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

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.