[ WP ] Reading books is illegal , and libraries are run like brothels . Describe borrowing and reading a book like a sexual experience .

“ What are you going for? ” He stands next to me, sweating. Dull, coppery stink belches out of him like exhaust. There ’ s already a musk. The room itself is claustrophobic, crowded, dark, nestled in the basement of an old accountant ’ s office. From behind the long counter, paper stacks rise from the floor in gloomy stalagmites, razorbacked and dog-eared and filthy. Back East the places are all airy windows and crushed velvet, chaises and bowls of fruit, with busty escorts who will read to you aloud – readeasies, they call them, tongue-in-literal-cheek. 
 
 
 He ’ s coming for the smut, the trash, the kind of stuff you avoid others' eyes for. The books you would burn if you were dying from the cold. Pulp. But it ’ s safe, at least; a cop catches you with that and he might not even take it away. Most likely, he ’ ll just laugh in your face. 
 
 
 “ Mystery. ” He says to me with a high titter after a long, unproductive silence. “ I love mystery. ” 
 
 
 It ’ s always a woman at the desks. Her breasts always come together under her tawny cotton dress in a single, sexless mound; her face is always fat and pinched and matronly. She hands the books over with fingers gloved in pre-war leather. They do this on purpose I think, less of a deterrent and more as a kink. Some Oedipal rebellion. What must they think of us, whoever creates these surreptitious places, with their dark corners and avalanches of old words? 
 
 
 In front of me, the man with the coppery stink snatches his book and stuffs it under his greasy coat. He shuffles into the dark recesses of the hall, to a room with an infested mattress and no windows, to a bathroom with a cracked sink and a spider in the bathtub. To silence. To escape. 
 
 
 “ What do you want? ” The woman always has glasses: cat ’ s-eye, on a gold chain. 
 
 
 Thrillers are safe. Also Romance, Adventure. Even Horror. Brain candy – evil only in that they deprive the brain of time. Why is it the most dangerous things are the most impossible to classify? 
 
 
 I speak, wondering if this is worth dying for, blushing and stammering because I can not help but be conditioned to shame. I wonder, as her eyebrow ticks up around those cat ’ s-eye frames, as she recedes into the darkness, if these places don ’ t exist to root out people like me, to sort the chalk from the bone. 
 
 
 She returns. She passes it across the stained counter, followed by a cheap pair of latex gloves. 
 
 
 `` Wear those. No exceptions.'' 
 
 
 A paperback, the cover torn off. Its pages like dead moth wings. 
 
 
 Edit: formatting
