The Stuff You Find In Books [fiction]

Sometimes a column turns into a story

I have a whole file folder of stuff that’s fallen out of books when I opened them.  People will use anything as a bookmark, and you never know when that time you set it down will be the last time you ever look at it.  Fifty years later, your grandkids sell your stuff, some guy at a flea market dumps all your books out on a table, I buy one and open it up, and out flutters a matchbook, or an expired coupon for a long-forgotten snack cake brand, or your pay stub from a factory bulldozed during the Reagan administration.

You know what I never find in books?  Actual bookmarks.  I’m convinced that people who spend money on those are too goal-oriented to leave a book unfinished.  They might hate it, but it’s gonna stick in their craw if they get five chapters in and let life get in the way.  It’s your folks who live a more chaotic life who’ll get up to answer the door and cram a whole matchbook in between pages 122 and 123, and then let that book sink to the bottom of the strata of magazines and newspapers and bullshit next to their chair, never to be seen by them again.