WHEN Stefan Merrill Block was a teenager, he spent most of his time with his mother, being home-schooled near Dallas. Now he’s a 26-year-old first-time author of a recently published novel, “The Story of Forgetting” (Random House, $25), living in a two-bedroom floor-through in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn. But he still calls his mom in Texas every day to chat.
Anchoring the kitchen is a round tiled garden table.
The apartment is furnished with castoffs and leftovers from Ms. Thibault's previous tenants.
His roommate, Anne Thibault, is the platonic yin to his yang. An actress, writer and waitress, Ms. Thibault was raised by her father in Toronto and Pennsylvania, and rarely saw her mother. Her play, “I Wrote This Play to Make You Love Me,” about the loss of a mother, sexual promiscuity and other themes, was recently produced at the Fairbanks Shakespeare Theater, in Alaska, and now she’s writing a memoir.
They pass the days in their $1,500-a-month apartment writing and caring for their 10-month-old pug, Chachi, and in many ways mothering each other.
Ms. Thibault first rented the place in 1997, and while she has kept the lease, she has sublet it to various people much of the time when she has been on the road in theater productions or living elsewhere. The apartment is furnished with castoffs and leftovers from all the temporary tenants.
At the rear of the house, a round tiled garden table with a few basic plastic chairs anchors the kitchen. Off that, a small alcove has an easy chair for reading. The windows frame a view of frumpy gardens and trees where parrots from Brooklyn’s wild flocks sometimes gather. The alcove’s walls, which are lined with bookshelves, are painted orange.
“I have always had this idea of autumn orange in my head, but every time I try to paint a room that, it comes out more the color of a football,” said Ms. Thibault, who gives her age as “30-ish.”
The living room is in the front of the apartment, accessible from the public hallway or through Mr. Block’s dark bedroom in the middle of the apartment — which has a shade-covered window, a bed and a vintage poster of Andy Warhol’s banana cover for the “Velvet Underground & Nico” album.
The living room has more books and a well-worn couch facing an inoperable fireplace. The windows overlook the Prospect Expressway, a noisy sunken highway. The roommates pretend the noise is the sea.
Off the living room, Ms. Thibault’s bedroom also faces the expressway.
The two roommates have lived here together since September 2007, when they fled the illegal Park Slope sublet where Ms. Thibault first met Mr. Block. She was living there because at the time friends were occupying her Windsor Terrace place. She advertised on Craigslist for a roommate, and Mr. Block was one of about 40 people who answered the ad. Ms. Thibault liked him so much that when he told her he couldn’t afford the two months’ rent plus security up front, she let him move in anyway.
The day he moved in, he ran into the landlord in front of the building.
“Stefan?” the man asked.
Mr. Block turned, quite surprised to see that the new landlord also owned the last building that he had lived in. Of course, the landlord knew he didn’t have a lease, and informed him that he was moving into an illegal sublet.
“Please don’t kick me out,” Mr. Block begged.
“We’ll see,” the landlord said.
Almost immediately, Mr. Block sold his book for an advance he says has allowed him to write full time.
The roommates spent several months working on their respective projects — Ms. Thibault on her play, and Mr. Block on his novel, which deals with a nerdy boy, a hunchbacked rancher and the Alzheimer’s gene that unites them — in a crumbling apartment with spotty electricity and no cold water. The landlord hired a private investigator and threatened to take them to court to evict them. Eventually, the situation became untenable.
About then, the people who had sublet Ms. Thibault’s Windsor Terrace apartment left, and last September they moved in with Chachi, who wears a collar studded with fake jewels. They are happy to be back in an apartment with a lease and a landlord they love.
They work at home most days, Mr. Block sitting with his computer at one of the cheap plastic chairs at the dining room table.
“Something about these uncomfortable plastic chairs — cheaper than Ikea — makes it easier to write,” he said.
Ms. Thibault sits with her computer on the couch in the living room. She says she learned how to write a book from watching Mr. Block, who gets up in the morning and writes all day. Since she’s prone to waiting for inspiration rather than working, Ms. Thibault has posted her writing schedule on the refrigerator, which allows her three 10-minute Internet breaks a day.
“Sometimes one of us gets stuck on a word and comes charging in the other person’s room,” Mr. Block said.
They don’t keep a lot of food in the house, because they find that if it’s there they’ll treat writer’s ennui with too many snacks. At the end of each workday, Mr. Block runs in Prospect Park. And often at night they’ll go out with friends.
“She gets me out into the world,” Mr. Block said, “and gives me good advice about dating.”
“Stefan is such a gift in my life, I can’t say it enough,” Ms. Thibault said.
