“Can’t you picture those writers using them to type up their masterpieces at night, after the store’s closed, before they go to sleep?” he said. “Maybe you should write one of your tiny books on one, and become a world-famous author.”
“I’m not an author.”
“You make books that get published on the spot, don’t you?”
“No, I doodle on scraps of paper and fold them up to make a pretend book that I recycle later. Big difference.”
But she got goosebumps. No one had ever called her an author before.
They saw a bulletin board covered in dozens of notes about writing or visiting or to the love of their lives, scribbled on scraps of paper or the back of a train ticket or a candy wrapper. Sabine read one to Aubin: “Yesterday I turned nineteen! Far from home, penniless, pretending to be confident, trying too hard, terrified, free, living the dream, best birthday ever.”
“That’s me,” she said. “I don’t know what I want. I am all these things.”
“Everyone is these things,” said Aubin.
On the underside of the stairs to the second floor were taped a few pieces of ripped, yellowed paper. One was ten rules for writers from Elmore Leonard (another author she’d have to look up). It started with “number one: never open a book with weather,” and finished with “number ten: try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.” Good advice.
Sabine stepped up the worn red stairs. On its risers were painted-on words:
I wish
I could show you
When you are
Lonely or
In darkness
The astonishing
Light
Of your own
Being
—Hafiz
“Who’s Hafiz?” asked Aubin.
“A Persian Sufi poet,” said Yves.
On the landing, the wall was covered in framed photos of writers: Truman Capote, Simone de Beauvoir, Maya Angelou … Yves pointed to a photo of Leonard Cohen.
“Awesome Canadian like Sabine,” said Aubin.
“Mais oui,” said Yves. “I saw that photo, and I found a book about him here and sat on that bench and read it. There’s a famous line from a song of his about how light gets into all the tiny cracks of life. Right there, I wrote the outline for a short film, called my friends from film school, and told them that I wanted to shoot that weekend. Which we did.”
“Can I see it?” she asked.
“Sure. It’s amateur and self-important, but it got me into Cannes for the first time. Thank you, Leonard.”
Yves wandered off.
The next room had a piano, chairs, and another place to read or sleep. Sabine found Aubin a book on music production and pushed him into a comfy chair.
“There. Read and feel some hope,” she said, plunking herself onto a bench, pulling a piece of paper from her notebook, and tearing it in strips, which she folded into a chapbook.
