Whatever Lola Wants Read Online Free PDF Page B

being serious.”
    â€œYes, very.” I felt a sudden growing melancholy. Which is impossible, since passion dies with our arrival here. “More than you can imagine.”
    She found my eyes with hers, and held them, the left, the right. Her earthly beauty, undiminished, filled my chest with pain. She said, “I should go back.”
    I forced myself to nod. Technically she was right.
    â€œSee you tomorrow?” She spoke softly.
    A smile must have made its way to my bobbing face. “I’ll look forward to that.”
    She took my hand, squeezed my fingers, and was gone.
    What, what were we doing? We function by the laws, and one of the most ancient says Gods and Immortals must spend a minimum of two parts in three of time space with their own kind. It’s a law so old no one’s ever needed to invoke it. What God would want to pass time space with Immortals? And why would a God let an Immortal spend time space with her?
    I drew myself over to an edge of cloud and watched the happenings below. Tomorrow I’d tell her what I saw.
    â€¢
    4.
    C. Carney worked his Ram between snow-covered shoulders of the back-country highroad toward his appointment, a consultation with Dr. Theresa Bonneherbe Magnussen. She’d written that she needed help with a potential catastrophe, she’d like some guidelines. So maybe she hadn’t made her mistake yet. He had called her.
    â€œSorry,” her secretary told him. “Dr. Magnussen doesn’t speak on the telephone. Shall I set up a meeting?”
    â€œWhat does she want?”
    â€œI’m afraid I don’t know.”
    Carney took a curve, banking against ice. Woods on the left, ahead the lake, then Burlington stretched along the shore. Clients normally blurted out the problem in the first minute, but Magnussen hadn’t even come to the phone. Why did he agree to meet her? On all sides white ground, blue sky, black trees; the world simplified to three basic shades.
    For the last week he’d lived mostly with filth-laden orange, a methane fire out of control thirteen miles north of Median, New Hampshire, a town he knew well. At two-fifteen equinox morning he’d gotten a call from Mrs. Staunton, embodiment of the communication center at Carney and Co. She had the Median town manager on the line. It took Carney just three minutes to turn the man’s bombast to a squeaky “Please! Help us.”
    Carney headed up jobs these days only if they looked to be some new kind of disaster, or a disaster so immense he had to be there himself. Methane fires weren’t all that dangerous. But the others were dealing with disasters elsewhere. So Carney drove through the jaws of a spring storm so thick he was less than eighty yards from the fire before he saw smoke. Municipal solid waste in a litter dump the size of three football fields, and the most obvious precautions hadn’t been taken. All they’d needed to do was let the methane release properly by covering the waste with adequate soil, simple as that. Now the peripheral temperature had reached 600 degrees Celsius and the local firemen had no idea how to handle it. “Thanks for coming,” said the chubby town manager, reaching out his hand. Then he said, “We’re in trouble, aren’t we.”
    Carney studied the fire, getting as close to the filthy flames as he dared without face mask and body protection. The town manager trailed him. “Well,” he said, “what’s it going to cost?”
    Always the first question. Never, How can we be sure no one gets hurt here? or, What can we do to keep this from becoming a long-term disaster? “It’s a standard project. My costs, billed to you, plus twenty-five percent.”
    â€œAnd how much will—”
    â€œI’d figure $3 million. Maybe more.”
    â€œThat includes your share?”
    â€œNope.”
    â€œOh my god …”
    In the end the man agreed. They always