The First One First · Visiting Hours

085. Two first accounts stop before payment

The paired accounts share a date boundary and describe incompatible actions.

	First account: renews	First account: does not renew
Shared particulars	Fifty-three; wife dead eleven years	Fifty-three; wife dead eleven years
Morning or meeting	Interest in the removed tree, then corrected tense	A woman offers her hand; his hands stay in his pockets
Stopping point	Before the ninth; money still his	Before the ninth; money still his

His later written intention to renew does not show a completed renewal or settle which account he originally gave.

086. Cutting the page does not cut everything

Four kinds of text receive four different material treatments.

Text or object	Treatment	What remains
Boxed comfort statements	Left alone as true	Both first accounts can contain them
Laugh question	Leaf folded over the woman's passage	The stranger's answer is made adjacent to her
School-gate passage	Three lines cut out and swallowed	A slot through which the receipts remain visible
Third account	Signed and placed underneath	The other two accounts remain above it

The story shows changes to this copy and a signed intention, not the removal of a woman or alteration of the city.

087. The index redirects the question

Links inside the coverless book; destinations are not confirmations of identity.

The book's index: Consulted to find which account he gave
The preceding woman's account: Sees four years of his receipts; he has eleven
REFUSAL: The word he wants to learn
REINSTATEMENT: The index's destination from refusal
A third first account: No page number; begins with his request for the book

The index offers another account where he asks which account was his.

29. The First One First