“Books expire the same as people. It was a brave thing. It was a scary thing. Sleeping rough on the streets for a year, he had learned to recognize their faces.”
Marv McCullin was a long-looking fellow whose arms had reach. Eyes grey, once keen, spoke early warnings. A quiet shape of mouth offset by a careful shave. All morning, he had been practicing his diagnosis. Most hopeless cases could be told at a glance coming apart at the seams. Books expire the same as people. It was a brave thing. It was a scary thing. Sleeping rough on the streets for a year, he had learned to recognize their faces. Across the library reception area, automatic doors slid back and forth. Their patterns of entrance and exit fascinated him. Rhythms of coming and going, like a machine that breathed for you. So, this was how time passed on the outside. A few days ago, he came across an untouched paperback over fifty years old. Although he had opened it gently, the ancient glue binding had cracked and split, and it closed its eyes forever.
“Have you read it?”
Marv looked up from the service desk. The book was a popular hardback, taken out on a regular basis. He shook his head as he stamped it for issue and handed it back. A woman in her mid-forties with a mole-like face stared at him curiously. Her eyes were a watery grey, half blind and half prophetic, a face unremarkably English, except for the eyes. Marv had learned to wear his face with a clean razor. His talent was a slow observation. All perfume is alcohol, he thought to himself. The woman spoke again as though speaking to no one, as though she had already expired herself.
“Some never stood a chance,” she rasped and turned to go. Marv McCullin’s heart had stopped two minutes earlier.
“How could she tell?” he stared at his hands, furious with incomprehension. The automatic doors opened and closed once more as though of their own accord. Nobody saw him leave the library early. Nobody noticed as the sunlight hit them right between the eyes.
The Last Minute of Marv McCullin
By Jonathan Jones
Jonathan Jones lives and works in Rome, where he teaches at John Cabot University. He has a PhD in literature from the University of Sapienza.
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