Page 27 of Bad Words

A pause.

Jacob, I said. Oh boy, what?

I switched windows into Bluesky and found thirty notifications. When I refreshed, thirty-five.

1m ago @SelinaChan What a disgusting and invasive thing to be written about you

1m ago @SelinaChan lawsuit when? wtf were they thinking letting him publish that

1m ago @SelinaChan hopw u r taking time for sel f care sweetie

I stared at this last post. Self-care? Historically, people on the internet had been more likely to recommend me self-immolation than self-care.

A text dropped down from the top of my screen. Jacob had replied:

Enjoy.

[LINK: “Who Will Know Me When I’m Gone?”—New Short Fiction by Parker Navarro—TheParisReview.com]

Still cross-legged on the floor, I began to read. My mouth drifted open.

Halfway through, I let out a disbelieving laugh, stood up so quickly that I nearly lost my balance, and grabbed my laptop from the table.

Excerpt:

“Who Will Know Me When I’m Gone?”

by Parker Navarro

In the concrete heart of the critic’s apartment building, three elevators rise to different heights. The first elevator rises as high as the twelfth floor and the business center. The second can take a person all the way up to the pool, assuming that person is worth the pool. The third elevator shaft spans the full height of the building, basement to fifty-third floor, where the critic lives. On the evening of February 3 she slides down the gullet of elevator three and counts time to herself. She lives thirteen seconds above the people who are worth the pool and twenty-nine above those who are worth the business center and forty above the man in the lobby who tells her, Stay warm, ma’am, as he opens the front door for her to pass, unpausing, through.

The critic is on time for her seven o’clock reservation. She carries a black leather bag that holds at all times her uncased cellphone, two red lip stains, three fifty-dollar pens, the current novel, a notebook produced in Japan, a wallet produced in Germany, within the wallet two credit cards with a collective $53,000 limit, and gum. On the street she is never recognized but often admired. She knows that the exact symmetry of her features affords her certain opportunities at host stands and bars. Even the disaffected greeter at the front of the restaurant fumbles his words when she arrives.

At 7:02, the host at the stand, a fragile eighteen-year-old pursuing a degree in literature, says, I’m so sorry, we’re clearing your table now, it’ll be five minutes still.

My reservation was for seven o’clock, the critic says.

Yes, ma’am. I apologize. But the table over there, you can see, that’s the one.

I see a table that isn’t ready for a seven o’clock reservation.

Yes. Of course. I understand.

Do you? Are you able to understand?

Yes, ma’am, I understand.

The critic considers the review she will write on each of the major platforms. A beautiful paragraph. An elegant cruelty. Maybe to maximize its reach she should translate it into each of the five languages she speaks. Later, as she teases pieces of the lobster away from its exoskeleton, she thinks with weary disgust that to keep a promise is not so very difficult. The lobster passes into her esophagus, and the current novel lies prostrate on the table beside her. When she was twenty-seven, she flew back to Denver and took up a post at her shrunken mother’s bedside. Not an easy promise to keep, but she was there. Her father excused himself regularly to weep and otherwise spent his hours bowed over the bed or entangling himself into her mother’s hair or fingers. The critic asked, upright, Do you need the blinds drawn, Mom.

She turns the page of the novel, then swirls her wine and examines its pale red legs running down the delicate glass. Her mother said no and reached for the critic, who enfolded her hand around her mother’s knuckles and moved her thumb neatly along the maze of the prominent veins. Her mother said, Would you tell me a story?

When the waiter arrives, the critic says, I’ve been waiting for this check half my life.

I’m so sorry.

This is a restaurant full of apologies, she says, handing him her credit card. Her mother’s eyes closed while the critic tried to think how to begin. Several minutes later the card comes back, and the critic replaces it in the German wallet, then closes the current novel, parsing her dislike. At the next table, some man, his face a blurred brushstroke of rosacea, has split his mouth open to display laughing teeth. The woman opposite plumps her hair with a self-conscious hand. The critic’s disgust and impatience intensify, and she carves a path in her black coat through the bobbing lights, the heads of the candles in their crystal jars bowing fearfully in her direction. Fifty-three years later she will die in a hospital bed in San Jose, the only person in the room.

At home, the critic adds resistance to the weight machines and watches the flexion of her deltoids in the mirror. They twitch and gleam and relax, and she counts them into and out of their suffering. Afterward, she spends a quarter hour before the full-body mirror in her bedroom. She inches her fingers down the yielding contours of her waist and wonders why she is still so hungry …