The Bookstore Read Online Free PDF Page A

touch me, and I have already moved towards him when I realize this. I try to stop the gesture and end up looking like I’m having some sort of spasm. I turn on my heel and as I do, Mitchell catches my arm and turns me around again.
    “Hold that thought,” he says, as he kisses me. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning. I’ll call you.”
    He goes downtown and I walk over to the New York Public Library, to research Thiebaud’s immediate antecedents. I am hoping that such an activity will dampen my suddenly fiery libido. I’ve never been here before, but my professor, Dr. Henkel, has recommended this library for the paper I am doing right now. With its dark mahogany and scholarly quietness it reminds me of Cambridge, except it is public, open to anyone who wants to study; there are no hoops to jump through, no porters at the gates of learning. I find the humanities and social sciences library, look up the books and journals I need, and go to the ordering desk.
    They have a messaging system that I would ordinarily find charming, but today it is not helping to cure my condition. The librarian inserts my order slip into a smooth brass cylinder that could appear quite phallic to an overheated imagination. Then he prods the cylinder into a tube and pulls a lever. There is a pleasing whoosh.
    “How does that work?” I ask.
    “It’s a pneumatic thrusting system,” he answers. I nod carefully.
    “And where does the order end up?” I ask.
    “It goes deep into the stacks,” he says.
    I nod again, and wait quietly for my books. When they come, I force myself to read, try to concentrate, but it is hopeless. At the end of about forty minutes, I look at the notes I have made and accept that I am wasting my time. I close the books, return them to the right table, and leave. I take the subway right back home. I wonder if this is what women who go voluntarily into the sex industry feel like all the time. If it doesn’t go away, maybe I will take up performance porn as a sideline.
    As I come up from the subway, a UPS van is parked on the street. The UPS man leaps out with a parcel and a clipboard. He is black, about six feet two, and wearing shorts. The muscles of his legs are glinting in the sun. I almost faint from sexual need. I wish I were the sort of girl who could just go up to the UPS guy and say something cheesy like, Hi, Big Guy. Want to deliver a package to my apartment? But I am not that sort of girl. This is going to have to be a solo trip.
    I do not own a vibrator. As I say, this rampant sexual desire is a new thing for me, and I’ve never felt the particular need for one before. I cast around my apartment for some accessory that would do the job better than I would on my own. Presumably its phallic nature is more important than the vibration—women must have been doing this since long before they invented batteries. John Donne’s wife made use of the bedpost, for instance. And penises don’t vibrate.
    My deodorant looks about the right shape. And smooth. It wouldn’t hurt. I could buy a banana, but the Koreans are probably the last of many to touch them, and bananas are usually a bit scraggly round the end. Or do you peel it? Carrots would be a better bet, but the carrots they sell downstairs are organic, with the tops. They are a little slender. I wonder if they sell parsnips?
    Should I google the history of female masturbation? Maybe the women out there can teach me something. Switching the computer on and getting online is just more than I can bear in terms of delay. I pull down the blind, grab the deodorant, get under the covers, and wriggle out of my jeans. I often walk around my apartmentwith barely anything on, so undressing under the duvet must be about guilt. I think that even if God, my grandfather, and my Auntie Elsie can see me as I walk around New York, there is still a chance they can’t see through quilts. They might know what I am up to, but they’re not getting a visual.
    As soon as I begin the