Read Online Circuit Of Heaven by Dennis Danvers - Free Book Online Page B

You think you’re better than me—because you still live out there in the
real
world? Maybe you’re a Christian—waiting for the Rapture—while I’m a hellbound sinner.”
    He put up his hands as if she held a gun on him. “No, I’m not Christian. I’m not anything. I just don’t like the Bin, okay? I don’t think I’m better than you. I think you’re absolutely wonderful. I’ve never met anyone like you. You’re…I just don’t think it’d be such a good idea.”
    She couldn’t help smiling at his upraised hands. “I’m what, Nemo?” she prompted.
    He lowered his hands. “You’re beautiful,” he said. “I like you very much. But I can’t…I should go.”
    “I’m not proposing, Nemo. I’m just asking you to have a drink with me.”
    He hesitated, and she reached out and took his hands. “I know you want to,” she said, tugging at him, and he let himself smile. “We can argue sitting down?” she added hopefully, and he laughed—the first time she’d heard him laugh. “See? You’re having fun already.” She slipped her arm around his waist and squeezed. He put his arm around her shoulders, and they walked into the
Grotto
.
    THEY FOUND A TABLE AS FAR AWAY FROM THE PIANO player as they could get. He was playing a medley of themes from old romantic virtuals with elaborate arpeggios thrown in every other measure. Justine imagined the actors about to embrace, distracted and foolish in the swirl of notes, imagined she knew exactly how they felt.
    They selected their drinks by touching icons on the tabletop. The hurricane lamp slid over to one side, and the drinks rose out of the middle of the table on a little elevator, the glasses wet with condensation. When they picked up their drinks, the elevator descended, and the hurricane lamp slid back into place.
    He laughed again, not a happy laugh this time, but an ironic little chuckle, as dark as the bar they were sitting in.
    “What’s funny?” she asked.
    He pointed at the hurricane lamp where the drinks had been. “It’s such a Bin thing—these silly gizmos like that. Seems like you could do anything in here—the drinks could appear floating in the air or something—but instead it’s just hokey shit like that.”
    “Is that what you don’t like about the Bin—the silly gizmos?”
    He ran his thumb along the rim of his glass. “It’s more complicated than that.”
    “I can do complicated,” she said. “You said I was smart, remember? In your parents’ garden? You haven’t changed your mind since then, have you?”
    He smiled at the thought. “No, you’re even smarter than I figured.”
    “And why is that?”
    “Well for one thing, you talked me into coming into this bar.”
    “That wasn’t hard. You wanted to come.”
    He nodded. “Yes I did, very much. How did you know that?”
    She smiled and pointed at the hurricane lamp. “My little secret. So tell me what’s funny.”
    He tapped on the hurricane lamp. “Okay, take this business. It’s supposed to look like a machine—everybody understands machines. If the drinks just floated in the air like I said before, people couldn’t process that as real, so they made up this thing. Everything’s supposed to seem real in here. Now, I could build one of these on the outside without too much trouble, but the important difference between this one and the one I’d build, is that mine would change. I’d have to keep it working—replace parts, lubricate it, adjust it. It’d still break down sometimes no matter what I did. No one ever works on this one. It’s just there, somebody’s idea of a neat way to get a drink. It never wears out. There are no moving parts. No parts at all in here. Ideas don’t have parts.”
    “Sure they do.”
    “I mean moving parts, parts that wear out.”
    “You don’t think ideas wear out?”
    He started to answer, and she burst out laughing. “Are you always this serious? Talking so solemnly about ‘moving parts’ without cracking a