Every Tuesday, a card appeared on the same library chair. Reserved for Dr. Ansel, it said, although the university had held his memorial in spring. The new attendant removed it each morning. By noon, another stood in its place.
A student noticed that the lettering changed whenever the afternoon porter was away. She asked him whether the reservation was a joke. He showed her an old instruction book. Ansel had requested that the chair remain empty for a reader who needed the wider aisle. The name on the card was the person who had arranged it, not the person expected to sit there.
The porter had kept the instruction without knowing whom it served. The student rewrote the card as an accessible seat and left the professor's name out. That afternoon, a woman with a walking frame used the desk without asking anyone's permission.
In the instruction book, the porter added a date beside Ansel's request. He did not write cancelled. He wrote understood, and tucked one of the old cards between the pages where the arrangement had begun.