Random Acts Part 1

RANDOM ACTS.

by Jerry J. Davis.

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 b.u.m that 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 b.u.m. 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 b.u.m 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 a.s.sume 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 antic.i.p.ating 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 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 b.u.m'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 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 pa.s.sing, when Tom suddenly exclaims "Hey!" He stops and points.

"What?" Pris asks.

"The b.u.m. 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 b.u.m.

"No, that can't be the same . . ." I start, but trail off. It is the same b.u.m. I can tell by his jerking, uneven motions, like a wind-up toy with broken gears. n.o.body else moves like that. How in the h.e.l.l? I wonder. How in the h.e.l.l did he get here before us?

"That must have not been our b.u.m at the meeting," Tom says.

"It looked like him to me," I say. Then again, the b.u.m at the meeting didn't act like our b.u.m. 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 b.u.m 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 b.u.m lowers his eyebrows, scrunching up his face.

"Whaaat?"

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

The b.u.m'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, pa.s.sing the bathroom 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 G.o.dd.a.m.n 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 f.u.c.king 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 b.u.m 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, Sat.u.r.day 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 love it when it falls back down. d.a.m.n it! I tell myself. You don't love it, you hate it! But, d.a.m.n it, I love it! I love her!

This isn't working at all.

She pa.s.ses 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 Sat.u.r.days, 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 b.u.m 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 b.u.m 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 b.u.m 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 b.u.m 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 why I'm sitting out here with a b.u.m.

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

Frowning, I reach into my pocket. What in the h.e.l.l 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 b.u.m 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 t.i.tle for a scientific paper. I thank our b.u.m, 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.