Davis, Jerry - Random Acts

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RANDOM ACTS

1. LITTLE RED LIGHTS

HAVE YOU SEEN A

LITTLE RED LIGHT?

If you have, you'll know it,

and if you want to share your

experience with others who

have seen and heard the same

thing then come to 225 W.

Poplar Street, Berkeley, at

8:30 PM on Friday 6/20/84.

The building at 225 W. Poplar Street is an ugly Co-Op meeting

hall with brown-painted stucco walls and a flat roof that's

trimmed in orange. Nervous-looking people stand on the front lawn

smoking cigarettes and talking in low voices; they watch Tom, Pris

and I with haunted expressions as we pull up in Tom's car. Tom

looks back at them and they turn quickly away, staring at their

own feet, a companion's elbow, a tree . . . anything but us. As we

get out of the car and walk up the rough, rock-imbedded concrete

sidewalk toward them, they move away.

Tom nudges me. "If they kick me out, I want you to stay. Say

you don't know me. Okay?"

I nod slightly. We've been over this before --- they'd

already told him they don't want publicity, even though they'd

been putting up those weird signs all over town. A reporter from

the Berkeley Barb would not be welcome.

The inside the building is dim and smells of marijuana. There

are folding metal chairs set up in rows, and at the front of the

room there's a cheap utilitarian table and an obviously hand-built

podium that's wired for sound. All throughout the room people

gather in little groups, whispering, and one mustachioed man

dressed in black is lighting candles and placing them on the cheap

table. Everyone glances at us and at each other but they avoid

direct eye contact.

I lean over and whisper into Pris's ear. "Boy, do these

people know how to party."

Pris grins. This brightens my mood a bit, but only for a

while; the place has a feeling of musty, suppressed dread, and I'm

beginning to wonder if we've stumbled into some sort of satanic

cult. Tom is quiet, taking it all in; his eyes are like camera

lenses, and they affect people the same way a camera does. They've

very blue, and he stares with such an intensity and clarity of

focus that they put people on the defensive. He's also a big guy,

with big square shoulders --- he's not really muscular, and he's

not fat, he's just big. He dwarfs Pris, who stands between us,

touching both of us. She watches him and then watches what he's

watching, as if trying to fathom how he sees things. Occasionally

she glances at me and flashes her brilliant little Pris-smile,

which always sends a little thrill though my nerves. I watch her,

and see she's breathing fast and shaking. It makes me want to hold

her, an urge that never quite leaves me when she's around.

Pris taps on Tom's arm and whispers, "Isn't that the bum that

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hangs out on your front steps?"

Tom and I look over; in the back corner of the large, dim

room, in the darkest part, is a thin man standing by himself. He's

facing the front with a mask-like face and piercing, beady eyes.

He's dressed in an old Army jacket and tattered pants, and his

hair hangs in oily strings to one side of his forehead. Yes,

that's our bum. He's acting strangely calm tonight --- it's odd to

see him standing still, not moving a muscle, not even talking to

himself. The only time I've seen our bum motionless is when he's

asleep in the bushes next to the steps of our apartment building

--- other than that he's always moving, always doing something

. . . usually something mindless, like dragging things out of the

public trash cans and playing with used straws and rubber bands.

The mustachioed man in black finishes his candle-lighting and

then takes quick steps to the door. At the door, he glances at his

watch for about twenty seconds then looks up, grunting. "Excuse

me," he says to the people loitering outside. "Meeting's about to

start." Turning from the door, he takes more large, quick steps to

the table, where he takes a seat. The people around us find a seat

and settle down. Tom, Pris and I take seats toward the back.

Someone closes the door to the room and the only thing that breaks

the sudden silence is a few low whispers.

The man in black clears his throat then introduces himself as

Bob Thorn, then he introduces the two dumpy-looking women who have

positioned themselves next to him as Virginia Beach and Lori

Angstrom. Pris and I share a glance and a stifled laugh at

"Virginia Beach." Jokes would come from that later. Virginia

stands up and positions herself behind the podium, clearing her

throat into the microphone. "I assume everyone here has seen the

little red light?"

There is a general nodding of heads, and a few muttered

admissions.

"I see a member of the press has shown up," Virginia says,

looking straight at Tom. "Is that because you've seen the light,

or are you here to do a story?"

"I'm here to find out what this is about," Tom says. "I'm

just curious. I mean, your signs are all over the place."

"I'll tell you what it's about," Virginia Beach says with

hostility. "For the past five weeks there has been a freak

occurrence in this area where a tiny, bright light appears out of

nowhere in someone's house or office. It lasts anywhere from a

minute to three hours, and is often accompanied by disembodied

voices." She pauses, glaring at him. "This meeting is to give

those of us who have experienced this phenomenon an opportunity to

share our experience with others, and hopefully ease our anxieties

and neutralize our trauma."

"Trauma?"

"Yes, trauma. For some of us it's been a very intense,

unpleasant experience, a breakdown of reality. But it's hard to

explain this to someone who hasn't experienced it. Your presence

here may intimidate some of us from openly expressing ourselves.

We are not seeking attention. One of your articles in the Barb

would certainly bring about public ridicule, and at this stage

that is something we are not ready to deal with."

"You're speaking for everybody." Tom looks around.

"I'm anticipating their best interests."

"Then you're asking me to leave?"

The woman's expression closes down like a mask. "No. This is

a public meeting. I'm just hoping you'll understand the

situation."

Tom stands up and addresses the whole room. "I don't know if

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I'll end up writing about this or not, but I promise that if I do

I won't use anyone's name unless I have your permission. If you

feel you have to hide this . . . experience you've had, that

suggests to me you're ashamed of it. If you really did have such

an experience, why be ashamed?"

"You don't understand," Virginia nearly shouts at him. "This

is the first meeting, a big step for everyone here, and you could

ruin it. As a matter of fact, I am going to ask you to leave. You

can come back after we're used to being public about our

experiences."

Tom nods. He turns to Pris and I and gives me a long,

meaningful look with those camera lens eyes of his. He reaches

down and takes Priscilla's hand; Pris stands up, and Tom keeps

staring at me. I stay where I am and he and Pris head toward the

door. I look wistfully after Pris, and when she and Tom are out of

sight I suppress a sigh and feel lonely. The meeting continues,

and one by one people stand up and nervously tell their stories.

Every one is much the same: He woke up and saw this red light

on the wall; she looked up from the television and saw a red light

on the wall; he and she and another were studying and they heard

voices and looked up to see a red light on the wall . . . it was

hardly a spectacular experience by the way they told it.

Nevertheless they all seem haunted by it, and many of the people

around me, young and old, glance around with wide eyes as if they

expect the little red light to appear at any moment.

When it comes to the bum's turn, he quietly clears his throat

and in a husky voice says, "Yeah, I saw it . . . I saw it on the

surface of a building, and it said, 'Look, there he is,' and I

ran. I saw it again on the same night in a different place, but

didn't hear it speak." I'm impressed. I've never heard him speak

so clearly. I'm sitting there pondering this when Virginia Beach

clears her throat and says, "Excuse me." I turn to look at her and

she nods. I stare blankly, wondering why she nodded at me, then

suddenly realize it's my turn to tell everyone how and where I saw

the Little Red Light. Jesus Christ! I think to myself. What do I

say? Everyone is looking at me expectantly, and Virginia's eyes

are narrowing, suspicious . . . she's probably figured out I'm

with Tom Harrison and that I've stayed behind to spy on the

meeting.

"I was in my bathtub," I tell them. "The light appeared on

the ceiling and stayed there for three minutes. I didn't hear any

voices, thought." I swallow, wondering if they'll buy it. I can't

tell about the rest of them, but Virginia Beach is glaring at me.

She doesn't say anything, but she continues to stare. I smile,

shrugging, but she doesn't react, doesn't shift her gaze. Finally

she turns and points to the next person and I nearly slide out of

my chair in relief.

The rest of the meeting takes form as a discussion as to what

this mysterious light is, what it means, what it wants . . . et

cetera. Most of them think it's Aliens from Planet 14 trying to

contact them, but there's all sorts of suggestions. Someone says

Russian psychics are causing the phenomenon; another forms a

theory attributing it to an electrical condition caused by the

over-abundance of radio and television signals. I myself suggest

ball lightning, but no one goes for it. The discussion winds down,

and when they adjourn the meeting I am the first person out of the

room.

Tom and Pris are across the street, sitting on a public lawn

under a streetlight. Pris sees me and raises both hands, waving,

her face bursting out in a tremendous smile. I feel my heart-rate

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increase, and I smile back --- I have no choice, her smile is one

of those that are so warm and natural and happy that you smile

back out of reflex, whether you feel like it or not. "You made it

out alive!" she exclaims in her throaty voice; it cracks a little

at the peak of her emphasized "alive."

She and Tom get to their feet and we head toward the car,

ignoring the stares of the people drifting out of the building ---

people realizing that I was, indeed, a spy for the Barb's most

notorious reporter. I tell them about what went on in the meeting

as we pile into the car and Tom starts the loud, throbbing engine.

Tom listens to me, but I can tell he's lost interest. There's no

story here for him, unless he wants to write for the National

Inquirer. The car jerks forward, leaping down the road, and in two

minutes we make it to Euclid Street. Tom parks in his rented spot

way up the hill from the building where Tom and I share an

apartment. The building, named "The Euclid," is right across the

street from the Berkeley campus, and there's never any parking

anywhere near the campus. This spot way up the hill is the closest

he could get. For the same reason my vehicle is even farther away

--- I haven't seen it in over a week.

Pris and I help Tom put the rubberized canvas covering over

his car ---it's a gleaming 1967 Camero convertible with a totally

un-stock, high performance engine and transmission, not at all

street legal --- and having secured that, we plod down the hill

toward the Euclid. I'm right in the middle of suggesting we stop

at Rodney Red's Bar, which we're passing, when Tom suddenly

exclaims "Hey!" He stops and points.

"What?" Pris asks.

"The bum. Look." He's pointing at the Euclid building, which

is only a half block away. The steps are clearly visible, and

sitting on them is our bum.

"No, that can't be the same . . ." I start, but trail off. It

is the same bum. I can tell by his jerking, uneven motions, like a

wind-up toy with broken gears. Nobody else moves like that. How in

the hell? I wonder. How in the hell did he get here before us?

"That must have not been our bum at the meeting," Tom says.

"It looked like him to me," I say. Then again, the bum at the

meeting didn't act like our bum. We reach the steps of the Euclid

and he looks up at us, grinning a grotesque, rotten-toothed grin

with gaping holes, and bobs his head up and down like a lizard.

"How did you get back here so fast?" Pris asks him.

The bum stops his bobbing nod, and draws his head back in a

way that makes his neck look like rubber. "Huh?" he says.

"The meeting," Tom says. "How did you get back from the

meeting before us?"

The bum lowers his eyebrows, scrunching up his face.

"Whaaat?"

"You weren't at the meeting?" Tom says. "You know, about the

little red lights?"

The bum's face jumps forward on his rubber neck. He moves his

arm up in an awkward way to rub his creased forehead; he looks as

though he's dislodged it. "I wasn't at any meeting," he says.

Tom looks at me with his camera lens eyes. "That wasn't him."

"I guess not," I say.

Pris looks back and forth between us, puzzled, her lips

forming a little pout. Her hair has fallen over her left eye, and

she pushes it back. "Oh well," she says, then smiles.

Tom unlocks the Euclid's front door and we enter the

building, plodding up the dusty steps and making a left, walking

all the way down the dingy hall to the last door on the right. Tom

unlocks that door and we enter behind him, passing the bathroom

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and the kitchen and head straight into the living room. Tom plops

down on our ratty couch and Pris gingerly steps over and sets

herself down on his lap. He grins, putting his arms around her,

and she leans against him intimately and sticks her tongue into

his mouth. I sit across from them in a reclining chair and watch.

This hurts. Why am I punishing myself? I have a hollow

feeling in my chest, as if all the organs had been relocated, and

there's a unpleasant tingling in my arms. Suppressed emotions. I

take a breath, stand up, and turn away. They obviously want to be

alone.

I walk around the chair and into my room, turning on the

light. My bed has camera equipment strewn all across it, and along

my walls are shelves with terrariums full of specimens, and on my

desk is an old IBM Selectric II typewriter and piles and piles of

notes and dust and clutter . . . and goddamn it, I don't want to

deal with the mess, not right now. I don't even want to be here

--- the room is so small it gives me claustrophobia. Turning

around, I go back into the living room just in time to catch a

glimpse of Tom carrying Pris in his arms, heading toward his

bedroom. When they get inside he lifts one leg and closes his door

with his foot. I sigh and walk down the hall to the apartment door

and quietly let myself out.

I am so fucking stupid sometimes. Why do I let things like

this happen to me? How could I be so careless as to fall

hopelessly in love with my roommate's girlfriend? I trudge down

the outer hall, down the steps, and out of the Euclid, patting the

shoulder of our bum as I go. The sun has set, and twilight is

rapidly fading to night. I make a left and take a walk through the

Berkeley campus, heading up into the hills behind, up behind the

Greek Theater, up nearly to the laboratory buildings that are at

the top. From the hill I can see all the way across the bay to San

Francisco, the city where Pris comes from . . . it sparkles like a

billion diamonds through the distant haze. The air up here is cool

and fresh. I breathe deeply and tell myself that everything is

okay. Everything is just fine.

The next morning, Saturday the 21st, I walk back from the Co-Op

apartments where our friend Felix lives, where I'd spent the night on

the floor with a sheet and a pillow, and just as I approach the gray

brick building where I pay rent I see Pris timidly let herself out of

the front door, carefully closing it behind her. Her hair is messy and

the collar of her white and blue blouse is half inside-out; she looks

sleepy, and there's a contented look on her face. I myself have a

hangover, which reminds me of the decision I had made last night: I am

going to force myself to fall out of love with Pris. This agony that I'm

going through is nothing more than a few chemicals in my brain, a few

synapses misfiring when they should be dormant, a few hormones mingling

with my blood when they shouldn't. Well, last night Felix and I decided

that the conscious mind can influence the subconscious, and the

subconscious can change anything in the body that is controlled by the

brain. Love can be controlled by the brain, so I will force myself to

shut it off.

I don't love her, I tell myself as I hide from her. As a matter of

fact, I hate her. I despise her.

She pushes her hair out of her left eye as she walks to the corner

and then crosses the street, walking toward the BART train station that

is about five blocks away. Her hair falls right back over that eye, so

she pushes it again . . . and it falls again. It's the style of her

hair, the way it is cut, that makes it do this. It's impractical, but

it's beautiful. I love it when she pushes it away from her eye, and I

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love it when it falls back down. Damn it! I tell myself. You don't love

it, you hate it! But, damn it, I love it! I love her!

This isn't working at all.

She passes out of sight, walking downhill toward the front of the

campus, and I feel sad that she's leaving. But I know why, she works on

Saturdays, and so does Tom. Sunday morning is usually his deadline for

whatever story he's working on, and for some reason he always waits

until Saturday to write it. His stuff is very political so it's rare

that I ever read any of it, but at least I know his writing habits ---

he has the personality of an angry cobra until he finishes whatever he's

working on. If I'm in the apartment on a Saturday morning, he snaps at

me if I make the tiniest noise. This is why I'm not in a hurry to get up

there.

Our bum is already awake and playing with trash on the front steps.

I pause on my way up to the door to look down at what he's doing; he's

making crooked cubes again, using drinking straws for building material

and gum and old bandages to hold it together. The bum pauses to look up

at me, jerks his head up and down in recognition, then goes back to his

work. "Making more four-dimensional cubes, huh?" I ask.

"Yeah," he says with a grunt. His voice is dry, as if he'd been

without water for three months.

"What do you do with them?" I ask.

"Research."

I stare at his bald head for a few seconds, thinking this over,

then laughter comes bubbling up and I clamp my lips together and slap a

hand across my mouth. All that emerges is a little strangled noise, easy

to disguise as a cough.

"I sell 'em, too," he says, his shoulders shifting back and forth

but keeping perfectly level. "You want to buy one?"

"Sure, I've always wanted a four-dimensional cube." I say this amid

more strangled coughs.

"A dollar fifty," he says, not even looking at me.

"A dollar fifty!"

He stops what he's doing, turns to glance up at me with narrowed

eyes. "Dollar fifty."

"How about seventy-five cents and I throw in a roll of cellophane

tape?"

His face brightens. "Oh. All right."

Christ, I think to myself, what am I doing? But I feel sorry for

the guy, so I cross the street to the bookstore and buy a roll of tape

then head back to the Euclid's steps. I hand the bum the tape and the

spare change in my pocket --- which is at least a dollar --- and tell

him to do an "extra good job." I'll have a story to tell about this

thing, people will see this weird little cube made of drinking straws

and when they ask what it's for I'll tell them where it came from. It's

interesting, and they'll be impressed that I was kind to this

unfortunate travesty of a person, with snot encrusted in his mustache

and holes in his pant legs and four layers of worn and dirty socks in

the place of shoes. Then I think, who's "they" that I want to impress?

Pris is "they." Pris is the only person on the whole planet I care about

impressing. Who else? Tom wouldn't be impressed --- he wouldn't have an

opinion at all.

I watch as the bum constructs the thing, using way too many straws.

There's no way he's going to be able to make a cube with all those . . .

but as I watch, I get a tingle down my back. A cube is taking shape,

though even as I watch him put it together I can't figure out how he's

doing it. I sit down next to him, staring intently as he works. Then a

shadow crosses over me, and I look up to see Tom's ex-fiancee Heather,

the actress, looking down at me. She's blond and green-eyed and wearing

a frilly white dress. She appears puzzled --- she's probably wondering

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why I'm sitting out here with a bum.

"Hi," she says. "Can I borrow your key for a second?"

Frowning, I reach into my pocket. What in the hell is she doing

here? I don't feel right about lending her my keys but I do it anyway,

and she opens the Euclid's front doors, then smiles and tosses them back

before disappearing inside. She doesn't even say thanks. I have the

feeling I was of convenient use to her, but that's all.

A few minutes later our bum finishes my cube, which looks just like

a normal cube --- not a hint of the extra dimension --- and he hands it

to me, an uncharacteristic look of anxiousness on his face. "You did a

good job," I tell him. "Thanks." Actually it's a sloppy job, but at

least it's not stuck together with little globs of dirty chewing gum.

"Do you see it, then?" he asks, the anxious look still on his face.

"See it?" I look at the cube, then back at him. "What?"

"The whole thing?"

"What? What do you --- oh." He means the forth physical dimension,

of course. "To tell you the truth, no, I don't see it."

"You have to learn how to see it," he says, the anxious look

replaced by one of disappointment. He thrusts his head forward on his

rubber neck and tilts it to the side. "It's an acquired perception."

I think about this: "Acquired Perception." I like the ring of it. I

would make a catchy title for a scientific paper. I thank our bum, more

for the term he created than for the bogus four-dimensional cube, then

unlock the door to the Euclid and make my way up to the apartment. When

I enter, I find I've stumbled into the middle of a heated argument; Tom

and Heather are shouting at each other, their voices vibrating the walls

and tearing at my ears. I duck into my room before I become involved and

close my door, finding myself faced with the same cluttered mess that

drove me out of the apartment last night. I begin to methodically clean

up, putting everything where I deem it belongs, trying not to listen to

the argument but interested nonetheless in what it's about. I can't

tell, however; all I hear is "Why can't you be more considerate!" and

"You never listen!" and things like that. Tom and Heather have never

gotten along. I can't see how they ever got engaged. Either underneath

it all they really love each other, or they both simply love to argue.

Tom had been in the process of breaking up with Heather when he

first moved in with me. He'd been living with Heather over in San

Francisco, where she acts, and his move had been sudden and violent. In

effect, she'd thrown him out, and from what I understand both of them

lost half their possessions in the process. Things like, if they

couldn't agree who owned a certain book, Tom would rip the book in half.

The same happened to sheets, blankets, furniture, kitchen appliances,

the waterbed . . . everything. What a nightmare! And for weeks after

he'd moved in she would call him every night, crying, and then they'd

argue on the phone. But it tapered off, and he and Felix would go out

partying. Then they started taking me out with them ---which I'd never

really done before --- and I started having the time of my life. We, all

three of us, met Priscilla at the same time, out at a dance club on

Haight Street in San Francisco. She was merely interesting to me at

first, and of course she fell for Tom. His big square shoulders, wavy

black hair and bright blue eyes were so overpowering I don't think she

even saw Felix or me. It was only after she started coming over every

week that I started falling for her, totally against my will. She was

already Tom's girl. I felt it when it started, and I fought it all the

way. It was relentless, though --- there was nothing I could do.

I finish cleaning up my room, then sit on my bed and think about

Pris. What is so special about her? Why does she affect me this way?

Maybe I'm just lonely --- which I am --- but, no, it's more than that.

She's short, petite, always smiling, always joking --- she's 22 but

sometimes she looks 14. And her hair always falls over her left eye, no

matter how many times she pushes it back. I just love her. I just

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fucking love her.

After a while the noise dies and all that's left of the argument

are whispers. Burning with curiosity, I poke my head out to see what's

happening. Tom and Heather are standing in the living room embracing,

and tears are running down Heather's face. As I watch, horrified, I see

them begin kissing, first little pecks on each other's cheeks, then

lips, then a passion seems to engulf them and they're nearly dry-humping

right there in the living room. Before I know what I'm doing I barge in

on them, pissed off that he's kissing her, pissed off that he's cheating

on the girl I love. Goddamn it --- if I can't have Pris because he's got

her, then he better damn well appreciate her! They break off their

kissing to turn and look at me, both wearing sheepish expressions.

"Sorry about the noise," Heather says. "We're finished yelling now,

I promise."

"Oh! Well! I can see that!"

Tom looks at me with a half-smile and then rolls his eyes, as if he

and I are sharing a private joke, but I have no idea what the joke is.

Nothing seems particularly funny. "Want to go to a party?" he asks.

This is so unexpected it takes me a moment to react. "A party?"

"My birthday is Tuesday," Heather says. "I'm throwing a party for

myself."

Oh, I'm thrilled. I don't say this, however --- neither one knows

why I'm angry, they just think it's because they've been so loud. But

I've calmed down to the point where I can't lambaste Tom for his

sinning, and so I sigh and remind myself that I hate Pris and I don't

love her, and announce that, sure, I'd love to go to Heather's party,

and also that I need a drink, and they join me, and all is wonderful and

nice and it's happy-time, tra-la-la, and they begin kissing again and I

lock myself in my room and throw things around and kick and punch my bed

and feel totally impotent.

I finally have to grit my teeth and face it: I am going insane.

This situation is driving me nuts. It might be a chemical imbalance or

overdose of hormones, but it's still real and I'm still feeling this

pain. My mind is not controlling it, it is controlling my mind.

I watch my tree frogs and my lizards moping around in their

terrariums for a few hours, trying to take notes, but I can't keep my

mind on it. I end up laying on my bed holding the four-dimensional cube

and staring at it. It seems like hours pass. Though I'm looking at the

cube, I'm not really seeing it --- I'm thinking about Pris again, my

thoughts always returning to Pris. I'm wondering if she's off work yet,

and if she'd like to hear about Tom and Heather? But I can't do that, so

I don't. But I'd like to talk to her anyway, I'd just love to, I just

want to hear her voice and think about her petite little form and

imagine holding it against me, and kissing her hair, and massaging her

back, and touching her little nose with mine.

I pump up my nerve with nine gin-and-tonics then dial her number,

but instead of Pris I end up talking to her fat roommate for 45 minutes

about dinosaurs, which she thinks I study, and after hanging up I pass

out in a drunken stupor in my bed at four in the afternoon. Sometime

between then and midnight I dream that I'm making love to Pris, and

she's soft and warm and velvety and our rhythm is like music, but after

a while I realize it's not Pris I'm making love to, it's Heather, and

she's horrified and in the weird shifting way of dreams it turns out

I've been raping her, and Tom comes in with a baseball bat and smacks me

over the head with it, and I roll off of Heather and it's not Heather

after all, I was wrong --- it's Pris. I had been raping Pris. I wake up

crying, still drunk, and hear voices that I assume are Tom and some of

his friends in the living room. The room is dim, and I look to see what

time it is but I can't find my clock. It's too dark. The only light is

something brilliant and red, and very small, a pinpoint really, hitting

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the wall just above my bed. A little red light.

I realize what I'm seeing. It's the same thing that the haunted

people in the Co-Op meeting hall had seen. I hold my breath, staring.

". . . little to the left," a voice is saying. "Stop. There's

something."

"A picture."

"What is it? A lizard?"

"We must be looking into one of the bio labs."

The voices sound as if they're coming through a long cardboard

tube, muted and hollow. The brilliant, ruby-red speck of light moves

across the wall. It comes to rest on a picture of Anolis carolinesis,

which is a little green lizard better known as an American Chameleon.

I've seen ruby-red specks of light like this before, in fact many times

before. It's a laser beam. As I watch, it moves down and the voices

continue.

"What's that? A certificate of some type----"

"A doctorate. A doctor of . . . of . . . can you make that out?"

"Herpetology."

"Huh? Study of Herpes?"

"I don't know."

I begin to suspect someone is playing a joke on me. Two thirds of

the people I talk to think Herpetology is the study of Herpes. Well,

it's not. It's the study of reptiles and amphibians, a major part of

Earth's fauna.

"Move it down some," one of the disembodied voices say. Obligingly,

the laser's spot moves down my Doctorate and as it does I try and

determine the source of the laser. I can't. My windows are closed, the

curtains are pulled, and my door is shut. The only way for a laser to be

shining in here is if the laser itself is in the room, or if someone has

drilled a hole in the wall. But if that were true, then it would have to

be a hole from my room to the hallway of our apartment. Immediately I

think of Felix, who is more Tom's friend than mine . . . he is capable

of this kind of stunt. I watch the light crawl smoothly down to a

picture of Hyla regilla, a picture of mine that ended up on the front of

National Geographic, and then head over to a print of Goya's The Swing.

As silently as I can, I reach over to my night stand, slide open a

drawer, pull out a butane pipe lighter and a genuine Cuban cigar that

Tom brought back for me from one of his trips. Shading the light of the

lighter's merry little flame, I light the cigar, puffing heavily,

letting the smoke drift up and spread out. The laser beam becomes

visible, but to my amazement it leads from midair to the Goya print,

coming from nowhere! I blow smoke toward the spot where the beam should

continue on to its source, but it reveals nothing, and a moment later

one of the voices says, "Do you smell something?" The voice, I realize,

is coming from the point in midair where the laser beam vanishes.

I'm still drunk, I tell myself. It's true: I still am. Something

must be wrong with my logic. I must be missing something. Voices and

laser beams don't come out of midair. There's a source, but my mind is

too muddled to figure out where it is.

"Somebody's smoking a cigar," one of the cardboard-tube voices

says.

"Nobody here is smoking."

"Then it could be there."

There's a protracted silence. Fed-up, I exclaim, "All right, what's

going on?"

The laser beam jerks violently then disappears. The room is silent.

I sit up, waving at the air in a half-panic. I find, however, that I

shouldn't sit up so quickly because a hammer begins pounding on my head

and I have this terrible feeling that I'm going to be sick in exactly

twelve seconds. Lurching to my feet, I stumble across the room, fling

the door open, and careen though the apartment --- making it to the

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bathroom with only seconds to spare.

2. THE FOUR-DIMENSIONAL CUBE

I'm still recovering from my hangover the next morning when Tom

shows up with Felix and our lawyer Aaron, our traditional Sunday morning

guests. Pris is already there, sitting on my bed and looking at the

terrariums with interest. I hardly notice when everyone else comes in;

Pris has all my attention.

Aaron is a tall, lanky man with red hair, taller than Tom but not

so broad of shoulders. He always has an amused expression on his face,

or at least every time I see him. I think Tom and I amuse him . . .

we've known him for years, even before Tom and I knew each other. I

really like Aaron. I like Felix, too, but I never liked the way Felix

looks at Pris.

Felix is a professional student at Berkeley, although Berkeley is

not the only university he's attended. He's been down in UCLA, where Tom

graduated, and back East at Yale, though I hear he hadn't lasted long

there . . . and at other places I can't recall. He is an expert at just

about everything, but he doesn't apply himself or use any of his talents

to make money. He just keeps studying. Today he's being an electronics

surveillance expert because that's what Tom has decided is behind all

this little red light business.

Felix, like Aaron, has red hair, but that's where the similarity

ends. Felix is short and skinny and freckled and boyish, and sometimes

downright juvenile. He gives me a smile as he unpacks some equipment

from a tattered suitcase lined with foam rubber; there's something in

the smile I don't like. I think he's humoring me . . . he doesn't

believe I've seen the little red light.

"Here," Felix says to Pris, handing her a black and silver device

that's obviously hand-built. "Hold that button down and wave it around

the room." Pris looks gleeful that she's an active part of this

mysterious event, and eagerly takes the device.

"This button?"

"Uh-huh. It's a bug detector. If there's anything in this room

that's transmitting, it'll tell us." He smiles at her. She smiles back,

doing as he instructed.

I don't like this at all. "It was a laser beam I saw last night."

Felix frowns at my tone of voice. "We're getting to that. Don't get

all huffy."

Pris laughs.

Felix pulls out an aerosol can of Christmas snow and pops off the

plastic top. A little white piece of paper falls out and he snatches it

up with a surprised look. "My God, that's where I put it!"

"What?" Pris asks.

"Window pane! Why didn't I remember it? It was symbolic." He looks

at us to see if we're following his cryptic logic. "I spray this stuff

on window panes, get it? So this is where I hid my window pane."

"What is it?" Pris asks.

"LSD. I thought I'd lost it. Who wants some?" As he says this he's

unfolding the little piece of paper to reveal what looks like several

small squares of thin purple plastic. Everyone declines his offer, so

Felix pops one of the little squares into his mouth and puts the rest

away. Then he holds the can of fake snow out, showing it to us. "This,"

he says dramatically, "is canned laser detector."

"You're not spraying that in here," I tell him, crossing my arms

defensively.

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Davis, Jerry - Random Acts

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