And it was truly exciting to begin to learn the intense and rigorous art of fact checking, which is like cross-examining sentences. I absorbed quickly and satisfyingly how to do another layer of reporting on the heels of the writer. I figured if I did good work and kept my head down, I’d eventually be rewarded.

But, try as I did to avoid them, the affections and gifts and little notes continued from the older staff member — attentions that had begun during the interview process. One day he leaned in, suddenly, and kissed me in front of the Nat Sherman luxury cigarette store on Fifth Avenue. I didn’t know whom to talk to about this or even if it was as weird as it felt.

I’ll be the first to admit that the themes of adultery and overt and detailed sexuality in Updike’s stories sometimes made me slightly queasy. But there was nothing in them that ever smacked of the predatory; on the contrary, it was his fastidious honesty, his euphoric interest in sexuality, that rattled and embarrassed me.

From Richard Ford I had learned an acerbic and more shrouded form of male sexuality, one that was, somehow, easier to take because less was there in black and white. Either way, these were stories; my best friends were Richard and Joan Maple and Frank Bascombe. No one had ever sat me down and told me what was wrong or right in a job or how to handle anything complicated with men in real life.

As the news of the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, the staff member’s flirtations intensified and began to feel controlling in their insistence. After weeks of insomnia, I finally broke down in a co-worker’s office. I remember the smell of paperwhite narcissus through my salty tears more than anything; she was always forcing the little bulbs in large glass vases filled with turquoise marbles on her windowsill.

That night I called a lawyer friend of my father’s, and the next day, using language the lawyer had advised me to, I confronted the man. That afternoon he brought over a bundle of thank you cards I’d sent him during my quest for the job — a personal touch taught to me by a career counselor at Brown. He had tied them with a ribbon, like love letters. In front of two office mates, he ripped up the cards and threw them at my face and walked out. I remember scrambling to the floor to pick them up. A few days later he told me my freelance gig was over, and that I would not be hired on staff. I had been at the magazine only seven months.