O+F | Page 7

blower and the pipe that led to the furnace. Oliver lit the torch and knelt by the furnace. George stood by the propane tank. "Hope this works. You ready?"
"Do it."
George opened the line, and Oliver angled the torch tip down into the furnace. Nothing happened for several moments. There was a whooshing sound, and George said, "Holy Mama!" A blue flame, the size of a beach ball, was bouncing under the wooden ceiling joists. Oliver concentrated. Air. He reached back and grabbed the blower valve, twisting it counter-clockwise. Almost immediately, the blue flame lowered. He continued opening the valve. The flame pirouetted irregularly down an invisible column, drawn toward the furnace.
"Air," he shouted. "Not enough air until it got way the hell up there."
"Keep going," George said.
The flame reached the top of the furnace and began to whirl in a tight spiral. It plunged inside, roaring and spinning at high speed. The floor shook. "Jesus," George said.
"It's like a Goddamn bomb," Oliver said.
George put an ingot of bronze into a carbon crucible and gripped the edge of the crucible with long tongs. He lowered the crucible to the bottom of the furnace. "Put the top on," he said. Oliver lifted and pushed the top over the furnace. The roaring became muffled, contained. It felt safer. "Nice going, about the air," George said. "I thought we were going to burn the place down."
"Physics," Oliver said. George looked down through the hole in the top.
"Nothing yet." He stood back. A few minutes later the ingot began to slide toward the bottom of the crucible. "There she goes," George said. "It's working." He opened the door of the kiln, and, using a different set of tongs, extracted the flask. He set the flask, glowing cherry red, upside down in a flat pan of sand. He shut off the gas and unplugged the blower. "The top," he said, handing Oliver a pair of heavy gloves and pointing. Oliver worked the top over one edge of the drum, tipped it down, and rolled it onto three bricks.
George reached into the furnace with the long tongs. He lifted the crucible from the furnace and walked with careful steps to the flask. Holding the lip of the crucible over the flask, he tipped his body to one side. The bronze poured like golden syrup into the hole where the wax had been, quickly filling the mold.
George lowered the crucible back into the furnace. After the roaring, it seemed unusually silent. "Intense," Oliver said. "Now what?" George picked up the hot flask with the second pair of tongs and dropped it into a bucket of water. There was a burst of sizzling and bubbling, and it was quiet again.
"The temperature shock weirds out the investment. It changes state--to a softer stuff that we can get off the bronze." George poured the water into his bathtub and refilled the bucket with cold water. "Still hot," he said.
They drank wine while the flask cooled. When George could hold the flask, he pushed the investment out of the cylinder and chipped at it with a screwdriver. A hip appeared. "The Flying Lady," Oliver said.
"Damn!" George said, chipping and prying. Gobs of oatmeal colored investment fell away. "Not bad!" George held up the Lady and the heart on their bronze tree. "We cut them off and
polish. . ."
An hour later, filled with wine and a sense of accomplishment, Oliver walked up Danforth Street. The bronze heart was solid and heavy in his pocket. He warmed it in his hand, feeling the O, the plus sign, and the F over and over again, a mantra said with the ball of his thumb. When he got home, he placed the heart on one of the walnut boards, fed Verdi, and went to bed.
He lay there remembering the bronze pouring into the heart. A bit of him had poured with it, and an exchange had taken place: something bronze had entered him at the same moment.

3.
"Mythic," Oliver said to Paul Peroni, the next afternoon. They were sitting at the kitchen table with his mother. Paul was weighing the heart in his palm as Oliver described the bronze casting. Oliver's mother took another tea biscuit.
"Never too old for a valentine," she said, seeming to note the absence of a female presence in the apartment.
"Yes . . . No . . ." Paul answered them both. He was medium sized, sinewy, and graying--surprisingly light on his feet for someone who installed slabs of ornamental marble.
"It's so nice to see Verdi again. Kitty, kitty," she called. Verdi stretched and remained in the corner. "Oh well, be that way," she said, straightening. Lip gloss, touches of eye shadow, and her full wavy blonde hair broadcast femaleness like a lighthouse. The good body could be taken for granted. You might