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It wasn’t the first time. If it was, I doubted I would have recognized the type so readily. Still, there was no mistaking the top message in my inbox.
The response was from Boucher Books. The biggest small press publisher on the west coast. What they lacked in print runs they made up for in mystique. There was never a book that their company released that didn’t garner instant critical acclaim.
That kind of hype, combined with the scarcity of copies, ensured the company sold out of every book they chose to print. Numbers which looked very good for their overall standing. Like filmmakers who booked the smallest screening room at Cannes so they could boast their showing sold-out.
While based on a template, the missive was surprisingly personal. Unlike any form letter I’d ever seen.
But in spite of that piquing my intrigue, the most interesting part of the email came in the later stages. Particularly the bit about wanting me to start immediately. As in that day, that instant. The exact wording was ‘at your convenience,’ but I’d been around long enough to know that basically meant ‘as soon as you’re able.’
The second most interesting part, at least to me, was that the letter appeared to have been composed by Hugo Boucher himself. It could sometimes be hard to tell with electronic communications. The signatures were just the same kind of text as the rest of the message. Anyone could have filled in the name. Except there were little quirks. A odd sentence structure here, speaking of someone for whom English was not their first language, and a typo there, that spoke of human intention.
I was able, and almost frighteningly willing, getting onto the company website within seconds and signing up for every group, mailing list and assignment they currently had on offer, before the minutes on the clock hand changed twice
It didn’t mean I would get every project I signed up for. It was mostly likely a candidate system. Everyone in that department who was interested signing up and then, whoever was in charge of the project, picking who they thought was best. It was a system I knew well, and tended to cope with, by way of the shotgun approach. It was a decent way of statistically raising my chances of get at least something that I might want.
Curiosity tugged. As I waited to hear back about which projects, if any, I’d been assigned, my mind drifted to the inciting email. I’d only managed to get my hands on one of Boucher’s books, and an electronic version at that. I was happy to get anything of course, but his seemed the kind of work to be held and experienced viscerally.
There were print copies. Mostly on eBay, posted by the lucky sods who had snagged them when they were still new. All for prices well outside what I could afford, even if I ate only rice, with nothing but dreams of anything beyond instant coffee. I’d already been a student once.
But the words from that digital copy of his work came back to me. Line by line, phrase by phrase. Those simple letters arranged in a way that left me glad to be alive. No matter how bad life got. The literary equivalent of the sentiment ‘any day above ground is a good day.’
Boucher spoke to me though those backlit pages. Mostly read in the dark to get the effect. I also didn’t want anything else to be able to distract me from the experience. Like how people often turn the lights off before a movie, even when they’re at home.
The projector of my mind hummed as his beautiful words created images. I’d never really understood the near animosity between literature and visual art. They might have different ways of going about it, but were ultimately united in their goals.
I couldn’t draw, or even really paint. Nor was I really much of a writer, myself. I would never be published, but my career, such as it was at that point, had been in publishing, and I loved it. I loved to read.
Hugo Boucher was on another level, though. He was absolutely beautiful, in body as well as in print. Although I didn’t have too much reference to go on as far as the former. Photographs were scarce, much like his treasured output.
There were rumors of art, paintings that no one had seen. Not to mention another book he’d been working on for over five years. I stared at the single photograph of him on the company website and it almost felt like he looked at me across space and time. Rendered in a stoic black and white, doing little justice to his true Norman features. His full lips held a cigarette. A risky move in the days of health cartels and easy offense. Though, in his defense, the image had been captured over ten years ago, its subject an obstinate youth of 25.
