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He stands up, too, which makes me move more quickly, stuffing my book and scarf and water bottle back into my bag.

“This isn’t going well,” he says.

How dare he. My idol has been desecrated. The very reason I got into publishing pulled out from underneath me. Everything I loved about love is in question. Andhethinks it’s not going well? I turn on my heel and speed walk away.

“Lanie.” He follows me past the chess house.

I don’t know where I plan on going. I’d like to run very far away from here. I’d like to buy six pints of ice cream and hide under my duvet for the rest of my life. I’d like to enter awormhole where my longtime hero is the inspiring woman I always imagined—not this guy.

I think of Sue forecasting turbulence. This is more like dual engine failure.

“You need me,” Ross says as we pass the Dairy, children running out around us, clutching new souvenirs. I stop in my tracks.

“What?” I hear myself. I sound demonic. And I feel even darker inside.

“You need me. This book,” he says.

He’s right. If I don’t want to get fired, I do need him, and I need to coax his next book out of him. Peony needs him. All the other decent human beings I work with need him. That means they need me not to quit right now.

He looks over my head as he delivers his next gem. “Don’t conflate art and artist. If you’re concerned about my readers, then focus on my books, not me. I’m not the origin of my books’ meaning. Society is the only author.”

“Oh, give me a break.” I start walking again, calling over my shoulder, “People love cheap clothes, too, but hey, who cares about sweatshops, right?”

“That’s my point!” he persists. “ ‘The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.’ ”

I ball my fists in rage. I’ve loved the essay Ross is quoting ever since I read it in Intro to Literary Criticism in college. But at this moment, in this rage, “The Death of the Author” begins to take on a new, more tempting and literal light.

“Roland Barthes did not toil in relative obscurity,” I say,“just to give some spoiled millionaire permission to be a prick.”

He laughs, throwing back his head as we exit the park and wait for the light at Fifth Avenue. “See? Now we’re having fun.”

I wonder if he’s a legitimate sociopath. Would he be having so much fun if his entire career felt as tenuous as mine does now? Whydoesn’tit feel that way to him? The light turns green.

“I need to go,” I say. I practically sprint across the street.

If I could only run back in time and never read a Noa Callaway book. But then where would I be?

The fucker is running after me.

“Maybe you should ask yourself why my gender is so disturbing to you,” he shouts. “Isn’t it aggressively heteronormative to assume I have to be a woman?”

“Goodbye, Ross,” I shout back.

“Lanie, please,” he says, surprising me.

I stop. I turn around. His tone and expression are more earnest than they’d been a moment before. I find this more unbearable than when he was being a pseudointellectual jerk. How can this be so uncomfortable? When there were two computers and the comforting labyrinth of the internet between us, Noa Callaway and I had such amazing chemistry.

“Will you come up?” he asks. We’re standing beneath a building’s awning, and he points at the door. “This is me.”

“I know. I’ve only been sending you packages here for seven years.” I glance up at the building, which I’vespeculated about so many times, imagining a very different Noa Callaway inhabiting its penthouse.

There’s no chance I’m going up there. I’ve been disillusioned enough for one afternoon. I need space from this man to figure out what the hell I’m going to do about him.

“No, thanks,” I say.

“Don’t you think we should talk about the book?”

His words jar me into seeing how far astray we are from any semblance of professionalism. This was all supposed to go so differently. And it’s not entirely his fault. Maybe only ninety-five percent. I take a deep breath, let it out. I think of everyone depending on me to deliver the new Noa Callaway book.