Paperbark

Three boxes from a house in Maldon.

Mostyn Street, Castlemaine. The lamp stays on until six.

They came in on a Thursday, in the back of a station wagon, and they still smell like a closed room. Travel, cookery, and a short row of poetry that someone had actually read — the Wright is pencilled, the Murray is not.

Nothing on the front table is more than twelve dollars. If you are after something particular, leave a note on the pad. We don’t take orders any other way. What’s in the boxes is written down, for this week only.

The bookshop window at dusk The window, Thursday

On the desk, not on the shelf yet

A worn paperback under the desk lamp

One novel with a bookmark still in it, around the middle, which is where most people give up. I haven’t priced it. If you want to finish it, say so and I’ll take the bookmark out.

The poetry is to the left of the window. A school anthology, a couple of paperbacks with soft spines, and the jam book that turned up twice — one copy has a stain on page 40, the other doesn’t. The stained one is the better of the two. Someone cooked from it.

A shelf of secondhand paperbacks

The rest of the shelves are the ordinary stock: river guides with the maps still folded in, and whatever was left when the last person moved. Come in. The door sticks; lift it a little.