Catch up on part 4 before reading on…
Chapter 5: Clyde’s Shelves
The bell above the door gave a soft, brassy jingle, nothing like the harsh buzzers or lock clicks Barry once knew. Instead, it was more like a polite throat clearing. He paused on the threshold, letting the sound settle over him the way he once waited for Mack’s permission to breathe. Morning light slanted through the front window in dusty bars, striping the worn floorboards gold and shadow. The air carried brewed coffee, the sweet must of old paper, and vanilla from a candle flickering on the counter.
Barry stepped inside. The rubber suit beneath his T-shirt and sweatpants had dried stiff overnight; the cosplayer’s load had crusted in flaky patches along his lower back, pulling the latex with every shift of his hips. The sensation was tacky, intimate, and shameful, a secret skin no one here could see. His flip flops left faint gray smudges on the wood.
Behind the counter, Clyde glanced up from a stack of paperbacks he was pricing with a grease pencil. His pale, blue, crow-footed eyes met Barry’s for a second, then softened in recognition. The same lost puppy from yesterday, only now the eyes were ringed darker and the shoulders were a fraction more bowed. Clyde set the pencil down, wiped his fingers on a rag, and offered the smallest of nods as if to say, Welcome back, no questions asked.
Barry drifted into the stacks, drawn by the quiet gravity of the Classics section. The shelves in this corner of the shop were taller, darker wood, with books packed tightly like soldiers at attention. His gloved right hand rose almost on its own, index finger extended, and began to trace the spines in slow procession: the cracked red leather of Crime and Punishment, the faded navy of Another Country, and the stark white jacket of Confessions of a Mask. Each embossed title tugged at buried memories, muscles remembering how to turn pages and how to lose hours inside prose.
It knows these. The thought surfaced, faint and wondering. Once, it read.
The rubber squeaked softly as Barry shifted his weight, the crusted patches on his back pulling like scabs. No one noticed; the store held only two other customers, and both were absorbed in their own corners. Barry’s breathing slowed, matching the hush between jazz tracks on the turntable.
From behind the register came the soft scrape of wood on the floor. Clyde appeared at the end of the aisle, carrying a small wooden stepstool. He set it down beside Barry, not blocking, just close enough to reach the higher shelves, then retreated two respectful paces.
“Help you find something?” Clyde asked.
Barry’s finger paused on Mishima’s gold lettering. The “Sir” arrived before the rest of the sentence, automatic as breathing.
“It… browses, Sir.”
Clyde nodded once, no judgment in it. He lingered a moment, as if weighing whether to ask another question, then simply rested a hand on the stool’s top rung. He let the silent, pressure-free invitation hang between them before he turned back toward the register. Barry’s hand settled on a sun-bleached paperback copy of The Great Gatsby. He lifted it from the shelf. The spine cracked faintly as it opened in his palm to a page he once knew by heart: They were careless people, Tom and Daisy. They smashed up things and then retreated back into their money, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. The words blurred, then sharpened, and the bookstore around Barry dissolved into memory.
He was back in Mack’s den, years earlier, before all the mechanisms to imprison him had appeared in the house. The hardwood floor bit into his bare knees. He was naked except for the rubber hood, the mouth hole stretched wide, a ring gag holding his jaw open. Drool pooled on the wood beneath him. Mack sat in the leather armchair, legs spread, book in one hand, the other lazily stroking his exposed cock. The scent of musk and cigar smoke was thick in the air.
Mack read aloud, his baritone like rolling thunder. “In my younger and more vulnerable years…” He paused at the end of each page, tore it free, and dipped it into the bead of precum welling at his slit. Then he leaned forward and fed the darkened, translucent paper into Barry’s waiting mouth. Barry chewed and swallowed the wet sheet, tasting cheap ink and salt and the faint bitterness of Mack. Each belabored swallow earned a reward—the slow drag of Mack’s boot sole along the steel cage locked around Barry’s cock. Pressure without friction, promise without release. The cage wept steadily onto the floor.
Another page, another dip, another swallow. The words, Gatsby’s longing, and Barry’s own longing, dissolved on his tongue, until meaning and taste were indistinguishable.
The memory snapped. Barry’s knees buckled in the classics aisle. The book slipped from his fingers, pages fluttering like trapped birds, and landed with a thud on the floor. Clyde was there in an instant, his steady hand picking it up and smoothing out the creased cover.
“Easy,” Clyde whispered. He didn’t ask what storm had just passed through Barry’s eyes. He simply closed the book and held it out, patiently waiting to see if Barry wanted to take it back. When Barry’s fingers closed around the book again, Clyde nodded once, giving approval without fanfare, and gestured toward the counter with a tilt of his chin. “Come on back. Let’s get you something warm. You look like you could use it.”
Barry followed, abandoning the stepstool in the stacks like a forgotten thought as the shop’s speakers crackled out unremastered Coltrane. Behind the counter, the space opened into a narrow nook. A pot of coffee simmered on a hot plate, ringed by a halo of mismatched mugs. Clyde reached for a blue ceramic one with glaze flaking at the rim and poured. Steam rose in lazy curls that smelled faintly of cinnamon. He slid it across the scarred wood countertop. No saucer, no spoon.
“Sit,” Clyde said, gesturing to a rickety stool while pulling forward a second for himself. Clyde intended it as the kind of invitation you might use with a neighbor dropping by. Barry interpreted it as an order, perching on the edge of the second stool, the rubber suit creaking under his sweatpants. He wrapped a gloved hand around the mug’s heat, allowing the warmth to seep through the latex.
Clyde leaned back, resting his elbows on the counter and eyeing Barry not with pity but with curiosity. “You’ve got reader’s eyes,” he said after a sip from his own mug. “What’d you study? Y’know, back when?”
Barry’s throat tightened. He stared into the black coffee, watching the surface tremble in time with his pulse. “It… English. Before.”
Clyde took another unhurried sip. The radio needle scratched lightly between tracks. “English. Good bones for a life. Before what?”
Barry’s grip blanched the knuckles under this latex second skin. The steam blurred the mug’s rim. Memories of Mack’s voice, the taste of pages, and the boot’s slow drag pressed in, but they tangled with the sweat-slicked rubber on his back and the emptiness of last night’s strangers. Silence stretched as thick as the dust in the air.
Clyde didn’t push. He set his mug down, reached under the counter, and pulled out a laminated flyer. He rubbed a thumb over the edges, which were curled and beginning to separate, and passed it to Barry.
APPLY WITHIN: Part-time clerk. $15/hr + Tips + Free Books.
“Store’s open ’til seven daily,” Clyde said. “But I’d sure enjoy getting out of here around four. Could use a hand. Folks tend to come in waves. No heavy lifting, just sorting and ringing up. Something to keep you busy, if you’re inclined.” He glanced at Barry’s threadbare sweats and filth-streaked rubber. “Quittin’ time is early enough that you could still hit the bars at night. But… you’d need to clean yourself up a bit for work.”
Barry looked at the flyer, plain as a grocery list. He traced the print with his thumb. Fifteen dollars an hour, no obedience or kneeling or heavy storage required. Just a job.
“No pressure,” Clyde said. “Just seems like you need something to do with your life. Sci-fi section’s a mess after the weekend crowd. If you want to start today, I’ll show you the ropes.” Sensing Barry’s hesitation, he added tenderly, almost paternally: “Tell you what? Let’s hire you for the day as a trial run. I’ll pay you cash at close. If you like it, you can come back tomorrow.”
Barry’s thumb scraped the card’s frayed edge. The word clerk felt foreign, but he nodded.
Clyde smiled, not triumphantly, just pleased, and rounded the counter. He handed Barry a short, black apron with Rainbow Pages embroidered in faded multicolored thread. Barry slipped it over his head and tied it, the strings loose around his narrow waist. Then Clyde led him to the back corner where paperbacks leaned in chaotic towers.
“Used sci-fi goes alphabetical by author,” Clyde explained, demonstrating with a grease pencil: $4.95 on the first inside page, firm but fair. He handed Barry the pencil and a stack of 20 books, Asimov to Ellison. Barry sat cross legged on the floor, rubber creaking faintly, and began. The motions came back like muscle memory from a past life. Open. Price. Close. His handwriting was careful, but blocky from lack of practice.
An older man in a knit cap entered the shop and browsed nearby. He glanced at the shelf Barry was stocking. “Alphabetical by author?”
Barry nodded, not trusting words. He shifted two paperbacks, placing Bixby before Bradbury. The man hummed approval, thumbed a Le Guin, and moved on.
Later, Clyde entrusted Barry with the feather duster. Barry worked the higher shelves, standing on the same stepstool from earlier. The rubber suit squeaked with each stretch. A young woman wearing a pride pin smiled at the sound, as if it were charming rather than shameful. No one stared. No one asked why he was covered in black latex.
Near closing, Clyde called him to the old mechanical beast of a register. He stood behind Barry, close but not crowding, and placed his weathered hand lightly over Barry’s latex one. “This for dollars, this for cents.” His fingers guided without gripping, patient when Barry hesitated on the Tax button. The till dinged open. Coins clinked. Clyde let Barry count the change for the last customer, a college kid buying two queer theory texts, and nodded approvingly when the drawer balanced.
Seven o’clock. Barry flipped the sign flipped to CLOSED, and the bell gave its soft farewell to the final straggler. Clyde locked the front door, turned off most of the lights, and emptied the till of the day’s receipts with practiced speed. When he finished, he pulled a plain white envelope from the drawer, already prepared.
He slid it across the counter. The front read, in Clyde’s neat cursive: Pay Period: 1 day. Name: BARRY.
Barry took it with both hands. The handwritten stub was thin, the ballpoint ink fresh and smudged. Seventy-five dollars gross, a few deductions, for a net of $69.65. His name—BARRY—printed in block letters at the top, felt official as a birth certificate.
Clyde watched him trace the letters with a gloved thumb. “Tomorrow at 10, if you want.”
Barry nodded again, this time firmer. He tucked the envelope into his sweatpants pocket. For the first time in years, something other than Mack’s voice told him when the day was done.
The walk home felt shorter, and with every step, Barry felt the envelope shift in his pocket. The hallway bulb still flickered, but the urine smell seemed less sharp, or maybe he was just too focused to notice. The key even turned easier tonight.
Back inside 4B, he flicked the single switch, and the bare bulb hummed to life, casting the same unforgiving circle over the mattress, the mini-fridge, and the microwave. Barry slipped out of the sweats and folded them with the same care he once reserved for Mack’s leather. He sat cross legged on the mattress and stared at the envelope. The flap had torn on the walk home, but its contents—the stub, three crisp 20s and a few smaller bills, plus some coins—were undisturbed.
No “it.” No “object.” Just “Barry.”
His latex fingers dragged lightly over the stub with a whisper of friction. Something low in his belly stirred. Not the frantic heat of the bar or the cosplaying couple. Not the conditioned throb of Mack’s boots. The quiet warmth of recognition. His cock thickened in his cage, trapped by the rubber pouch, not demanding, just acknowledging. This belongs to someone named Barry.
He rose, found a strip of clear tape in the envelope’s corner, and pressed the stub to the wall above the mattress. The tape stuck crooked the first try, but he peeled it, straightened, tried again. There. The first decoration in 4B was a paycheck stub fluttering faintly in the draft from the air shaft.
Barry stepped back, hands at his sides. The bulb’s light caught his rubber body’s dull sheen and now the white rectangle with his name in black ink.
It has a name on paper.
He turned off the light, lay down, and stared at the dark ceiling until the stub’s afterimage glowed behind his eyelids like a small, steady star.
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