The invoice had been up since fall. It billed me for a shipping container I never ordered, nine hundred dollars, due on receipt. A brass pin had held it at the top edge, and the brass was the trouble. It had no grip left. Somewhere in the cold months it worked its way out of the block, and the sheet went down behind the box of Christmas lights that sits against the wall waiting for a December that keeps not coming.
I found it looking for an extension cord. The paper had rolled itself into a loose tube in the dark and the damp, printed side in. When I unrolled it, it fought me and wanted to roll back. The toner had held. The invoice was still due on receipt. Receipt had happened months ago, behind a box, in the dark, to no one.
The bent pin was on the floor under the lights. I found a fresh one in the saucer, a clear plastic head, and pushed it through the top of the sheet into the same puncture the paper already had. The block took it this time. I ran my thumb down the length of the page to flatten the curl. It flattened while I held it and lifted again the second I let go, a slow half-turn back toward the shape it had learned behind the box.
The boiler came on across the room. The furnace note steadied. I left the invoice where it was, standing slightly off the wall, still owing nine hundred dollars, the curl coming back into the bottom corner as I climbed the stairs.