Page 66 of Bad Words

Stop, don’t tempt me with the possibility, I’ll get too attached.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Sent: Dec 25, 2:40 PM Re: Kavan Retrospective

Ha.

Yes, I do have Christmas traditions. I ice skate at Rockefeller Center in the morning. Then I go home, watch a Christmas movie, and spend the afternoon cooking something special.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Sent: Dec 25, 2:41 PM Re: Kavan Retrospective

What’s today’s menu? Child marrow, served rare?

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Sent: Dec 25, 2:42 PM Re: Kavan Retrospective

I wish. Child marrow is so expensive these days.

This year: Duck confit over saffron risotto, roasted beets, Cabernet Sauvignon pairing. Crème brûlée with homemade blackberry ice cream.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Sent: Dec 25, 2:43 PM Re: Kavan Retrospective

My God. The degree to which you are a parody of yourself.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Sent: Dec 25, 2:44 PM Re: Kavan Retrospective

I only get one life. I want it to be full of what’s good.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Sent: Dec 25, 2:46 PM Re: Kavan Retrospective

Oh, I know.

I didn’t know why, when I pressed Send, the back of my neck felt momentarily hot. I didn’t know why I stood aimlessly tapping through my phone, waiting, for five full minutes.

I didn’t know why I looked up with the feeling of emerging from a different reality, but when I did, my apartment seemed fresher somehow than it had this morning; my bookshelves occurred to me, jumping out in my vision as though they’d just been installed, and the same happened with the cookbooks on the shelves, and the Blu-rays that Arthur had lined up under the TV. I thought of the jazz club a few blocks away I’d somehow never visited, of the hip-hop dance and leatherworking classes I’d pinned to the corkboard in my room and never attended.

At dinner, Selina had said she always stayed in the city for the holidays. Of course she had rigorously developed personal traditions. Of course she would take the train to Rockefeller Center for a skating session on her own, without a care in the world. I doubted she’d have been bothered to be snowed in for an entire month.