Nows and Forevers

You never know what you’ll find in library books. I’ve found any number of pressed flowers and leaves, an old love letter, a dollar bill, and index cards and the occasional honest-to-gosh bookmark. I’ve never kept any of that stuff, because it wasn’t mine to keep and also because maybe the person who left them will come back.

Or maybe they should stay where they are, frozen in time.

Today I was at my local library, looking for my next few reads. I picked up John O’Hara’s “Collected Stories,” a book that I have been meaning to read for a long time. You don’t hear much about O’Hara these days, but he was one of the best-ever American short story writers last century. He was also someone who long lived in New York City (as I did) and was from northeastern Pennsylvania (where my family is from). Plus his “Appointment in Samarra” is also on my reading list.

Flipping through the pages, I came upon this slip, from Friday, Sept. 19, 2014, almost a decade ago. It was slipped into the pages, about halfway through the book, where the reader apparently stopped.

There were two books taken out that day almost nine years ago: “The Collected Stories of John O’Hara” and “Harlot’s Ghost,” one of the last novels written by Norman Mailer.

I don’t know what to make of that. There isn’t any other details about the person who took this book out before me, or whether this was the last time it had been out. I wonder whether I’ve ever done that, leave a due-date slip in a returned library book. And what would it say about me?