The record with the coffee ring on side B

The ring sits just off-center on side B's label, a faint brown circle that must be fifteen years old by now. I bought the record for two dollars at an estate sale because the cover showed a landscape I recognized—rolling hills, a single oak—but when I got it home and turned it over, there was the stain.

The previous owner set a mug down while the record was spinning. I know this because the ring isn't quite circular; it has a small tail where the label was rotating under the cup. Someone was careless, or tired, or just didn't think a dollar-bin folk record from 1971 needed protecting.

The mark as a cue

Now I use it as a landmark. The coffee ring sits exactly where the third track ends and the fourth begins—right at the shift from the fast instrumental into the slower one with the woman's voice. I don't need to watch the needle anymore. I glance at the label spinning and wait for the stain to rotate past, and I know the change is two seconds away.

It's the most reliable thing about the record. The jacket is split along the spine. The vinyl itself has a pop in the first thirty seconds of side A that I've stopped hearing. But the coffee ring is permanent, patient, exactly where it was the day someone set their cup down and forgot.

What it holds

The woman's voice comes in and I think about the original owner every time. Not who they were, exactly, but the morning they made that mark. Early, probably. Still half-asleep. The kind of tired where you put your coffee down on whatever's nearby and only notice later, if at all.

I play side B more than side A now. I tell myself it's because the slower songs are better, but really I just like watching the stain come around, like a hand on a clock that only measures one thing: the moment before the song I'm waiting for.

— w.