denied having, because of the impure motive that led her to make the copy in the first place: the hope that it could be hers, and hers alone.
She wakes up her Kindle and opens a newly imported file, a submission from a friend of one of Isabel’s notably unprofitable clients. Alexis reads the first page—not bad. She learned the hard way to always read the opening page before committing any further time to anything; you can learn a lot on first pages about the many different ways that a manuscript can be awful. But this page 1 is not, so this is what she’ll read on the elliptical machine. Or something else. She has three dozen submissions loaded onto the device.
She played it wrong with The Accident . She was too impatient, too gregarious, too reckless. She needs to buckle down, to get serious, to continue to pay her dues. She’s only twenty-five years old. Even if there are other twenty-five-year-olds who’ve risen above her current station, they’re the exception, not the rule. Her own time will come. But that time is not now.
Finally Spencer is dressed. Alexis pulls him out the door before he has a chance to dawdle, ask for coffee, whatever.
They step out onto the Hell’s Kitchen sidewalk. A delivery truck rumbles past, drowning out all other sounds. A taxi screeches to a stop. A small army of Hispanic contractors, all wearing tan work boots and jeans, loiters in front of a newly converted manufacturing building, waitingfor the strike of 8:59 a.m., when they’ll be allowed to access the unit, to begin their noisy messy undocumented day of sanding floors and plastering ceilings and installing sound-dampening double-pane windows to three-million-dollar lofts.
At the corner she stops. “So,” she says.
In the ATM office, only three of the assistants are men, and at least one of them is gay, probably two. The third is on every level unacceptable. So Alexis needed to seek out broader dating horizons—perhaps not dating; whatever this is—often in Brooklyn, where most people her age live, unrelenting boosters of their adopted borough, disdainful of Manhattan. But Alexis’s vision of herself has always been in Manhattan, walking to work at a literary agency or a publishing house, surrounded by the throbbing, insistent life in the center of the city.
“This is where we part?” Spencer asks.
She nods.
“That was killer.” She knows he means the sex. Their conversation last night was nil, and this morning’s consisted almost entirely of her trying to get him the hell out of her apartment.
She’s beginning to suspect that Spencer doesn’t actually like her all that much. And she has to admit that the feeling is rather mutual. Maybe she should stop sleeping with him. “I’ll give you a call.”
“That’d be awesome,” he says, without meaning it. For Spencer everything and everyone is awesome and killer, or, when he’s feeling retro-ironic, groovy and neat. It drives her bananas. “We’ll hang.”
“Mmm,” she says, and turns and walks away, past the Korean deli, where the cute Mexican kid is swabbing the sidewalk with an eye-burning bleach solution. “Morning, Miss,” he says.
His familiarity makes her realize —damn —that in her haste to get rid of Spencer, to get out of her little hovel, she forgot her wallet. She needs her ID for the gym. There’s a new morning-front-desk guy, a prissy officious little twit who she knows will not let her in without the damn card.
Alexis takes a step off the concrete curb and down onto the blacktoppavement, distracted. She takes another step, then another. She hears a car screeching, and she turns to face a black sedan—
The Mexican kid yells, “Cuidado! Cuidado!”
But she’s frozen, unable to move, staring at the oncoming grille.
“M iss?” The boy is holding her arm, as well as his mop. “Miss? You okay?” She nods.
“The fuck ya thinkin’?” It’s the driver of the sedan, his window rolled down, yelling at her. “Ya know what a
She wakes up her Kindle and opens a newly imported file, a submission from a friend of one of Isabel’s notably unprofitable clients. Alexis reads the first page—not bad. She learned the hard way to always read the opening page before committing any further time to anything; you can learn a lot on first pages about the many different ways that a manuscript can be awful. But this page 1 is not, so this is what she’ll read on the elliptical machine. Or something else. She has three dozen submissions loaded onto the device.
She played it wrong with The Accident . She was too impatient, too gregarious, too reckless. She needs to buckle down, to get serious, to continue to pay her dues. She’s only twenty-five years old. Even if there are other twenty-five-year-olds who’ve risen above her current station, they’re the exception, not the rule. Her own time will come. But that time is not now.
Finally Spencer is dressed. Alexis pulls him out the door before he has a chance to dawdle, ask for coffee, whatever.
They step out onto the Hell’s Kitchen sidewalk. A delivery truck rumbles past, drowning out all other sounds. A taxi screeches to a stop. A small army of Hispanic contractors, all wearing tan work boots and jeans, loiters in front of a newly converted manufacturing building, waitingfor the strike of 8:59 a.m., when they’ll be allowed to access the unit, to begin their noisy messy undocumented day of sanding floors and plastering ceilings and installing sound-dampening double-pane windows to three-million-dollar lofts.
At the corner she stops. “So,” she says.
In the ATM office, only three of the assistants are men, and at least one of them is gay, probably two. The third is on every level unacceptable. So Alexis needed to seek out broader dating horizons—perhaps not dating; whatever this is—often in Brooklyn, where most people her age live, unrelenting boosters of their adopted borough, disdainful of Manhattan. But Alexis’s vision of herself has always been in Manhattan, walking to work at a literary agency or a publishing house, surrounded by the throbbing, insistent life in the center of the city.
“This is where we part?” Spencer asks.
She nods.
“That was killer.” She knows he means the sex. Their conversation last night was nil, and this morning’s consisted almost entirely of her trying to get him the hell out of her apartment.
She’s beginning to suspect that Spencer doesn’t actually like her all that much. And she has to admit that the feeling is rather mutual. Maybe she should stop sleeping with him. “I’ll give you a call.”
“That’d be awesome,” he says, without meaning it. For Spencer everything and everyone is awesome and killer, or, when he’s feeling retro-ironic, groovy and neat. It drives her bananas. “We’ll hang.”
“Mmm,” she says, and turns and walks away, past the Korean deli, where the cute Mexican kid is swabbing the sidewalk with an eye-burning bleach solution. “Morning, Miss,” he says.
His familiarity makes her realize —damn —that in her haste to get rid of Spencer, to get out of her little hovel, she forgot her wallet. She needs her ID for the gym. There’s a new morning-front-desk guy, a prissy officious little twit who she knows will not let her in without the damn card.
Alexis takes a step off the concrete curb and down onto the blacktoppavement, distracted. She takes another step, then another. She hears a car screeching, and she turns to face a black sedan—
The Mexican kid yells, “Cuidado! Cuidado!”
But she’s frozen, unable to move, staring at the oncoming grille.
“M iss?” The boy is holding her arm, as well as his mop. “Miss? You okay?” She nods.
“The fuck ya thinkin’?” It’s the driver of the sedan, his window rolled down, yelling at her. “Ya know what a
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