By the time I push my way onto the train, the sun is nuking all the garbage in Manhattan. We stall for traffic at Montrose, Lorimer, and Bedford, and the dark tunnel walls make mirrors of the windows. I turn away from my reflection and a man is masturbating under a tarp. I almost lose a seat to a woman who gets on at Union Square, but luckily her pregnancy slows her down. I arrive at work eighteen minutes late, and the editorial assistants are already directing the wave of phone calls to publicity.

* * *

I am the managing editorial coordinator for our children’s imprint, meaning I occasionally tell the editorial assistants to fact-check how guppies digest food. I call meetings where we discuss why bears are over, and why children only want to read about fish. The editorial assistants do not invite me to lunch. I try to be approachable. I try to understand my group of pithy nihilists who all hail from the later end of Gen Z. There is only one EA I try to avoid, and this is the one who comes first thing this Thursday morning to my new, centrally located desk.

“I don’t know how these reporters are getting our direct lines. Have you seen Kevin?” Aria is the most senior editorial assistant. She is also the only other black person in our department, which forces a comparison between us that never favors me. Not only is she always there to supply a factoid that no one knew about Dr. Seuss, she is also lovely. Lovely like only island women are; her skin like some warm, synthetic alloy. So she’s very popular around the office with her reflective Tobagonian eyes and apple cheeks, doing that unthreatening aw-shucks shtick for all the professional whites. She plays the game well, I mean. Better than I do. And so when we are alone, even as we look at each other through borrowed faces, we see each other. I see her hunger, and she sees mine.

“I don’t know, maybe Kevin was finally beamed up by the Heritage Foundation,” I say, taking my coffee into my hand.

“This isn’t a joke to me,” she says. For the most part I’ve stopped worrying that she is compiling a list of reasons she should have my job, because now it is not a question of whether she will take my job, it is a question of when. The only thing that bothers me is that I still want to be her friend. On her first day, she came into the office meek and gorgeous, primed to be a token. And as you are wont to do—having always been the single other in the room, having somehow preserved hope that the next room might be different—she looked around, searching for me. When she found me, when we looked at each other that first time, finally released from our respective tokenism, I felt incredible relief.

* * *

And then I miscalculated. Too much anger shared too soon. Too much can you believe these white people. Too much fuck the police. We both graduated from the school of Twice as Good for Half as Much, but I’m sure she still finds this an acceptable price of admission. She still rearranges herself, waiting to be chosen. And she will be. Because it is an art—to be black and dogged and inoffensive. She is all these things and she is embarrassed that I am not.

* * *

I’d like to think the reason I’m not more dogged is because I know better. But sometimes I look at her and wonder if the problem isn’t her, but me. Maybe the problem is that I am weak and overly sensitive. Maybe the problem is that I am an office slut.

“They’re never going to give you the power you want,” I say because I’m jealous, and it is interesting how she wavers between her mask and this offering of conspiracy. She leans down and there it is, that sweet, copyrighted black girl smell—jojoba oil, pink lotion, blue magic.

“How would you know? You’re still a managing editorial coordinator, and you’ve been here three years,” she says, and I could assert my seniority, but that would be embarrassing. The difference in our entire yearly salaries is one monthly student loan payment.

“We just got a bunch of proofs for that series we’re doing on bath time. Can you take care of those?” I say, turning away from her. I check my phone, hoping there might be a text from Eric. Some reassurance that our first date truly went well, or some indication that he is excited about tonight. I think about sending him a comprehensive list of things he is allowed to do to me, so that we are on the same page, but when I have a draft, it has kind of a Helga Pataki vibe. I try my hand at it a few more times before I give up and go to find Kevin, who has acquired the book at the center of this PR nightmare, an illustrated history for the conservative child, a lyrical meditation on the radicalism of the liberal media and the martyrdom of rural states.

* * *

If I have to be objective, the art in this book is something. The moody gouache sunsets over Confederate camp. Lincoln’s saggy thought bubble as he looks into the future, disappointed by the state of his party. The photorealistic depictions of urban crime. I find Kevin walking around his office in one sock, talking on the phone as this G-rated agitprop flies off the shelves. And then I see Mark. I’m not proud of what I do then, which is duck into the stairwell and hold my breath. Of all the men I’ve slept with at work, this is the one who cost me the most. What they say about not shitting where you eat only holds if they pay you enough to eat. For the most part, this has been the best part of the job.

* * *

Onboarding with Mike, his little fingers and junior human resources lingo as I cajole him out of his pants. Jake from IT coming up the stairs at 6:00 p.m. with his key fob, breathing on my neck about admin privileges while he addresses the service desk ticket about my broken monitor. Hamish from contracts in the nursing room with that blue streak in his hair and his hairy thighs asking me so sweetly if I could call him Lord. Tyler, managing editor of lifestyle and self-help, his fanned glossies and sock garters, pushing my head down while he’s on the phone with the Dublin office. Vlad from the mailroom with his broken English and all the packing peanuts around us on the floor. Arjun from the British sales group with his slick black hair and cartoon villain forearms, all riled up by Scholastic poaching high performers on his team. Jake from IT, again, because these computers are shit and he has the prettiest dick I’ve ever seen. Tyrell from production with his halfway smile in the bathroom stall at the office Christmas party, string lights a fractal echo in his dark, reflective eyes. Michelle from legal sitting on the copier, nylons slung around her neck as fluorescents flicker overhead. Kieran from bodice rippers taking me from behind and going on and on about severing my body from my limbs and the whole time I’m laughing and I don’t know why. Jerry who is acquiring all the cancer-centric YA, making bank and soft love to me in the conference room with the aerial view of 30 Rock and I’m crying and I don’t know why. Joe from true crime who doesn’t read at all and who comes loud and quick and calls me nigger and then mommy. Jason from STEM textbooks who wants me to cry just like I did for Jerry, which is an experience I do cry about, at home. Adam from Christian erotica coming on my face and I feel nothing. And then Jake, one more time, because my keyboard is on the fritz, but it isn’t Jake but John from IT who comes, sliding his hand beneath my shirt, telling me that Jake was in a bad car accident and it isn’t looking good.

* * *

And somewhere in between, Mark. Mark, head of the art department, where the air smells like warm paper and everyone is happy. Where there are silky sheaves of eighteen-by-twenty-four and the printers are sighing in self-generated heat, churning out deep blacks and liquid blues like clockwork, panels as clear as water, so saturated that if you touch it fresh you can feel the wet. The people in the art department move around the building in smiling clusters, concept work cradled in their arms. They have passionate debates in the elevator about embossing and Verdana and Courier New. They have their own hours and their own dress code, each in that chic, dorky limbo that is the domain of the old art school kid. And all I want is to be one of them. I want to order takeout from the dumpling house across the street and stay in the office until ten, revising the vista behind Frank the Fox from ultramarine to cerulean to cyan. I have applied three times. I have interviewed twice. And in both cases they have asked me to do more work on my basic figure drawing skills. Mark told me that they would keep my résumé on file, and so I went and flunked some night classes I could not afford, thwarted by the dimples in human muscle and especially by the metatarsal bones in the foot. I stuck to graphite and paper, hoping that unlike paint, the medium would afford me more control, but my figures kept blurring under the heel of my hand.

* * *