Page 81 of Bad Words

“Cool. I’ve been warned.”

“Very funny.”

We passed an apartment whose drawn curtains showed the shifting silhouettes of a house party, then a garden unit whose cracked door emitted the thump-thump-thump-thump of house electronica. We checked down a one-way and crossed at the red light, and he said, “Second-tier Never Let Me Go, I can’t get over that. You’re unbelievable.”

“Am I? Why?”

“Like, Kazuo Ishiguro hasn’t won enough of your goodwill for you to like his other books out of hand? Genuinely, I don’t understand that. Where’s your loyalty!”

“Unquestioning loyalty makes you a bad critic, Parker.” I steadied myself against a stop sign and adjusted one of my heels. “I can’t just love something because it comes from someone I’ve loved before.”

“You don’t ever want to give somebody a pass?”

“I—maybe.” I hesitated. “I mean, if Anna Kavan had ever published a bad book, I would have found that a little bit devastating to read.”

“What if Jacob published a bad book?”

This drew me up short. I searched for words for a moment before saying, “Jacob doesn’t write fiction.”

“Play along with the thought experiment, Selina. What if he did? What would you do?”

“Well, I wouldn’t write about it in City Magazine, first of all, because it would be a conflict of interest.”

Parker looked up at the night sky and laughed. “You’re terrible at this thought experiment. You know I meant—” As we were about to turn the corner onto Nassau, he broke off.

Just in front of us, a golden rhombus of light lay on the snow, cast out by an open door down a few steps to our left. I heard the chatter of muted voices, and I thought, a bar, but then my eyes found a small, dirty sign: THE BOOK BAR. Through the doorway I saw bookshelves.

“Wait,” said Parker. “I didn’t know this place existed.”

“Neither did I.”

We traded a look. The look was conspiratorial. I felt softly aware of my lightheadedness, the tipsy blur of my thoughts. Then we wordlessly stepped through the low iron gate and down the steps, each one a slick of ice pitted with green salt.

I stepped into the warmth, Parker close behind me. The place was low-ceilinged and rough, a labyrinth of unfinished wood and dim bare bulbs. As we moved down the main aisle, the voices grew louder, rounder, along with the chatter of a TV playing the New Year’s celebration, until the book-lined pathway opened up into a half-full dive whose creaking stools and rickety tables were crowded against packed bookshelves. I loved the place immediately. The books’ spines all faced out. White creases split their titles from years of reading.

I realized Parker was watching me. I unbuttoned my coat, my face prickling.

“Want a drink?” he asked.

“Just soda water. Thanks.”

We exited the bar with glasses in hand and turned down the fiction aisle, which was so narrow that we had to move single file. Obscure paperbacks from the nineties faced out with book-talkers hanging beneath, while one reluctant copy of last year’s biggest bestseller had been shoved anonymously into the G section.

“Fun selection,” said Parker ahead of me. “I like this store.”

“What makes a good bookstore for you?”

“The weirder the better, definitely.” He glanced up at the higher shelves, his cheeks flushed. “I love when a place feels like a well-kept secret.”

I smiled. When I didn’t answer, he glanced back over his shoulder. Our eyes met. I inhaled, smelled his cologne, held my breath.

“This is kind of late for me,” Parker said.

“Me too. I’m not usually up past midnight. Unless I’m being hectored with emails by some author with nothing better to do.”

I caught one corner of his smile as he faced forward again. “Do you email anyone else? Or am I your only victim?”

“My parents.”