Read Chapter 3: A Business Plan with Wine Stains

The official business plan for La Petite Traversée was written on a paper tablecloth in a wine bar near Place Monge.

It began because Clara received a letter from the landlord.

The rent would rise in June.

Not catastrophically, not illegally, not even surprisingly. Just enough to transform the shop's fragile arithmetic into a verdict.

Clara read the letter three times at the counter. She had spent two weeks cutting costs, negotiating distributor terms, and discovering that Marianne had been subsidising the shop from savings. There were no savings left.

At six, Luc came downstairs to complain about a poetry reading Clara had scheduled for the following Thursday.

"They have a drum," he said.

"One drum."

"A drum is not divisible by reassurance."

Clara handed him the letter.

He read it standing under the pendant lamp.

"Ah."

"That's your expert financial analysis?"

"My expert financial analysis is worse in French."

"I have eight to twelve weeks unless sales improve substantially."

Luc folded the letter.

"Then we improve them."

She looked at him.

"We?"

"I live above a bookshop. I prefer it to a bank or a luxury handbag boutique. Self-interest."

"How noble."

"Also Marianne cheated at cards and still owes me forty euros. I consider the debt transferable."

He took his coat from the peg by the back door.

"Come."

"Where?"

"To create capitalism."

The wine bar was crowded and warm, with fogged windows and a chalkboard listing bottles by region. Luc knew the owner, Sabine, a woman in her fifties with cropped silver hair and the authority of a person who had removed drunk philosophy students from chairs for twenty years. She gave them a corner table, two glasses of Beaujolais, and bread with salted butter.

"So," Luc said. "What does a bookshop need?"

"Customers."

"Excellent. British education."

"What does a graphic novelist need?"

"Silence."

"Then this meeting is already over."

But Clara had brought the accounts.

She explained margins, returns, event sales, online competition, tourist seasonality, and the complicated status of English-language books in Paris. Luc listened more seriously than she expected.

"You have tourists," he said. "Students. Expats. French readers who want English editions. But Marianne's customers are getting older."

"Yes."

"And you sell books as objects."

"What else should I sell them as?"

"Reasons to come somewhere."

Clara stopped.

Luc drew a rectangle on the tablecloth.

"People can buy a book online in thirty seconds. So the book is not enough. The shop must be a place they cannot order."

"Community."

"I hate that word."

"Of course you do."

"But yes. Something like it."

They began listing ideas.

Bilingual reading nights. Small press tables. Sunday drawing sessions. Children's story hours in English and French. Book-and-wine evenings with Sabine. A neighbourhood discount. A subscription box. A monthly "blind date with a book." A wall where readers could leave recommendations in any language.

Luc suggested an exhibition of original comic art.

Clara looked at him. "Yours?"

"Some. Others too. There are artists nearby."

"Would they do it?"

"If I ask."

"You would ask?"

He shrugged. "I said we improve sales."

The word we sat strangely between them.

Clara drank wine.

At the next table, two women were discussing childcare in rapid French. Someone opened the door, letting in cold air and scooter noise. Paris outside gleamed with rain, ordinary and theatrical at once.

"What about your work?" Clara asked. "Aren't you on deadline?"

Luc grimaced.

"I am always on deadline. It is a system designed to make anxiety appear professional."

"I know that system."

"Marianne said you left your publisher."

Clara traced the rim of her glass.

"I did."

"Because of the man?"

Her head came up.

"Marianne told you about Daniel?"

"Only that he was an idiot with expensive shoes."

Clara laughed despite herself. "That's accurate."

"She liked accuracy."

"He left me for someone at work. A publicist. Twenty-nine. Very efficient eyebrows."

Luc said nothing.

"The worst part," Clara continued, surprising herself, "was not that he left. It was discovering he'd been planning a different future while I was still living in ours. I felt stupid. Then everyone became kind, which was worse."

"Kindness can be unbearable when you want dignity."

She looked at him.

"Exactly."

Luc folded and unfolded a corner of the tablecloth.

"My ex-wife left because I was never in the room even when I was in the room."

Clara blinked. "You were married?"

"For four years. Anaïs. Architect. Better at walls than I was."

"How long ago?"

"Three years."

"And were you? Never in the room?"

"Often."

No self-defence. No joke.

Clara respected him more for that than she wanted to.

Sabine arrived with another glass of wine neither had ordered.

"Pour sauver les librairies," she said.

"For saving bookshops," Luc translated.

"I got that one."

"Progress."

Clara looked at the tablecloth. Their ideas had spread into arrows, boxes, figures, sketches. Luc had drawn a tiny shop with people spilling out of it onto the pavement.

"What do we call the programme?" she asked.

"Programme?"

"The whole thing. If we're marketing it."

Luc considered.

"La Traversée. The Crossing. Marianne already gave you the idea."

Clara looked at the blue ink sign in his drawing.

A crossing between languages. Between readers and artists. Between old customers and new. Between whatever she had been in London and whatever she might become here.

"All right," she said. "La Traversée."

Luc lifted his glass.

"To not becoming a luxury handbag boutique."

Clara touched her glass to his.

"A noble cause."

On the walk back, they argued about whether Sunday opening was civilised.

Neither noticed that they had begun walking at the same pace.