How I would have loved to sign them all, because every one of the writers I invited to a meeting after reading through their manuscript had a talent for conveying a message beyond words. That’s the magic of literature. We read a story, and something happens. We don’t know what or why, nor which sentence was responsible, but the world has changed and will never be the same again. Sometimes it takes us several years to realize that a book tore a hole in reality through which we could escape from the pettiness and despondency of our surroundings.

Emma prepares a small tray, and when Sam timidly approaches, his eyes glued as always to the floor, she shakes his hand and says, “Hi, I’m Emma. And who are you, handsome companion of my favorite publisher?”

He blushes and mumbles his name. He’s standing a few feet from the table with an old globe on it where Henri and I would sit when he returned from his encounters with the world’s most amazing people and I didn’t have enough in my flat to make breakfast. His flights often landed very early in the morning, so he would slip the key from its hiding place in the courtyard wall and let himself into my loft while I was sleeping. When I opened my eyes, he’d be sitting on my bed with his back to the wall, watching me. How many lonely evenings did I spend hoping that he’d be there when I woke up the next morning?

“Sam?”

He turns to me, and for a split second I glimpse the young Henri in the schoolboy’s features. My longing for Henri, his warm body, his skin, his scent, and his voice, is tearing my heart apart.

We sit down on opposite sides of the table. I spin the paper globe, whose continents have been re-created from old sepia maps. I stop it with my finger on South Sudan and tap a tiny blue ink mark.

“Your father was here,” I say quietly. I spin the ball again. “And here,” I say, pointing to the Canadian Rockies, and then repeat the process several times, pointing to Kabul, Colombia, Tierra del Fuego, Moscow, Damascus, Tibet, and Mongolia. Henri would draw dots on this globe with a pen to show me where he’d been.

Sam runs his finger over the surface. “I’ve got all his reports and portraits at home,” he whispers. His eyes are very bright and piercing. “He learned to ride in Mongolia. In Canada he met the professor who walked out on his family one day and went to live in the wilderness. And in Damascus he tracked down a former tutor of Arab princes and princesses.” He touches the various spots again before asking, “What is he like?”

He says “is,” not “was.”