Dear Diary:
Our co-op, in the East 50s, is surely not the only one in the city to offer shareholders a free library. On shelves by the fitness club, people drop off books they don’t want and pick up those they do â€" and can keep them for all anyone cares.
I add to, and subtract from, the shelves regularly. So the other day, when my wife insisted there was no room in our apartment for the huge Random House dictionary we’ve been storing largely unconsulted for years â€" we have the even bulkier two-volume Oxford English Dictionary, and isn’t everything on the Internet anyway these days? â€" I carried it down to the library along with a hardcover of Richard Ford’s “Canada†that I wasn’t enjoying.
That night, coming back from walking our dog, I was entering the elevator when a neighbor and his teenage son slipped in just before the doors closed and pushed the button for the floor above ours. The father was laden with my huge dictionary and “Canada.â€
I was about to ntroduce myself as the donor and wish him happy reading when he said to his son, in obvious censure, “It’s stunning what people leave there.â€
I nodded and smiled. What could I say? I’m the moron who left them?
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