Coilhouse Pneumatics

I found Coilhouse across from a gas station where three out of four pumps were always broken. It didn't seem to be a likely place for a business to prosper. Its previous owner had used it for storage. I felt as if he'd been using a porcelain vase as a trash can; I bought it off him immediately.

Pneumatics concerns the use of compressible fluids to provide or control power. I got into the pneumatics industry because of the increasing use of air power in industrial plants and coal mines. Factories around the country were installing efficient new air compressors. We sold a little of everything; hosing, tubing, manifolds, couplers, connectors, blowguns and valves.

If only I'd known what naming the business “Coilhouse Pneumatics” would do to me. What kind of people it would bring through that door.

The word Pneumatics had been an obvious choice for my business. In addition to its practicality, I enjoyed its archaic charm – kind of like theremin, proscenium, ether, cartography, and other words you just want to preserve in alcohol and keep in a jar on your shelf.

In contrast to the palpability of Pneumatics, Coilhouse came as surprise. I remember I'd just received a shipment of coiled nylon hosing. This was one of the most commonly-sold pneumatics components, and I considered incorporating its name into my title. I was trying to squeeze my shoulders and the giant box through the door when I noticed it: my store interior replicated the shape of the my inventory in an astonishing way. Like atoms and planetary systems, coiled hosing echoed in the spiral staircases; the winding hallways felt like the interiors of giant snakelike tubes. “Coiled hose, Coiled house,” I thought – and somehow, the name stuck.

But words have lives of their own – they will reinvent us as quickly as we choose to invent them. That's what living in Coilhouse taught me.

An air compressor works by taking a fixed volume of the surrounding air and compressing this air into a smaller volume, which (by Boyle's law) increases the air's pressure and discharges it into a closed space, thereby generating heat. This is similar to what happened when my night customers started showing up at Coilhouse. They entered, huddled together in excited chatter and whispers, and the room would explode into bustling movement. But that was by the time many of them had arrived. At first, there were only a few.

The first one came on day when I closed the shop five minutes late. I was a punctual shopkeeper, but on that day an influx of customers in the last quarter-hour prevented me from closing on time as I struggled to explain, advise, measure, cut and sell all at once. I had no hired help at the time.

Finally I managed to usher everyone out satisfied and closed the door. The setting sun made the glass of every window appear to be washed-over with solidified honey. Looking at it, I relaxed.

That's when I heard the tap on the door.

“We're closed,” I said. “We open at nine tomorrow.”

The knocking continued.

Wearily, I opened the door. “What can I do for you, sir?”

The young man at the door reminded me a bit of the way I'd looked when I was going to college; disorganized-looking but studious, carrying everywhere a couple of books in a bag he wore on one shoulder, as I always had.

“You stayed open five minutes past scheduled time,” he said. “Would it really hurt to stay open just a few minutes more?”

I shrugged, and motioned for him to step over the threshold.

The young man nodded in thanks and began to peruse the store. He looked at the different items, picked them up and put them back down again and asked intelligent questions about the products.

We'd been discussing the difference between polyurethane, thermoplastic and nitrile tubing when suddenly he said, “I want to tell you a story of how my sister went insane from religion.”

I peered at him. His shopping basket was half-full. I did not know what to say.

“When I was nine and my sister fifteen, she went mad about God. I don't know what traumatic event happened to her, but suddenly her life turned to prayer. She wouldn't eat a crumb without praying over it first. She prayed when a hair fell from her head. She prayed before blowing her nose. It wasn't religion, it was like obsessive-compulsive disorder. Oh, by the way, what's the bowl capacity of this coalescing filter?”

“1.5 ounces,” I answered meekly.

“I'll take it. Anyway, she made up new prayers for everything. She was always thanking God. She would not allow herself to go to sleep before she repeated the same prayer thanking God for rest at least one hundred times. I felt that something had to be done.

“We told her we worried, but she wouldn't listen – not to me, not to mother, not to any of her friends, who were disappearing from her life. I decided there was only one being whose word would matter to her – the Lord Almighty himself. And so, I decided to make the Word of God appear to her.”

At this point, he paused to examine two different types of hose fittings. He settled on nylon.

“At first, I thought writing a letter would work. ‘To: Clara. From: God. Dear Clara: It's nice that you pray to me so much, and I really appreciate it, but enough is enough. Go out and have some fun.'

“After additional consideration I realized that that wouldn't work, no matter how well I disguised my handwriting. Would Moses have decided to liberate the Jews if he received a piece of papyrus with a scribbled note on it? No, he needed to see a burning bush – a shock that turned his hair gray and left an impression for life. Am I right? And does this come in a bigger diameter?

“Yes, and yes,” I meekly replied. His shopping basket was filling.

“I considered my resources, and decided against torching Dad's bonsai trees. But how about having God appear to her in a dream? I would wake her up in the middle of the night with a mysterious sound (I could use the choir sound from my electronic keyboard) and have a vision appear to her. I thought: what could be more dramatic than a message from God, glowing in the air? I had some glow-in-the-dark paint for decorating T-shirts. So I spelled out a message from her on strip of clear plastic wrap, which I stretched across the room, taping it to the sides of each wall. That way the glowing letters of God appeared to glow, suspended in the air, in the middle of the room.”

“What did you write?” I asked. I was actually curious.

“I wanted to write something like ‘enjoy life and don't worry so much,' but I didn't have enough paint. So I wrote ‘Yahweh says play.' I ran out of the fiery orange paint halfway through the inscription, and had to finish up with green.”

He took a deep breath, pausing, recollecting.

“I was nine years old. I thought that a few cheap toys and household supplies would cure my sister of a deep depression and a mental disorder.” He scoffed. “Saran wrap. Brite-Glo paint. And you know what?”

“What?” I asked. We were at the register now.

He looked me straight in the eye. “It worked.” We stood there frozen for a moment. Then, the buzzing of the receipt printer filled the silence between us.

“She got better. Not immediately, but over time. She began going out again. She began seeing friends. She applied to go to school. A few years later, I asked her once what caused this change. She smiled and told me there were millions of ways for us to communicate with the divine – and for the divine to communicate to us.'”

I was bagging his purchases. “Now, this raised a question in my mind,” he continued, collecting his items. “Had God been working through me? Had I been working through God? I considered the lifting of my sister's depression a miracle. Could simple household items be used to conjure divine phenomena? Can this ”- he motioned his hands around the store – “be a valid pathway to God?”

Suddenly, he looked at me a if his question was not just rhetorical.

I faltered. “I… I don't know what you want me to say.”

“But you're the proprietor of this store!”

“Yes. I work to provide tools to the air power sector.”

“You work in pneumatics. Don't you know what that means?”

I stared at him blankly. He gasped and laughed. The he pulled a small dictionary out of his bookbag and leafed through it.

“Pneumonia, pneumococcus… ah, pneumatics. Noun. One – the study of the mechanical properties of air and other gases. Two – the scientific study or knowledge of spiritual beings and their relations to God, angels and men.”

I felt my eyebrows crawl to the middle of my forehead. I'd never heard such a definition before.

He smiled at me and shook my hand. “We're all very excited about the new pneumatics shop. We've been waiting for a place like this to open up. You seem like a very nice shopkeeper – my advice is, know your trade. Know it from the inside-out.”

He tipped his cap on his way out the door. “I'll be seeing you.”

My next encounter with one of the night customers was even stranger. Autumn was well on its way, and by this time the nights were creeping up on us earlier. It was dusk when she arrived.

“Good evening,” she said.

“Good evening,” I replied. She looked out of place in this room of cold machinery. As she moved further into the shop, she seemed so soft I thought she may be constructed from fabric: skin like satin, hair like curling ribbons of lace, eyelashes like threads of silk. As she walked, filling the room with delicate rustling, I realized that I could see her breasts. Her entire body was swathed in thin transparent white gauzes and tulle. They hugged her curves and flared out grandiosely in all the right places, making her look both clinical and sumptuous. Loose fabric ends flared like moth wings in a breeze.

She approached me as casually as if she were wearing jeans and a t-shirt.

“I want to talk to you about air magic,” she said.

“What?” I tried to maintain eye contact with her and not look down.

“We all work with different magic. Earth, fire, water, air. I've come to talk to you about air.”

I wondered who she was affiliated with. I hadn't noticed any crystals, pentagrams, henna art, ankhs, Chinese tattoos or other generic imprints that the New Age book industry stamped on its readers.

She took a deep breath, and began to speak. “It surround us, it fills us, and yet often we don't even notice it. We all share air.

“When we visualize planet Earth, we usually focus on a solid object, the earthly globe. But in reality, our world rests in the center of a gaseous atmosphere 560 miles high. Rather than a mere solid alone, Earth is a solid object surrounded by a glow of gas.”

As she talked, she folded a piece of paper that had been lying on the table into and fanned herself delicately.

“People have their own airs about them too. Our bodies have a natural scent that surrounds us like an aura. It changes uniquely from person to person, from day to day, even from mood to mood.”

I was about to interrupt her, but the words of my previous night customer came to me – “know your trade.” I continued to listen.

“Magically, the element of air is often associated with communication. Flowers share pollen. Humans augment each other with perfume, enhancing their own scent to create a desired ‘atmosphere.' Air wraps the entire surface of the planet and touches us all at once. It is no accident that we describe the act of broadcasting as putting something ‘on the air.'”

She took a step closer to me. And another step.

“Am I invading your ‘personal space'?” She put her hands on my shoulders and caressed my neck. Her lips were so close to me. Suddenly, her hands closed around my neck.

The sensation of my larynx, trachea and esophagus trying to jam together impossibly into one space was unbearable

“To understand the sheer power air has compared to other elements,” she continued casually, “remember that we can survive weeks without solid food, days without water – but only a few moments without air.

My vision blurred and my eyelids fluttered. But her voice continued.

“Paramedics perform air magic whenever they give mouth-to-mouth. They may breathe mere gases into a dying person's lungs, but they charge that air with healing intent and will. Their intent says ‘c'mon, breathe. Live!'”

She let go of my neck and smiled coyly. “Sharing breath doesn't have to be a life-and-death experience.” With that, she kissed me full on the lips. Her body seemed to settle on me like a vapor. I became lost in what transpired.

I woke up on the bare floorboards of my store to the sight of dust swirling in the morning sunlight. I lifted my head. The first thing I noticed is that half the shelves in the store were empty.

“Oh my god.”

I counted my inventory. All my pipe fittings, my excess flow check valves, every can of air compressor oil… in despair, I stopped counting. I was ruined!

I stumbled to the cash register. My key was inside it. Great, I thought. She - the thieves, or whoever - had given themselves an extra bonus on their way out. I opened the register and gasped.

Crisp hundred-dollar bills, twenties, tens and fives overflowed in the drawer.

Someone had made a very big purchase.

Since then, my business only continued to grow – thanks, in most part, to my nightly patrons. I proudly expanded my inventory to include “fun” pneumatics-related items - beautifully crafted glass equipment that exhibited the different laws of air. I got the Boyle's Law Apparatus, Jolly's Air Bulbs, free fall tubes, and gorgeous brass Magdeburg Hemispheres, which demonstrated the pressure of the atmosphere. Coilhouse was teeming with activity.

I came to appreciate every person who came through the door. Even the woman wrapped in white gauze, who dropped in pretty rarely, flashing me a knowing flirtatious smile and making an enormous purchase each time.

My favorite person was Rabbi Iosele Zalmanson. Every week he tried to explain to me, patient and fatherly, how he used the formulas of the combined gas laws to modify the traditional Tree of Life used by Aliester Crowley, which, he explained, was derived from the Golden Dawn, which in turn was derived from a long line of Gentile occultists who derived it from the Hebrew Kabbalah, who probably derived it from a seemingly paradoxical blending of Gnosticism and Neoplatonism, and so forth. This was his way of having fun. I didn't understand a word of it, but I enjoyed sitting with him and watching him redraw his diagrams.

My favorite part was when he asked me for formulas. “What's the equation used to calculate the pressure drop for air flowing through steel pipes?” I'd tell him, and he'd scribble it down in a notebook and make annotations in Hebrew.

“Mathematics is the way to true knowing, my friend,” he's say to me.

They came in dozens now. It became a challenge to order new products to keep up with the demand. They all treated me with respect, greeting me like an old friend when they came in, thanking me for my service when they left.

I don't know whether these people were crazy or brilliant, but I do know that once in a while, if they were in a festive mood, they conducted the strangest experiments with my inventory.

They made metallic components drift through the air and form strange configurations in the middle of the room. They made the equipment I bought to demonstrate the classic gas laws behave strangely, disproving the most famous physicists' theorems. They played.

And they talked about new possibilities. They talked about combining the parts in unusual ways, inventing new machinery. I only half-understood their speech. Once in a while, a fragment would waft my way that chilled and enthused me. I heard, “channeling the dead.” “Telescope to God.”

Coilhouse became a laboratory, a celebration, a sacred place. The manufacturers and workers who came in each day never knew that the valves and gauges they bought had been shimmering and dancing in thin air the night before.

One morning a representative from the Department of Housing and Urban Development came to tell me that Coilhouse was condemned. I was taken aback; an image of my beloved house going to the gallows flashed through my mind. I asked the man to explain what he meant.

“Well, it seems that the house is zoned improperly, meaning that you can't conduct business here. Or live in it. In fact, this house has been deemed uninhabitable for the past decade. Asbestos insulation.”

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. “But the man who sold me this house never told me any of this!”

I went to my files. I tried to contact the previous owner, but his phone number wasn't working. I researched his name and it turned out to be fake. I searched the town records for the previous owners of the house, but they all led to the same dead-end information. I had no choice but to give Coilhouse up.

Two months later, I came to watch Coilhouse be demolished. I sat on the grass and sipped some bitter hot tea. The air was cold. The steam of my breath mingled with the steam coming from my paper cup.

“Looks like we got front-row seats.”

I turned around and gasped. White lace flared in the wind. It was the first time I'd seen a customer since Coilhouse had closed.

“Don't worry, I'm not going to choke you again. May I sit down?”

I nodded.

“Well, it's nice to see you,” she said. “What've you been doing?”

“Renting an apartment nearby. Trying to figure out what to do next. You?”

“Same old. Been thinking about playing with fire.”

I laughed. “You're dangerous enough as air.”

She smiled and turned her face toward Coilhouse.

“But seriously,” I said. “Who are you people? Where did you all come from? How did you all find each other?”

She shrugged. “Some of us have known each other all our lives, some bump into each other by happy coincidence. We're just people who see life in a slightly different way.”

Considering the things I've seen these people do, I felt that was an awfully modest statement.

“When you chose that name for your store, we knew you were one of us.”

I chortled. “One of you? What are you talking about? I can't levitate metal equipment. I can't comprehend lofty divine formulas. I don't even have the guts to throttle someone to prove a point!”

“Listen,” she said. “I do some earth magic on the side. Just as a hobby.” She reached into her pocket and pulled something out. “Here, take these seeds. Plant them in a pot. Grow them in honor and remembrance of Coilhouse. If they grow, you're one of us. If nothing happens, go on with life and consider this incident an anomaly best forgotten.”

I nodded and thanked her. She got up, ready to leave.

“Oh, one more thing,” she said. “Water the plant with nothing but air compressor oil.”

She made me a believer.

Nadya Lev
Philadelphia, PA
October 26, 2003