THIN VOLUMES by Liam Wilkinson
Then there’s the man who comes in every Saturday to loiter in Romance.
His face may be milk-white but in those hot aisles his cheeks glow to the pink of the spines.
In a panic-climax he seizes six or seven and fiddles impatiently as I stamp them with a date, before he makes his exit, sniffing like a beast at the jackets.
When does a man find the dregs of his fantasies in the scent of hand-cream still lingering on thin volumes? Is it the erotica inside or out? Where the book might have ended up in those sunlit suburban semis?
Now I’ve taken to washing the covers before Saturday comes to preserve the last of those ladies’ most private passions.
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