A Screen Printer, a Broken Machine, and a Dancing Dog

For more than a month now, a young guy from the neighborhood has been coming regularly to my little shop in Saint-Henri.

He runs a screen-printing business not far from here.Every day, he comes in to print transparent films used for transferring designs onto clothing.

His own printer broke down.

He already bought a new one, but apparently the installation and calibration are taking forever. So meanwhile, he has been forced into an unusual temporary routine: every day, he walks into my tiny printing shop carrying USB keys, files, and half-finished projects.

Most of the time, we speak English.

Usually about practical things:film density,printer settings,alignment problems,production delays,business stress.

The ordinary language of people trying to keep small businesses alive.

But last week, something slightly unexpected happened.

He noticed my French novel sitting on the counter:

Luca, Timur et le Royaume Caché.

He picked it up.Looked at the cover.Flipped through a few pages.

Then he bought it.

Today, while waiting for another batch of transparent films to print, he suddenly told me:

“I really liked the book. It’s funny.”

Then he laughed.

And out of all the strange scenes inside the story, the one he remembered most was this:

Timur — the little dog — training all the dogs in the dog park to perform Michael Jackson dance moves.

Big dogs.Small dogs.Confused dogs.Nervous dogs.

All learning moonwalks and strange choreography under the authority of a tiny overconfident dog.

I laughed too.

Because honestly, that scene still makes me laugh when I think about it.

But afterward, while the printer continued humming beside us, I started thinking about something else.

What I find beautiful is not simply that someone bought the book.

It’s that this story keeps leaving the page and quietly entering real life.

A taxi driver from Congo pauses in silence while holding the book in his hands.

A woman learning Ukrainian buys a copy between stacks of language exercises.

And now, a screen printer — covered in ink, working long hours, dealing with broken equipment — tells me his favorite part is a little dog teaching other dogs how to dance like Michael Jackson.

None of these people came into the shop looking for literature.

They came to print documents.

And somehow, between printers, passport photos, transparent films, and ordinary conversations, a strange fictional world keeps appearing for a few seconds inside reality.

Maybe that is what I like most about independent books.

Not the sales.

Not the algorithms.

Not even the idea of “being a writer.”

But these tiny moments where imaginary characters quietly sit down beside real people in a real neighborhood.

A little boy.A little dog.A chaotic dog park.A moonwalk.

And suddenly, for a moment, the world feels slightly warmer, slightly stranger, and slightly more alive.