The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauman Read Free Book Online Page A

they were before. That’s what you accomplished today, and here you are at a party as if nothing had happened.’
    ‘I did almost get my nose broken.’
    ‘And worst of all, Adolf says you made some comment afterwards about how the machine was actually designed to injure him, and that’s why you gave it that name.’
    ‘No, I didn’t say that, I was only making a theoretical point about how the name of the thing couldn’t logically make any difference to whether or not—’
    ‘Oh God, you’re always making some point, aren’t you? Always some useless fucking point. Well, what about his arms?’
    Loeser shrugged. ‘At least they didn’t get ripped off completely.’
    Marlene gasped in disgust and led Klugweil away, presumably to counsel him not to slip into the darkness. ‘Hey, calm down,’ Loeser called after them. ‘I was joking. Adolf! You know I’m sorry about it really. I am!’
    ‘Oh, just fuck off!’ Klugweil shouted back at him, not very languidly.
    Loeser thought this might be a good time to do some more coke. So he found Achleitner and they went off into a corner and started drafting lines on top of a sewing machine.
    ‘That wasn’t actually Brecht, by the way,’ said Achleitner. ‘It was Vanel, but he happened to be wearing one of those long red overcoats like Brecht always wears.’
    ‘So why was there all that commotion by the door?’
    ‘It turned out he had a corkscrew on him.’
    ‘Oh, I might as well get Adele back from Rackenham, then.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘I left her with him so that Brecht wouldn’t notice her. He was very helpful about it.’
    ‘That was brave,’ said Achleitner.
    ‘Brave?’ said Loeser. Near by he heard one of those startling explosions of communal laughter that are distributed at random intervals through parties like moisture pockets in a fireplace log.
    ‘He’s very charming.’
    ‘Yes, but he’s hardly going to make a move himself, is he? He’s queer. Ideal chaperone.’
    Achleitner cocked his head. ‘Not exactly.’
    Another monstrous thought sank its teeth into Loeser’s brain, which made the previous monstrous thought look like an adorable snuffly pet. ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘As everyone knows, all those English public-school boys are Gillette blades. They cut both ways.’
    ‘But you said he was queer.’
    ‘I didn’t, Egon. I just said I fucked him. Not the same thing.’
    ‘You’re playing games with me.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘You must be.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘You must be because otherwise I will kill you and then kill myself.’
    ‘I’m afraid I’m not.’
    Loeser made a run for the dance floor, but Adele and Rackenham were nowhere to be seen. He collared Hildkraut, who looked as if he were mourning the loss of his corkscrew monopoly. ‘Have you seen that girl with the long black hair and the big eyes?’ he shouted over the music. ‘She’s with an Englishman in a waistcoat.’
    ‘The short bony girl? Looks about twelve?’ said Hildkraut.
    ‘I suppose so,’ said Loeser. That others might not find Adele as attractive as he did had not even occurred to him.
    ‘They were here, but they left.’
    ‘Where did they go?’
    ‘Well, they were doing some coke, not very discreetly—’
    ‘He gave her coke?’
    ‘Yes. And then I think they went out by the back entrance.’
    ‘Fuck!’
    Outside, there was nobody but Klein vomiting methodically into an upturned copper corset mould. Loeser dashed past him and out into the street beyond, but it was deserted, so he hurried back to the party, wondering if Hildkraut might have got it wrong about the other two leaving.
    Like a faithful old butler who quietly begins preparations to auction the antique furniture and dismiss the French chef several weeks before his master has even begun to wonder if all that fuss about the stock market might have cut a little bit into his income, there was an inferior part of Loeser’s brain which had long since accepted that it was going to be