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

"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


file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Jerry%20Davis%20-%20Random%20Acts.txt (9 of 93) [10/18/2004 5:01:39 PM]
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Jerry%20Davis%20-%20Random%20Acts.txt

bathroom with only seconds to spare.