first piece of short fiction soon in @TheParisReview Daily! Keep an eye on this space. :)

Unbelievable. Genuinely unbelievable that the same journal that gave us the Art of Fiction interview series had decided to debase themselves by publishing Parker Navarro. Had he bribed somebody? Had Bill Owens leveraged every ounce of cultural capital he’d earned in four decades as an agent to get a story through the door? Had—

“Selina.”

I looked up from my laptop. “What?”

Hayden was giving me her flattest smile. “Are we interrupting?”

“No.” I cleared my throat. Shut my laptop. “Of course not.”

“Well, I was wondering,” she said from her armchair, “what we can do to keep this momentum building.”

Down the table, Joyce exchanged a glance with Mike, our global news lead. Mike was a burly seventy-something man, serene and good-humored, who had worn the same pair of orthopedic slippers every day since I’d joined the team. He and Joyce were City’s two seniormost staff members, predating even Scott. Easy to guess why they were upset. For the past three weeks, Hayden had interrupted every meeting to review Navarro’s press, which podcast had featured him, which influencer had mentioned me, how we could push the feud into new corners of the internet as other corners moved on. I doubted this had been thrilling for two writers who’d been here since the magazine’s communications were conducted by fax machine.

“Did you want to add something, Mike? Joyce?” Hayden asked.

“No, no!” said Joyce, fluttering her hands near her face.