The paperback cost less than the coffee I bought on the way home. Inside the cover, someone had written a first name in pencil and then rubbed it out. The pressure remained. Tilted toward the window, the paper still held the letters.
I tried not to read them. There was something oddly private about a name that had been removed before the book changed hands. A price sticker on the back was more straightforward: a previous shop had asked twice as much.
Notes without their reader
There were three marks in the book. One paragraph had a line beside it. A corner had been folded and flattened again. Near the end, a question mark stood beside a sentence that did not seem especially questionable.
The marks changed the pace of my reading. I paused where another person had paused, even when I could not work out why. At the pencilled line, I read the paragraph twice and found two quite different things it might have meant to them.
Passing it on
For several days, an old receipt served as my bookmark. It was from my own pocket, but it soon looked as though it belonged to the book. I wondered whether I would remember to remove it before giving the paperback away.
I made no notes. This was less a principle than a hesitation: the earlier reader had left so little that another mark would seem unusually loud.
When I finished, I put the receipt in the recycling. The book went by the door. Inside its cover, the erased name was still visible in the right light.
