Chapter Thirty-One:  The Award Night

Tonight, the carpet contained a pattern apparently designed to conceal both spilt wine and existential collapse. There was no red carpet, no screaming photographers and no enormous poster of Brick Holland staring toward a horizon he intended to punch.

Localad found, walking into that room in a suit he had chosen and bought himself, that he felt more at ease than he had at any point during the entire, glittering, exhausting Hollywood chapter of his life.

He felt immediately at home.

This room was all about books: and people whose formal clothes looked borrowed from the more confident versions of themselves.

Marjory sat beside him at a round table near the front, along with Priya, who had flown out specifically for the occasion and had brought, unexpectedly, a bottle of champagne she'd been saving, she said, "for exactly this kind of night." A bottle of champagne and a folder, because she did not trust celebration unaccompanied by documentation.

And there was Mrs. Alvarez and Mr. Okafor, who had driven the two hours together and had spent the entire ride, according to Mrs. Alvarez's own cheerful report, arguing about whether the diner should stay open late to celebrate if Localad won.

Mrs. Alvarez wore sequins and informed three finalists that Localad had once repaired her toaster.

Mr. Okafor wore a dark suit and the expression of a man prepared to witness history without inconveniencing it.

Localad won.

His name was called.

For several seconds he remained seated because the name belonged to an author and his body had not been informed that this now included him.

Marjory squeezed his arm.

“Stand up.”

He did.

The moment itself passed strangely, the way Localad imagined most such moments must pass for everyone who experienced them. A name being called, his own name, a beat of disbelief before his body remembered how to stand, applause that felt both enormous and somehow very far away, Marjory's hand gripping his arm for one brief second before he had to let go of her to walk to the stage.

He had written a speech, of sorts, three different drafts of it sitting folded in his jacket pocket, and standing at the podium under lights considerably gentler than a soundstage's, he found that none of the drafts felt right, and he set them all aside and spoke, instead, from the same place he'd been speaking from since the very beginning of all of this. Plainly, honestly, without polish, the way he'd learned to write only after twenty years of trying to write some other, fancier ways first.

At the podium he unfolded his speech, looked at it and placed it aside.

"I wrote this book at a counter in a bookstore that was, for a long time, failing," he began. “Mostly before opening, because fear is easier to manage before customers arrive.”

The room laughed.

 “I wrote it for twenty years. This was not discipline. Well, some of it was discipline. But a considerable portion was avoidance with stationery.”

He spoke about the bad novel that had made him angry enough to finish. About Marjory telling him courage was doing the thing while frightened. About selling the film rights and paying the debt that would have closed Harbour & Page.

"I wrote it because I was angry at a bad novel I'd read, and because I was scared of finishing something that might turn out to not be good enough, and because a friend of mine told me once that being brave doesn't mean not being scared. it means doing the thing anyway, while scared. I sold the film rights to this book eighteen months ago, and I want to say, honestly, that I don't regret that decision. I don’t regret taking the money. It paid off a debt that would most certainly have closed my family's shop. It's not a story where the money was the villain. The villain, if there was one, was believing gratitude required agreement. For a while, every note arrived wrapped in praise, and I treated the praise as a debt. I thought saying no would make me difficult, unprofessional or ungrateful.”

He found Desmond’s face in memory, Trent’s conference room, Priya’s clauses, Brick’s unexpected kindness and the film’s enormous artificial sky.

“A story can survive many changes,” he continued. “But every story has a few things that are not decoration. They are load-bearing truths. You are allowed to know what they are. You are allowed to protect them. And you should decide before the room becomes expensive and everyone in it tells you that surrender is collaboration.”

The room was silent.

He paused, finding Marjory's face in the crowd, steadying himself against it before he continued.

“My three things were Jasmine, the sword and the Wound staying open. It took me far too long to understand that the third thing was also about me.”

He lifted the glass award.

“It isn't the same thing. I learned that the hard way, and I'm standing here tonight holding this award because, eventually, I learned it in time to do something about it. To every writer in this room who has a story that someone with more money than you is asking you to make louder, smaller, faster, easier to sell in fifteen seconds, I'd just ask you to remember that you're allowed to know which three things matter most, and to protect them, even when protecting them costs you something you thought you couldn't live without. I promise you, you can live without it. What you can't live without is the story being actually, truly yours, all the way to the end."

The applause that followed lasted longer than Localad expected, and he stood at the podium holding the award, a simple glass plaque, considerably less ostentatious than anything he'd seen handed out at the film's premiere a year and a half earlier, and, to him, immeasurably more valuable. It did not shake walls or generate content. But it meant more.

Localad thought, with a clarity that felt like the culmination of everything he'd been through since a stranger's car broke down outside his shop, that he had never once, in this entire strange and difficult journey, felt more certain that he had made the right choice than he did in this exact moment.

The applause rose for one last time.

Afterward, Priya opened the champagne.

Mrs. Alvarez, famed for her poise, tact and diplomacy, drank from the award because she mistook it for a strangely shaped glass.

Mr. Okafor shook Localad’s hand twice.

Marjory kissed him where everyone could see.

For once, Localad did not become embarrassed.

He had spent much of his life imagining himself being grand in secret. Standing in that modest ballroom, holding an award for the quiet ending he had nearly been afraid to write, he finally understood that grandeur was not being watched by everyone.

It was about knowing what you had done when the room went quiet.

Thank you for reading thus far. Click here to read the full story from the beginning.