The binder had survived four moves, two apartments, and a divorce that took the couch. He was thirty-nine. He drove it to the shop on a Tuesday with the car heat off to save gas, slid it across the glass, and then held the corner a second longer than he meant to, which the owner noticed and pretended not to.

The owner did not haggle. He counted out more than the binder was worth, slowly, and said nothing about why. In slot one there was a card an eight-year-old had drawn in crayon, a hero with the proportions all wrong, and the owner slid that page out and handed it back across the counter. He took it. In the parking lot, that was the part that undid him.