The Love Machine & Other Contraptions by Nir Yaniv Read Free Book Online Page A

I asked.
    “The elevator shaft for tomorrow. I’m just working out how much Eve we need.”
    “Eve?”
    “Extreme Velocity Explosives,” said Huey.
    “That’s right,” said Louie. “E.V.E.”
    “Oh,” I said, and looked around. Huey wasn’t there. “Hey,” I said, “Doesn’t it strike you as odd...”
    “What?”
    “That he, like, disappeared?”
    “Listen,” said a voice.
    “Who?” said Louie.
    “What do you mean who ? Where’s your brain?”
    “Listen,” said Louie, “Let’s not play games. If you want to ask me something, be specific.”
    I know him, and I know there is no point arguing.
    “Huey. He disappeared. Don’t you think something here doesn’t add up?”
    He thought about it. “No,” he said. “He probably took a break. He’ll be back soon.”
    “You’re ignoring me,” said someone.
    “Look,” I said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if he had disappeared at any other time...”
    “There’s something to your twisted logic,” said Huey, “But I don’t think we can do anything about it, anyway.”
    “He’s not right,” I said.
    “Don’t exaggerate,” said Louie. “He did a very nice job on Kalmanson’s flat today. Doing is everything, the rest is nothing.”
    “No—yes—that is... sure. But that’s not what I meant.”
    “Hello? Do you hear me?”
    “Don’t be a pain,” said Louie. “Let me finish here.”
    And he went away.
    ~
    “You have to stop,” said the voice. Its owner, a small, red-haired, bespectacled demon, gave me a warning look over his plate of asparagus.
    “I’m only helping them,” I said, mixing the pasta. The red-and-white checkered tablecloth caught my eye. I wondered what sound it would make when burning. Maybe if we turned on a big enough fan, we could blow away all of the tablecloths in the restaurant and then send out a jet of gas...
    “Who, exactly?” inquired the demon and tapped his golden monocle. “The world? Israel? The eleven people you killed?”
    “Huey and Dewey,” I said. “They’re artists. They— we— will have an exhibition. Besides, nobody was killed.”
    “Ha, ha,” said the blond demon, adjusting his sunglasses slightly. “I’m sure the families would love to hear that.”
    ~
    An elevator rises from its shaft, wrapped in flames, and takes off into the city’s skies like a metallic phoenix, clumsy and burning, an orange glow gathering over the roofs and water tanks of the towering city of Tel Aviv, the metal cables singing as they drag behind, caught in a sodium fire, a tail of steel sparks marking a trail in the evening’s heavens.
    “Beautiful,” said Louie, hunched under his earphones. He didn’t bother to look. The wireless mike inside the elevator caught the cries of the passengers as well as the thunder of the flames. A light westerly wind blew.
    “I think,” said Dewey from behind camera No. 2, “that it’s going to land somewhere in Florentine.”
    “Maybe,” I said, distracted, awed by the view. The trail of smoke described an almost perfect parabola, and the ball of fire, which until a few moments ago had been an entirely ordinary and unglamorous component of a nondescript office block, fell with dignity somewhere in the south of the city, beside a lighted billboard reading “Phillips: The Real Experience.” A passenger plane circled above, like a bird wondering if it was a relative who had fallen, or perhaps its eternal, mythological enemy, the fire eagle, the steel hawk... perhaps that was the thing lying there burning, never to return to haunt the bird’s dreams.
    ~
    We changed clothes and went to a party.
    Some genius of a designer had decided to build a light-organ of fire and smoke, one that shot out colored flames in tune with the music. For the safety of all present, a giant wire cage had been built around the contraption. Fire can’t pass through a wire mesh, but our Louie dealt with that in advance, replaced the cage with a soft plastic replica and improved the mechanism