Chasing Sylvia Beach Read Online Free PDF Page B

the city. She opened the door and slipped out. Before closing it completely, she snuck a peek at Paul. Seeing him dozing so peacefully made her smile. He had saved her. What would have happened without him? She sent him silent thanks and closed the door with a small click. Lily descended the stairs as noiselessly as possible, but they released a whine with every step. She cringed with each note, afraid of being caught.
    When Lily reached the ground floor, two women were talking in the small courtyard. She pressed herself against the wall in the dark stairwell, not daring to peek to see if one of them was the woman from the day before. They chatted on and on. Finally, the women left and silence fell in the dim yard. Lily peered out to make sure no one was looking out their window onto the courtyard, then slipped through the porte cochere and onto the street.
    The Paris morning swirled around her. Merchants stocked their stalls with fruits and vegetables from crates. Smartly dressed passersby hurried on their usual path to work. Children skipped on and off the sidewalk, swinging their briefcases and getting in the way of housewives carrying their shopping baskets to the market. The coal man made his rounds, delivering enormous bags of coal on his back.
    Lily shook her head in amazement. Her life back in Denver existed far away from this morning bustle. She, Lily Heller, was here! In the middle of all this . . . this normal Paris morning. It was crazy. She expected people to gawk at her, but she was the one staring in disbelief at the street life passing by. She gathered her courage and slipped into foot traffic on rue Saint André des Arts. It was odd to enter the city carrying nothing, no purse, no backpack, no passport. The streets felt much friendlier during the day, the shutters tucked up and away, revealing windows displaying here a dried goods shop, there a cobbler with a shoe stretcher and a pair of spats arranged as if ready to dance out of the window. She slowly eased into what was familiar about the city: the narrow streets forming cozy warrens, the spacious boulevards promising access. From her days as a student at the Sorbonne, she knew this neighborhood.
    She made her way toward Shakespeare and Company, feeling the same anxiety that she had before landing her job in Denver. It had taken Lily weeks to work up the nerve to ask if they were hiring. Capitol Books had been like a closed world, one she could only hope to enter. But with pressure from her father to get a job, she had finally approached Valerie. There weren’t any positions open, but Lily had persisted, taking refuge in the bookstore every day after dull temp jobs typing in downtown offices. Finally, Valerie had called her for an interview.
    But in Paris, Lily wasn’t looking for a job. She only knew she needed to be at Sylvia’s bookshop—the first place where she opened her eyes to this nightmare. The card, inviting her to a reading. She would find answers there. What story would she use to explain herself? “Hello, I’m Lily Heller. I’m your biggest fan and I’ve come from the future”? Maybe she could pass herself off as another writer wandering through Europe, searching for the bohemian life. She shook her head, trying to still her impatient thoughts with an imagined scenario.
    She would enter the shop, and its bookish chaos would welcome her like an old friend. Sylvia, perched at the desk, would greet her warmly. Lily would linger, savoring the familiar aroma of ink and paper, hoping to find the perfect book. It wouldn’t be long before she and Sylvia would be chatting about literature. And then Sylvia would somehow come to her rescue.
    Lily shook herself from her daydream. She had to deal with the reality of her situation.
    She arrived at rue de l’Odéon. The hubbub from the boulevard slipped away. The street was quiet. She passed two women dressed in hats and jackets that nipped the back of their waists. They stood outside a French