The marks in the margin

An original first-person fictional account of an invented tool-lending room.

The first thing Dena gave me was a red pen. The second was the ledger. Its ruled columns recorded each tool, each borrower and each promised return. "Dates stop one person's project swallowing the next person's," she said. I liked the certainty of that. Fairness, I decided, was a straight line: everyone kept to the date, and I did not bend it.

Before ten, a man returned a tile cutter two days late. He explained that only one strip of tiles had remained unfinished, as if the smallness of the task could shorten the delay. I entered the number two in red. While he was still speaking, the next borrower arrived. She had rearranged her morning to collect the cutter and now had less time to use it. The red figure looked severe, but it also looked justified.

At lunchtime, someone returned a folding workbench precisely on time. I drew a satisfied tick beside the date. Ten minutes later, the next borrower opened it and one side folded slowly towards the floor. A locking bar was missing. The previous borrower had already left, and the workbench, though punctual, was useless. My neat tick remained on the page, announcing that everything was in order.

That afternoon, a caller asked to keep a hand trolley until half past three instead of returning it at two. The ledger showed another booking from three o'clock. My pen moved towards the box for refused requests, but I stopped and telephoned the next borrower. He had booked from three because that was the only starting time available; he would not actually arrive until four. By the time the call ended, the trolley had a new return time of half past three and both borrowers could use it.

The printed box was too small for what had happened. I fitted two names, three times and an arrow into the margin. The page was untidy, yet the untidiness seemed more truthful than my earlier tick.

Just before closing, a message arrived from someone wanting to keep a ladder overnight. It was booked again as soon as we opened, but neither borrower had left a telephone number. Dena had gone home. I kept the red pen in one hand and picked up the pencil used for telephone messages with the other. For a while, I held both. Then I wrote, "Ask before deciding," in the margin and left the return date unchanged. The ledger was still open when the lights clicked off.