Taking Inventory
The notebook says STOCK on the cover, but it records no prices. What was bought, and one thing seen. Forty years of a ledger that refuses to conclude.
Behind the till there is a notebook. The cover says, in one word, STOCK. It is the kind of stock ledger that would be awkward to show a tax office: every item sold is recorded, and not one price. Something else is recorded instead.
Second week of October. One dozen HB pencils. The Thursday man. Says he presses hard, wears pencils down fast. Has never once bought an eraser. Whether he doesn't erase or can't erase is not the ledger's business.
That last sentence is the grammar of the whole notebook. About any customer the owner writes exactly two things: what they bought, and one thing he saw. From the thing he saw, he does not take a single step toward a conclusion. Someone asked him why, once. The answer was short. โWrite down objects and it stays observation. Write down people and it turns into a verdict.โ
Third week of October. Two 4B erasers. The child who draws. Last month she was rationing her eraser and the drawings kept coming out darker. Buying two, her face loosened. It seems erasing was a thing she needed permission for.
Same week. Twenty sheets of letter paper. The one who stalls at the third sentence. Twenty sheets means a while before the next visit. Not coming is also news.
This notebook is the twelfth. The first is forty years old, the handwriting more hurried than now. Back then he wrote three or four things he saw, not one, and sometimes a conclusion. โSuspicious.โ โGood young man.โ โWon't be back.โ The customer marked won't be back has now been coming for thirty years. That is roughly when the conclusions stop, the handwriting of the notebooks testifies.
First week of November. One bottle of blue-black ink. The one who came twenty minutes before closing. Old pen, new ink. The drawer grew heavier by one envelope.
Same week. One sketchbook. A friend the eraser child brought along. Said she wasn't buying anything, turned around at the door, bought it. Some people need the full distance to the door.
Second week of November. Nothing sold. Someone waiting out the rain, no umbrella. Browsed for half an hour. Not asking a rain-waiting person what they are looking at also counts as inventory management.
Some things never get recorded. The owner has not once written down a name. Even when he learns one, it stays out. A name is not an object, and this is, after all, a stock ledger. So people remain in the notebook as the shape of what they bought. The Thursday pencils. The two erasers. The ink the colour of night that hasn't fully drained.
Third week of November. One yellow highlighter. First-time customer. Said something had finally given her a reason to underline. Didn't say what. Wasn't asked. The ledger records only that a season for yellow had arrived.
At midnight the owner writes the day's entries and closes the book. The last line has been the same for forty years. โNot sold today: the drawer.โ Only while writing that line does his face stop being a bookkeeper's and become, briefly, a diarist's.
Read all twelve notebooks and would you know this alley's forty years? What you would know is probably a different kind of thing. Who switched pencils, and when. Who bought letter paper in which season. A record that refuses conclusions is unhelpful, and it lasts. Sentences that postpone the verdict are the only ones still true thirty years on.
In the next margin
The next story walks out of one line in this ledger: the man who buys a dozen pencils every Thursday and has never once bought an eraser.
The scene from another angle
A Selvora Original ยท Mina Seo
A house byline of Selvora Editorial