Free The Book on Fire by Keith Miller

benches. In the swelling light, they
performed, with taut grace, a curious dance, in unison, paperknives slicing
slowly through the dusk, ankles arcing in legato arabesques. At the conclusion
of each sequence of movements, as their hands reached the end of a swing or
their feet the apex of a kick, they snapped them into a pose with sudden power,
and a choral yell that startled me even when I was prepared for it, and I
realized I was watching the rehearsal of a martial art, though one so finely
choreographed it seemed more than half ballet. Birds, of the silent,
long-tailed species unique to the library grounds, dropped through the
apertures and looped about the room before flicking back into the day. The
movements of the librarians in the lessening twilight, the birds pulsing
silently over them, were chilling and beautiful. I imagined receiving a blow
from a librarian’s hand, and desired and feared that touch.
    When they dispersed, I followed some as they moved through the
caverns of books. They dusted and straightened the volumes and swept and mopped
the floors. They filled jars of cookies and fruit and replaced thermoses of
coffee and cocoa. But they were continually distracted by the books. I saw the
guilty expressions on their faces as they pulled down volumes and leafed
greedily through them, the look of a dieter succumbing to apple pie, and I
realized that even the denizens of paradise were not entirely at liberty to
enjoy the fruits therein. Though there were hundreds of librarians, the library
was enormous, and the tasks of dusting, tidying, cataloging, and binding were
such that they could not read to their hearts’ content.
    ****
    What
turns you on? Ligotage, rectal mucus, watersports, fisting? Chains, children,
sheep? The sexiest sight in the world is a woman reading. A stroll along the
strand at Biarritz, past oiled breasts and roasting loins, can leave me cold.
Page through those clandestine glossies, every orifice filled, no permutation
unexplored, and watch me yawn. But it’s night, a tram passes, and I glimpse, in
a pocket of light, a woman in a blue dress, auburn hair tousled, lost in a
book, and that image can sustain weeks of wanking. I’ve long imagined an
illicit literature tailored to my perversion, reader’s porn, with paintings in
the style of Sargent or Lord Leighton: Marilyn Monroe nude on a divan, reading Ariel .
Audrey Hepburn in a Spanish café, miniskirted thighs converging on darkness,
immersed in Fiesta . Josephine Baker in her dressing room, fondling a
gilded nipple, sunk in Les Illuminations . Madhubala reading the Thousand
Nights and a Night . These are the images that would turn me on. Let me
paint you the most erotic picture in my gallery, spied upon while crouching
behind a bookcase, peering through a gap between two leaning volumes.
    The youngest librarian sat cocooned in candlelight, on an
owl-colored armchair, legs drawn up beneath her so just her toes peeked from
beneath her gown. A book lay open on her lap. One hand rested along the top
right corner of the pages, caressing them as if she cuddled a cat, a finger
moving down along the pages, brushing slowly back up the edges. When her eyes
reached the end of a spread she flipped the page greedily, then continued her
fondling of the book. The rest of her body was still, the other hand supporting
her cheekbone, her head angled down and to the left. Her robe was too big for
her and tumbled in thick folds, concealing the shapes of her breasts and
thighs. She had not shaved her head for a few days, so it was shrouded by a
downy aura that glittered slightly if she stirred. She wore round wire-rimmed
glasses. I obsessed over the shape of her ears, delicate as halved nautili, the
crescents of her nostrils, her slightly parted lips. Once a strand of spittle
shone between them before she turned a page and her tongue severed it. Her
eyelashes beat like slow moths. She had a tiny mole on her neck, like a clove
embedded in her flesh.
    There