The Book That Would Not Rank

The shop had been a chemist, then a repair stall, then a shelf.

Aunty Sohl ran it with a kettle and a rule: the notebook was the catalogue.

Nadi came with her printed hearing in a bag, like a person bringing a relic to a relic.

“Do you have anything on the wars?”

Sohl pointed at a spine that had been taped twice.

“That’s about recipes.”

“That’s what my grandmother said.”

“Your grandmother and this book have a union.”

Nadi opened the notebook. Names, dates, sometimes a comment: brought it back in the rain, good. No ranking. No first result.

She held her terminal over it.

Sohl put a hand on the screen.

“If you search it, I have to become a library. Libraries get inspected. Inspected shelves get relevancy. Relevancy puts the recipe book on page seventy-nine and a prettier war on page one.”

Nadi sat on the stool that squeaked in the same F-sharp as Hana’s.

She read the recipe book. It was a war. Advertisements had invaded the pancakes. Someone in 2090 had written in the margin: I JUST WANT THE FLOUR.

Oren Beck came in for the kettle, saw his student, and did not turn it into a seminar.

They drank.

Rain did the thick-glass sound.

A man from Exchange tried to donate a box of identical civic primers.

Sohl said no with tea.

“They’re verified.”

“That’s their problem.”

Nadi left the hearing on the shelf without asking, then asked.

Sohl said, “It can live next to the pancakes. That’s honest.”

On the street Nadi did not search.

She walked past the school, past the discontinued door, and felt the building as a stack of jobs: stamp, teach, live, lend.

The gateway, in her pocket, stayed a pocket.

For one afternoon, relevance was a notebook on a string.