Page 51 of Bad Words

Trying to be surreptitious, I slipped my phone from my coat pocket, navigated to the City website, and searched Juliette Liao. Selina had published a review of House Hearth Home late last week. I’d missed it. She hadn’t posted it to social media.

I began to read. Beside me, Selina worked her way effortfully through small talk, but in my hand was the articulate fullness of her appreciation. To read Juliette Liao is to be in the presence of such intelligence that you feel small, and then, often in the same paragraph, in the presence of such sensitivity that you feel yourself expanding.

I felt that satisfying feeling of juncture, the sensation you get when you’ve been trying to put your finger on the right word and it finally floats up to you out of the dark. This wasn’t a personal essay. There was nothing about Selina’s life in here, about what Juliette’s books meant to her. But the devotion rang through every word, the care she’d taken in drawing lines from House Hearth Home to Willa Cather and the Zen sutras.

I glanced over at Selina, feeling a begrudging respect. Maybe, in the past few months, I’d begun to forget this: that criticism could be beautiful, not just a collection of reactions but a way to organize and illuminate the world.

I didn’t have to like Chan to accept that she was a good critic. There was actually something sad about it, something stalwart and defiant about how fiercely she clung to this art form, which was, by all accounts, dying.

My phone buzzed in my hand. I glanced down.

1 New Message in Chan Pan Support Group

I felt a pulse of discomfort and returned my phone to my pocket.

The voices beside me had come to a coda. I glanced up to see Selina saying, “Well, it was wonderful to meet you.” As her eyes fell on me, her face turned to cold glass. “Parker.”

“Selina.”

Juliette looked between us with surprise. “Oh, do you two know each other?”

“Yeah. We—yes,” I said, trying to force civility into my tone. “Selina’s a critic with City Magazine.”

Juliette’s papery eyelids fluttered rapidly. “Selina! You’ve been withholding!”

Selina let out a small laugh that sounded nothing like the derisive snap she’d aimed at me in the past. The sound was low, almost private. “Strangely enough, when you lead a conversation saying that you’re a critic, it tends to set authors on the defensive.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Juliette said.

Selina laughed again, and I managed to smile. Chester was at the register, closing up, and the other audience members were trickling toward the doors. Juliette stood from her armchair, slipping on her woolen coat. “Well, what are you two doing now? The snow delayed my flight, so I haven’t eaten. I’d love to treat you both to something.”

Selina and I stared at each other for a split instant, and I knew somehow that we were thinking the same thing: that however much we hated each other, we wanted to spend time with Juliette more.

We looked back to her as one. “No, please,” I said, “I’ll treat you.”

“Yes,” said Selina, “Parker will treat you.”

I felt a bizarre desire to laugh.

Juliette waved her hand. “Coronation gave me a card, bless them. Come on—let’s make a break for it, before the snow gets worse.”

Chapter FourteenSelina

Outside the Dog’s Ear, the snowfall had worked itself up into a blizzard. Juliette, Parker, and I made it a block and a half before caving to the wind.

“It’s freezing,” Parker called over the relentless blast of snowy air, like the steward of the obvious he was.

“There,” I yelled back, pointing to a sliver of gold up the block, a window cut into the ground floor of a blurred brick apartment building. As we approached, the light shimmered into detail, revealing a decal curving over the window that read OLD JOHN’S. On the other side: square-paneled ceiling, saddle leather booths.

I yanked the door wide, and Parker ushered Juliette inside. Bundled in her coat, she looked like she could have floated away with the wind, like a balloon spun out of wool.

The door snapped shut. Everything quieted. We glanced around, breathing hard, our faces chafed red.

We stood in an old-fashioned diner. Checkerboard tiles, a glowing drinks menu hovering like a cinema marquee over a small marble counter, menus clad in sweaty faux leather. The place was apocalyptically empty. One bundled-up man nursed a black coffee in a back corner. Christmas jazz whispered over fuzzy speakers, tripping from blue note to blue note.

“Three?” said the host, a woman in her early twenties.

“Three,” I said.