By midmorning the returns desk had a new jar of paper ribbons, each no wider than a thumb. We asked at the counter what they were for. "They listen," the librarian said, tapping one that had already learned to wait. "When a chapter ends, they give a little clap. Not enough to wake the cat on the atlas. Enough that the page knows it was liked."
A man with a grocery bag of library cards tried one on a gardening manual and wrote in the notebook by the window that the clap arrived just as he learned when to water the beans. Someone else left a shorter note: "Applauded twice. Once for the chapter, once for the kind goose in the picture."
The next afternoon the same man came back with a thicker novel and asked, very politely, whether the jar had any bookmarks that could last through winter.