When I get up in the morning, I look in the mirror and I see only my mother’s face. But the fact of our resemblance is such old news that to recognize it anew feels pointed, overly Freudian, a remnant of a dream I am still half inside. When she died, of course I was given to dissecting my face in the bathroom of Friendly’s, or avoiding my face altogether in Macy’s dressing rooms lest trying on jeans become any more demoralizing. But now I am seven years removed and there are some days I don’t even think about her, though on these days a siren will keen from the end of DeKalb and it will be 3:00 a.m. and a cloud outside my window will constrict into the shape of a lung and I will hear her voice.

* * *

This morning I look in the mirror and find a bruise that makes the resemblance more pronounced, and it makes my bowels a little shy. I retreat to my room, where I kill a few roaches, take a few pictures of my face, and do some quick acrylic studies. I have never been able to finish a self-portrait, but in these studies, in the burnt sienna and purple that is meant to be my face, I see the bruises clearly, and it fills me with relief. On the train, I listen to Rebecca’s voicemail over and over again. I arrive at the office with the intonations memorized. My plan for the day is to confirm the pub date for a new title about a vain giraffe and then fall down an internet rabbit hole of Rebecca Walkers who raise the dead.

* * *

My routine is always the same. I dart from the train and immediately wash my hands in the office bathroom. I load up on the free hand lotion the publisher started putting out after it was revealed that the women in the company (a whopping 87 percent of the employee base) are still making less than the men. The hand lotion has slightly increased morale, even though the quality is on par with that diabolical drugstore cocoa butter that leaves you ashier than before. I post a joke about the L train on Twitter, and I delete it when I don’t get any likes. I listen to a newly pregnant publicity assistant retch (lately always between 9:03 and 9:15) in one of the stalls, and I firm up my ponytail. I kill a roach in the kitchen, grab a cup of tepid coffee, and sit at my desk, where, before I start work, I browse through some photos of friends who are doing better than me, then an article on a black teenager who was killed on 115th for holding a weapon later identified as a showerhead, then an article on a black woman who was killed on the Grand Concourse for holding a weapon later identified as a cell phone, then I drown myself in the comments section and do some online shopping, by which I mean I put four dresses in my cart as a strictly theoretical exercise and then let the page expire.

* * *

Then I start work. I look through the Tuesday publications, confirm jacket copy, triage my inbox for panicked emails from production assistants and editors trying to soothe anxious authors with quick TOC and index corrections. Details so minute as to be absurd, an em dash, the romanization of a quotation mark, a last-minute change in the acknowledgments from I would like to thank my wife to I would like to thank my dog, but, and maybe this is surprising, I am good at all of this. Arguably it would be hard to be bad at it, but if a person comes to rote work with the expectation that she will be demeaned, she can bypass the pitfalls of hope and redirect all that energy into being a merciless drone. She can be the ear for the author who calls frequently to chat about the fineries of ichthyology depicted in his series about a bullied flounder, and she can wage war with large corporate vendors whose algorithms sweep book files for errors but have huge blind spots for the speculative lexicon of science fiction, and she can say to them: This is not an error; this is human; this is style.

* * *

Today at the office, the air is still. At my desk, something is different. My manager’s eyes, which, because of the open office arrangement, I can never seem to avoid, move quickly away from me. The editorial assistants are too alert, engaged in the performance of work. Then Aria comes in with a box of doughnuts. This would be cause to celebrate, except the person who helps her through the door is Mark. I see his hand, his desecrated fingernails and large knuckles, and I turn away and look into the dark face of my phone, which reflects a bruised iteration of my face. It occurs to me that I should’ve covered it up, but more pressing is the reality in which Aria and Mark just happen to be having the sort of conversations that spill into other rooms, because I’m certain they have nothing in common and no overlapping professional tasks.

* * *

I eavesdrop on them, which in an open plan is not eavesdropping so much as accepting your silent role in everyone’s conversation, and they are talking about a comic book I can’t place, Mark doing this thing where he prefaces every one of his observations with what you need to understand is, Aria’s breathless reception of these condescensions so pure and sweet. When he is gone, I try to make meaningful eye contact with Aria, but she will not indulge. I try to find Rebecca on the internet, but there is a new message from HR. Early August is generally when employee evaluations start, and I have prepared a diplomatic way to say that I loathe everyone here, but the message does not seem to be about this. It is a vaguely worded invitation for a meeting at 4:00 p.m.

* * *

I step outside and smoke a joint, and there are interns everywhere, beaming and overdressed and happy to be paid in experience. I wonder if I have looked too miserable at my desk, if I forgot to use a private browser when I was active on SugarBabees.com. Anyone could do my job with the proper training, and if I fell down the escalator of the Times Square Forever 21 and severed my spine it would not make office news.

* * *

I grab a doughnut and arrive at the meeting with two minutes to spare. The HR rep smiles at me and asks me to close the door. My boss, a squirrelly little editor who came up in sales and frequently lurks behind me after her bathroom breaks in an attempt to peer at my screen, is seated next to him. I smile at her and try to pretend that she is not pro-life. I lean forward to show my engagement and try to summon the spirit of the Grateful Diversity Hire. They start out with a few compliments, which I receive readily. Yes, I’ve whipped the digital archive into shape. Yes, I delivered on the K–5 Maya Angelou and Frida Kahlo biographies, wherein the sexual assault and bus accident were omitted per a Provo parents group who weren’t ready for their kids to see the blood women wade through to create art.

* * *

“Still, you have been on probation twice,” the HR rep says, trying not to look at the bruise on my face.

“I fell off my bike in Central Park,” I say, which only seems to make the bruise into a bigger deal. My boss and the HR rep glance at each other. “And yes, I completed two probationary periods, but the second time there was sort of a misunderstanding. HorseGirls.com was a link featured in one of our middle-grade ebooks, but domains tend to change over time. A parent called about the adult content, and I just wanted to do my due diligence,” I say, and my boss coughs, though it is one of those snide, performative coughs that most people stop doing after the age of twelve. I can’t think of a single moment she has ever been straightforward with me, and, even now, she redirects the conversation with words like tolerance and inclusivity before the HR rep cuts to the chase and says that some men and women in the company feel I’ve been sexually inappropriate. They are both being very sensitive about it, clearly upset by the optics of the whole thing, bracketing what is happening in such carefully neutral language that in a way, I feel sorry for them. And what is happening is that I’m getting fired. There are emails. Pictures sent over company servers. Complaints about which they are not permitted to offer any details.

* * *

There are a few encounters that come to mind, ingenious anatomical feats that, sure, happened on company time. Coworkers with elaborate, transgressive fantasies that I was dead enough inside to fulfill. And, of course, there is Mark. When I try to explain, there is a tremor in my voice. I try to regain my composure, but I am sensitive to the power even of authority figures I despise. I close my eyes and will myself not to cry, but I was so close to being able to spend eleven dollars on lunch. All I can do is take the doughnut out of my purse and press it all into my mouth at once. I stand up, knowing I only have so much time before the tears, and I go to the bathroom, lock myself in a stall, and puke.

* * *