Page 7 of Bad Words

“FiDi. There’s some publishing party. Scott made us all swear to come.”

“You’re going to a party? On a Wednesday?”

“I know. But one drink and then I’m home.” As we emerged onto the sidewalk, the wind combed the cool evening air through our hair. I leaned up and hugged Jacob.

“Good luck,” he said. “Text me if you start hyperventilating in a bathroom.”

“Jacob.”

“Oh, how I miss College Selina.” He waved and walked north.

With the breeze humming in my ears, I watched him move lightly, purposefully back toward his beautiful life. We were thirty-four now and the novelty of Jacob having a kid wasn’t so shocking anymore, but sometimes, in moments like these, the difference between our lives hit me afresh. I’d be standing somewhere like this, alongside a road full of cars, in the black space beneath the old train line, watching the world move and change, feeling pinned in place. I’d wonder if I belonged in any real way to that world, where people tumbled pleasantly along in love, or if something about me was just askew enough to put me on the outside.

I caught myself before I got too wistful. Perspective, after all, came from being on the outside of something. Better to be out here and objective than inside and lost.

I buttoned my coat and headed for the subway.

The Maynard-Roth party was held at Cipriani, a venue whose two levels of gray granite columns loomed over Wall Street. In publishing, the place was best known for hosting the National Book Awards every November, but tonight the atmosphere was more casual. The cavernous ballroom had been cleared of the usual lavish dining setup. Instead, a hundred small high-top tables formed long aisles down the hall, and teak easels, at intervals, displayed four-foot blowups of Maynard-Roth book covers. Hundreds of people in neutral coats stood grouped around them, chatting over drinks, their profiles lit by the racks of stage lights that hung suspended from the seventy-foot ceiling.

I wound between groups and ignored the eyes that strayed to me. One person in my wake said, in a lowered voice, “Was that—?” I increased my pace.

At the curtained front windows stood tables of hors d’oeuvres, plus the bar. I bolted a few slices of cheese and swept up a glass of bubbles, but before I could retreat, an eager voice said, “Excuse me, are you Selina Chan?”

I turned, bracing myself. A pair of women holding champagne flutes were gazing at me with expressions of morbid fascination.

I managed a taut smile. “Yes. Hi.”

The woman who’d spoken was close to six feet tall and cupped her champagne glass as though it were a mug of hot cocoa. Bending toward me like a reed, she said, “I’m Eileen. I do data at Harper. I read all your pieces.”

As her friend’s head bobbed, my shoulders relaxed. So they didn’t hate me. In criticism you never knew who was carrying one of your less flattering sentences around in their pocket, nursing it like a bottle.

“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate that.”

Eileen exchanged an uninterpretable look with the small blonde friend. Had I somehow, in five words, said something abnormal? That would be a record, even for me.

But then Eileen said, “This is my friend Courtney Mitchell.” Panic spread over Courtney’s face, but Eileen forged on: “Courtney’s an author. Her debut comes out next August and it’s brilliant.”

“Ah.” I nodded to Courtney. “I’ll keep an eye out. What’s the title?”

Her face turned bright red. “Oh, wow—thank you so much. It’s called Mean Streak. I hope you like—if you read it, I mean, not that I expect you to—”

“I’ll read it,” I said. “Congratulations on the sale.”

A profusion of giddy thanks, and they disappeared into the crowd. I wrote Courtney’s name into my phone and breathed. That could have been much worse.

After a full circuit of the ballroom and mezzanine, I’d found nobody from City. Inconvenient, since Scott needed to see I’d been here before I could escape. Moments later I’d been roped into conversation with an editorial director asking if I’d slide his author’s latest into my queue. “Selina Chan, out in public!” he exclaimed with the rare, brash confidence of literary extroverts. “A review from you, I know Jack would be thrilled…” Meanwhile, from over his shoulder, two men’s venomous glares were burning into my forehead.

None of it surprised me. I was less than beloved among novelists. Occupational hazard. Six months ago, Christian Gatehead had referred to me—on the record with The New York Times!—as “an insufferable little whiner delivering undergraduate-level analysis with the self-righteousness of a youth pastor.” Better characterization than anything in his past three books.

I did another round of the mezzanine with my glass emptying. I hadn’t eaten enough. What was I doing here, in a hall of people who looked at me and saw either a tantalizing shortcut to commercial success or the literary Antichrist? I never felt so far away from the point of literature, an art form built on honesty and intimacy, as I did at these events. To my left, a group of authors burst into laughter over a comment made by the bestselling writer among them. They gazed at her like they wanted to eat her.

I wished I were at home. As usual, I wished I were alone.

And when I stopped at the mezzanine rail and glanced back down at the ballroom, I wished I were anywhere on earth but here, because stepping over the threshold in a dark felt coat, spots of color high in his cheeks from the cold, was none other than Parker Navarro.

My breath stuck in my throat like a bone. I was seized by the absurd urge to run. Instead I stood utterly stiff, hammered down into place like a nail.

Navarro slipped out of his coat. He was lean and angular, the first author I’d ever seen whose headshots didn’t overstate his appearance to the point of unreality. He actually looked like that: debonair, something sorrowful about his mouth, like he was made for black and white.