"Davis, Jerry - Random Acts" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davis Jerry)

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
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