It was pouring rain, and I couldn’t believe the horses were still going to run, but they did, and against massive odds, my faith in A Very Freaky Chicken was rewarded, because the favorites had pulled out before the race due to conditions underfoot. My bet paid out almost eighteenfold. I stuffed the cash in my pocket and ran out before I could do something impulsive.

Since we had been teenagers, bopping in our rooms to The Smiths, I had promised Hadley a trip to Paris and so I booked it the moment I returned home. Although we would have very little spending money over the three-day French vacation, I wanted us to have something we would never forget.

Of course, I realize now that everything is destined to be forgotten. But believing that it wouldn’t gave it a significance it could only truly achieve years later with the certainty that it would.

I found an inexpensive bed and breakfast aptly named Le Coq near Gare du Nord station. The room was so small that if one person was standing, the other had to sit on the bed. And the mattress was very soft, which made getting up a comedy. There were mirrors on the closet doors, which we made use of, despite always being tired from walking. That tiny, worn out hotel was one of the places I’ve felt happiest in my life. I remember it clearly, from the electric hairdryer on the wall to a green vase of plastic flowers on the desk. You have to realize: I had just sold my first story. In a few months, hundreds, if not thousands of Bulgarians would be reading my words, following characters I had brought into the world from nothing. The truth was that a team of esteemed Balkan men and women of letters had found my thoughts original enough to share.

Even if no one liked it, the narrative would live forever on dusty library shelves, waiting to be discovered by people with taste. My story could never be unpublished. There was nothing to be afraid of anymore, no insult capable of denting my happiness. My short story had been accepted for publication. And unless the world ended before November, I could never not be a writer.

That’s how young I was.

In truth, it’s probably safe to say that the greatest writers among us never get published. The ones we know are but a splinter on the tree of the ones we didn’t recognize, or put in prison, or murdered, or feebly rejected with the same scribbled note⁠—Sorry. Not right for us⁠—because their work did not conform to the current fashion.