Brooklyn, late 2010s. I finally found it. There it is, at the bottom of a dollar bin: Vladimir Nabokov’s first novel, Mashenka . Magenta cover, simple black type. I lift it by the edges, gingerly, as if it didn’t just spend God knows how many years crushed under stacks of People magazine from the 1970s.

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I carry the book to the register. The cashier unfolds a plastic bag, clicks around on his computer. I hold out my credit card, impatient to go outside and examine it properly—the carriage-and-horseman logo, the photo of pince-nez’ed Nabokov inside, the delicate pre-Revolutionary orthography. The cashier keeps clicking. He frowns. The computer whirs, he clacks his teeth, all while my heart is in my feet. Finally, he says,

“This cannot be sold.”

I remember it because he said it like that. As if it was a law of nature.

“I found it in the dollar bin.” I say.…