Page 5 of Bad Words

“Working on it,” I said under my breath.

The clock hit eleven, and the door swung open. In swept our editor in chief with the embattled air of a general on day one hundred of the siege. Scott Goodwin had been City’s editor for twenty years. Every year he looked more and more the part, with his trim, graying beard and his rotation of well-cut suits.

He lowered himself into his chair, shook his expensive sleeves up his forearms, and interlocked his arthritic knuckles. “Good morning, all,” he said. His eyes strayed to Hayden but didn’t linger. “Let’s kick right off with features. Joyce, what have you got?”

We looked to our features editor, Joyce Crafton, a pixieish woman in her sixties whose tufts of silver hair stuck out from her scalp in every direction. This combined with her wide, unblinking eyes gave her a look of recent electrocution. “What do we think about Teresa Cagle?” she said. “I have an idea for her latest, Pathogenius—you know, with the alien frame narrative? I want to put it in conversation with War of the Worlds.”

“What’s the gist?” Scott asked.

“So”—Joyce adjusted her reading glasses with a jittering fingertip— “with the pandemic in mind, I’ve been thinking about barren environments. Safe from disease, but hostile to life: Is that more comforting or menacing? The way that both books—”

Hayden cleared her throat. The fourteen of us looked to her corner. She was still holding her phone near her face, as if she were about to return to an unmissable video call.

“Hi.” She broke into a wide smile, as apple-cheeked as a cursed Victorian doll. “I’m so sorry to interrupt the pitch sesh. So great to see you guys again!”

Nobody answered.

“I was wondering…” Hayden looked to Joyce. “Who’s this Teresa Cagle person? Path—what’s this book?”

“Oh, it’s wonderful, it’s called Pathogenius,” said Joyce quickly, shifting forward in her seat so that her glasses skittered back down to the tip of her nose. “It came out in July.”

“Okay! So, like, a summer blockbuster? Book of the season?”

“Well … not exactly. It didn’t get the attention it deserved.”

“Ooh. Bummer.” Hayden’s smile flagged. “And the author is…”

“Teresa Cagle. A real talent. Her first collection was in 2003. Then a novel in 2012 that, I think, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Cir—”

Hayden, who’d gone back to her phone, said, “Right, I’m seeing the book. Wow. A dozen reviews on Amazon.” She scrunched her face into an apologetic wince. “I’m not sure, Joyce.”

I aimed a wearied look at Kellie, who bobbed her freckled shoulders. Apparently Nextward was no longer satisfied with emailing Scott twice a week to complain about our traffic. They’d stationed Hayden at the source to make sure our coverage had all the intrigue of unbuttered toast.

“Point taken, Hayden,” Scott said with audible restraint. “That said, Pathogenius is an excellent book. I’d be happy to send you a copy.”

Hayden laughed. “Okay, but seriously, what about the Top Ten lists Alicia did last month? Those performed.” She aimed an encouraging look at Alicia, one of our editorial assistants, who flinched. “What if you jumped in on those for a week or two, Joyce? We could use a few more in the pipeline.” Her nails clattered against her phone screen. “And I just forwarded everyone a list of books I’ve been seeing around. It’d be great to pop out some reviews for them while they’re hot.”

A dozen laptop track pads clicked as we opened the email, and Kellie disguised a laugh as a cough. Hayden’s list was immediately familiar, culled half from Barack Obama’s reading list and half from October’s highest-profile book club selections.

I kept my voice even. “Hayden, unfortunately we don’t have the bandwidth for this. Our review calendar is blocked out for the next few weeks.”

“Ah. You know, I’m so glad you mentioned output. I’ve been wanting to break open this conversation: How do we feel about using AI to increase the team’s content production?”

Deafening quiet dropped over the round table. Beside me, Kellie’s pen stilled in the middle of a doodle of Hayden. A blot of ink widened until it engulfed her left eye.

“We do not feel good,” said Scott, in a voice that suggested he wanted nothing more than to tar and feather her.

Hayden looked from shocked face to shocked face and let out a small laugh. “Everybody, come on! Let’s be realistic, right? You’re up against sites that are packed with AI. Of course we want to preserve the spirit of the whole project, but at the end of the day, this is a business. Dollars in, dollars out. We need more eyes on the site if we’re going to keep paying for”—she gestured at us—“this.”

She rose, hoisting her purse onto her shoulder. “Think about it! No one’s saying you can’t add your own little personal touch.”

As she headed for the door, she spared a brief downward glance for Scott, as though he were her unpaid intern rather than a man who’d shaped American culture for decades. “Thanks so much for letting me sit in, Scott.” She paused, keen-eyed, on the threshold. “It’s been so illuminating.”

The door shut, leaving crushing silence in her wake.

After work, I met my friend Jacob for a drink in the Meatpacking District, at an Italian restaurant as long and thin as an alleyway. We drank matching happy-hour glasses of house white, ten dollars per anemic pour.

“Scott won’t let that happen,” said Jacob. “Will he?”