Hide and Gogol

Last week I was late for a get-together with friends but trekked out of my way to scrounge a copy of Gogol's Collected Tales from the library on 58th Street.  Though the catalog said it was on the shelf, it wasn't. I asked a clerk for help, and we looked for around 30 minutes till he pulled out a beaten copy from behind a row of books.  I said, "Holy shit!" How it feels finding lost things!

When I went to check it out, a clerk asked another why it was in such poor condition.  He typed some keys and said, "Oh! It's the last in the system."  And New York just got a little smaller.