Chapter 27
Spring/Summer Intern, The Paris Review
posted: Oct. 15, 2023
Offered by: The Paris Review
Duration: Full Time
Location: New York, NY
The Paris Review is pleased to open applications for our Spring/Summer internship term (February to August). This six-month internship provides interns with an in-depth introduction both to the publication of a literary magazine and to the wider publishing world.
Each internship term covers two full issues of the quarterly magazine. Interns assist with every step of the magazine’s production, particularly with fact-checking and research, as well as reading and evaluating submissions and researching potential interviews. In addition, they participate broadly across The Paris Review ’s administrative, development, and digital departments.
The Paris Review welcomes applicants with an interest in the magazine’s dual mission: to pursue the best and most exciting voices of the day and to support ambitious, inquisitive readers all over the world.
It turns out that pledging to have fun is the best way to cure all ailments. I work on my Paris Review application, finessing every word until I’m sure it’s perfect. In between rewrites I trawl job sites, writing up applications that definitely push the boundaries of what I’d usually write to try to get a job, like when I apply for a copywriting job at Magnolia Bakery by composing a missive on how I think cupcakes can change the world. I up my engagement on TikTok by sharing more of my life: I do some ‘get ready with me’ videos and I message Perdita’s mum to ask her permission to share Perdi at daycare. She not only says yes, she reposts my content every time I tag her, gaining me a steady trickle of new followers everyday. I talk to camera about why I’m in New York, my love of books, as well as filming some more Mum’s Missions clips. People seem to like it, and I get questions from Australians about how they can apply for the same visa, make friends in the BookTok community and am even forwarded job ads.
I go to Dogue’s whenever I’m scheduled. I do my job, ignore Lucas when he comes in to drop off Mully, and when I’m not working or applying for jobs, I hang out with my friends.
Sienna doesn’t have a lot of time because she’s right in the thick of her semester at school and juggling extra dance bookings as Halloween approaches. But Corey and I go to her shows at the Cat’s Meow and Sienna gets me on the door at any of the functions she gets comp tickets to. Corey takes me along to meetings with the Halloween dog parade committee and I agree to volunteer on the day of the event. After meetings, we go for dinner with Jake and his adorable scotch collie dog, Merlin—sometimes at their apartment, which is a beautiful spacious studio in the East Village, and other times we explore cheap eats all over the city. I try to leave the two of them to their dates, but they insist I join, and never make me feel like a third wheel. Even still, I always skip dessert to give the lovebirds time alone.
After two days off, during which I’ve seen Sienna dance, done some volunteering for the parade with Corey and Jake, and written a bunch of job applications, I’m in such a good mood before work that I go to Dunkin’ Donuts and grab a huge box of mixed doughnuts as well as a bagel and a coffee. I tag into Dogue’s, dump my stuff and go into the lunchroom to eat.
Robert stomps in ten minutes later, shaking droplets of water off his Panama hat.
‘Hey,’ I say, scrunching my bagel bag and throwing it into the rubbish bin across the other side of the room. ‘Doughnuts here if you’re hungry.’
‘I already ate; thanks though, kid,’ he says, patting me on the back as he heads towards the playrooms. I’m not sure if I’m right, but he doesn’t look so good this morning. He’s pale and clammy and his jeans seem looser than normal.
‘Oh my god, you saint,’ a new pet handler, Angelo, says coming into the room and picking one. ‘It’s gonna be friggin’ awful doing walks today in the freezing rain.’
Though there was a distinct chill in the air, it wasn’t raining a few minutes ago when I was outside, and it was still pitch dark so there were no signs rain was on its way. ‘Freezing rain? What, like snow? Isn’t October a bit early for snow?’
Angelo shakes his head. ‘Nope, I mean like frozen bits of rain. Not quite a hailstorm, but real cold rain is due. And it’ll make things slippery, so watch yourself on the sidewalks. You know Doug won’t pay for broken limbs.’
‘Great,’ I say. ‘I thought I’d have another couple of weeks before I had to get some boots. There goes the rest of my pay this week.’ I’m still working in my tattered Cons, which are totally worse for wear after braving the floods the other week, not to mention working at daycare for months. They are not winter appropriate.
‘Well,’ Angelo says with a smile, ‘I know a great army surplus store near my place that sells discounted boots. If you want, we’re off at the same time today, I could take you there?’
I look at my shoes for a second. ‘Nah, but thanks. I kinda got plans after work.’
I’d decided to go to The Strand bookstore to browse their new releases and maybe try to take the employment test again. I’ve been trying to work out if I could smuggle my phone in and film myself doing the quiz for TikTok, and I thought maybe today I was ready to give it a go. But Angelo doesn’t need to know all that.
He shrugs, grabs another doughnut, and heads off to get started.
My mood quickly goes downhill. I begin getting the boarding dogs out and setting up in the small dog room, but then Hilde arrives and declares she and Robert are in with the littles today and I’m out the back with Angelo.
It’s still raining at walk time so Angelo gets me an umbrella and slips on his heavy black coat, covering his head with the hood. He also takes three dogs at once so I can have a hand free for the umbrella and take just one dog at a time. I do four walks without incident. And then it’s time to walk Perdita.
Perdi cowers as I clip the lead to her collar, and I have to drag her along the floor of the shop to get her outside. Once we’re on the sidewalk she manages to take a few steps, but then a fire truck roars past, its siren blaring and reverberating off the buildings. Perdita decides there’s no way she’s going anywhere. She sits down, digs her heels in and leans forward, as though she’s trying to push her collar off. It’s okay that she doesn’t want to go for the rest of the walk, but I have to get her back inside.
The rain gets heavier and I hunch down in my coat and pull the umbrella low, trying to keep dry. Angelo was not lying about this rain being freezing. It comes down in hard little lumps that sting my neck, my hands—every piece of skin that’s not covered.
Perdita shakes the water from her head, and I move to stop being sprayed. At that exact moment, there’s a huge gust of wind that turns the umbrella inside out. I flail about trying to fix it, but with the rock-solid dog sitting at the end of the leash, there’s no give and no room to move. My foot finds a patch of ice and shoots out, and I fall, landing with my butt in a puddle that’s not quite frozen. I’m saturated and can feel the cold water seeping in through my jeans. In the moment of shock, I drop Perdita’s leash.
But, instead of making a run for it, she just wanders to the door of Dogue’s, sheltering under the store’s awning. Angelo comes around the corner and stands over me laughing.
‘You could help me up, you know,’ I say, not even trying to mask my annoyance.
He adjusts the leashes and offers me his hand. ‘Man, you have got to get yourself some new boots with grip so you got a fighting chance of staying upright. What would you have done if it had been one of the bigger dogs who decided to bolt?’
‘I guess I would have gone skating,’ I say.
Unfazed by my sarcasm he continues, ‘You sure you don’t want to come over to Jersey today and check out the store?’
I rub my bruised, cold tailbone as we walk back to Dogue’s. I pick up Perdita’s leash and, once again, drag her across the floor to the room. I don’t want to spend the money, but I also can’t go near The Strand looking like this.
‘Sure,’ I say as we lead the dogs inside. ‘Sounds like a plan.’
We catch the PATH train to Hoboken and Angelo guides me through unfamiliar streets to our destination. Army stores all look the same to me, no matter where they are. They’re full of big guys in camo gear and khakis, some with beards, some bald. They sell battered boots and metal drink bottles, and smell like old leather. There’s certainly no Louboutin.
In the second store, Angelo leads me straight into a small back room full of camo gear for women. A bald, square-jawed guy in olive green pants that are almost the same shade as my coat comes over and shakes Angelo’s hand.
‘What can I do ya for, Angelo?’ he asks.
‘My girl here, she needs good warm winter boots that she can wear to work with a bunch of dogs—her toes need to be protected because they like to bite—and that have decent grip. She went over today on the ice.’
My eyes almost fall out of my head at ‘ my girl’, but I’m too surprised to say anything.
Square Jaw glances down at my ratty sneakers.
‘No wonder,’ he says. ‘Those things ain’t much good for anything, let alone working with a bunch of mutts. What size are you?’
‘Nine,’ I say and he turns to a shelf, pulling down a pair of heavy black hiking boots with silver buckles and handing them over. I don’t like the chunkiness of them.
I give him a sceptical look. ‘They’re real nice and all,’ I say, trying to be tactful, ‘but you wouldn’t happen to have anything a little less ... chunky , would you?’
Square Jaw shakes his head and I start to kick off my sneakers. I might as well try them on, especially if it helps me avoid offending him.
‘No, no,’ he says. ‘I wasn’t shaking my head to say no, I was shaking it at you.’
I don’t know if that’s any better.
‘What I mean is, I guess you want stylish as well as practical.’
‘Well, I know those things don’t often come hand in hand, but yes, some sort of style would be nice. I might have to pick up dog poop every day, but I certainly don’t want to look like I do.’
‘Give me a second,’ he says, and I think that maybe I see his frown softening. ‘I got some good stuff out the back. I was saving it for my own girls, but there might be something in your size.’
He disappears into a back room, and I try to browse, but it’s hard to show any interest in hunting knives with special ‘female-compatible’ handles. What the hell is a female-compatible handle anyway? And where would I need a female-compatible knife in New York City?
I whisper this to Angelo and he grins. ‘Brynn, we’re not in New York City at the moment. We’re not even in New York state. They do things differently in Jersey.’
‘They? Don’t you live here?’
He sighs. ‘Not by choice.’
I want to ask him about his family, but Square Jaw comes back holding two shoeboxes. They’re the big ones, the sort that boots come in, and despite the fact I’m in an army surplus store my heart gives that little ‘I’m about to get new shoes’ flutter.
And I’m not disappointed. He pulls out a pair of calf-high black boots with laces, and a zipper in the back. They’re lined with soft fur, but they don’t have that fluffy stuff coming out the top, the way Australian Ugg boots that half the girls in New York seem to be wearing do. I try them on and walk around, pleased that they feel comfortable immediately.
‘They’re second hand, but hardly worn. Real leather, with good grip and no dog will be able to get a hold of your toe. Plus they’re waterproof,’ Square Jaw says, giving the sales pitch.
‘So, how much for these indestructible yet fashionable boots?’
‘Two hundred.’
My mouth nearly hits the floor. That is way more than I wanted to pay for boots that are going to get ruined in the playrooms, no matter how tough they’re supposed to be.
‘Man, come on, you had those out last week and they were one twenty,’ Angelo says.
‘Yeah, and, like I said, I put them away for my girls.’
‘Angelo, it’s fine,’ I say, touching him lightly on the shoulder. ‘I don’t need them, I’ll just get some cheap ones.’
Angelo nods. ‘Thanks, man,’ he says to Square Jaw. ‘I’ll be round next week for the stuff I’ve got on lay-away.’
We’re almost halfway through the main shop when Square Jaw comes running over clutching the box. ‘Okay, okay, I’ll give them to you for one-fifty.’
‘Dude,’ Angelo says. ‘They were marked at one-twenty and you’ve just screwed us around. You should give them to her for eighty bucks.’
I look at Angelo and shake my head; that’s not how you bargain.
‘How about a hundred?’ Square Jaw counters and I nearly fall over in surprise.
‘Ninety,’ Angelo says, and I want to get him to stop. A hundred was good, I would take them for that.
‘Ninety-five.’
‘Sold,’ I say, putting a stop to Angelo’s bargaining.
Five minutes later, we walk out of the store, me carrying my new boots and a twenty-dollar can of leather protector that I bought because I felt guilty.
‘Well, that was fun,’ Angelo says. ‘You wanna grab a bite or you do you need to get home?’
‘Sure, I could eat,’ I say. Corey’s off in Atlantic City with a self-help author and I’m definitely getting a bit sick of going home to an empty apartment to apply for jobs every day.
‘Great. What do you feel like?’
One of the worst things about being new in a city is that you don’t know where to find food, or where to suggest going out that’s easy and sort of cheap. Honestly, I kind of feel like sushi and had planned on ordering in. But who knows if there’s decent sushi in this part of Hoboken, or if Angelo likes sushi ... there are too many variables. So, I do the nice girl thing.
‘Oh, I’m easy. Whatever is closest to the train and not too expensive. And,’ I tilt my mud-streaked butt at him, ‘somewhere where lack of mud isn’t part of the dress code.’
It’s completely my fault that we end up in McDonald’s by the station, eating burgers and fries.
But despite the classy place, we have a nice time. We chat about work and the others. Angelo tells me he met Hilde’s boyfriend Mason the other day and got bad vibes. He also tells me that he couldn’t believe he got a job at Dogue’s. His casting call for the job had been as packed with people as mine was. ‘There’s always an infinite number of people willing to work in places like this,’ he says. ‘That’s why Doug can treat us like shit.’
It’s comforting to rant and complain about Dogue’s. Plus, the burgers aren’t terrible and at least we don’t break our banks on lunch.
Once we’re done, he walks me to the station and tells me how to find my way from the PATH back to the subway when I get to the city.
‘That was real fun,’ Angelo says, smiling. He grabs my hands and pulls me towards him, leaning in for a kiss.
I’m too slow to react and don’t pull away in time. His lips meet mine, and only when I feel his lips parting as he tries to deepen the kiss do I manage to pull my shocked body away.
‘Sorry,’ I say, my face burning with embarrassment. He looks totally confused. ‘I’ve got to go.’
I turn and sprint down the stairs to the train. I realise, waiting for the train to pull in and clutching my new boots to my chest, that I’ve just been on a date without knowing it was a date.