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

"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