TWO POINTS OF LIGHT

by

Daniel Berman

            In the dream, which had come every night for two weeks and was here again, David was tied up in a dark place, unable to see anything.  Then, far off, he thought he could see the tiniest light that was slowly, very slowly getting closer.  Soon he could make out not one but two tiny lights, and they seemed to be approaching more and more rapidly.  Sweating from panic in the cold air, he struggled, tried to run, but he was tied in place with invisible bonds.  He screamed and screamed and the shrill sounds echoed back to him.  Then he was quiet, overcome by a terror so great that he was beyond screaming.  The lights!  They were eyes, the eyes of a ferocious animal!  It was running towards him and soon…  But the eyes were high up, on a level with his head.  They were the eyes of a demon, a ghost…

            David sat up in bed, exhausted.  It was the same every night—somewhere between two AM and two-thirty he had the dream and woke up terrified.  The air conditioner was chugging away, but the room was stifling.  The city was in the grip of a heat wave; for the past few days, he’d been staggering through the blinding heat on little or no sleep, and to top it off the air conditioning in his office had been broken yesterday.  He dragged himself into the living room, looking for something to read.  Pulling out a book of stories by Kipling, he spent the rest of the night reading on the sofa, then took a long cool shower and got ready to leave for work.  At least it was Friday.

            The E train he caught at the Continental Avenue station in Queens was air conditioned, except the fans weren’t working.  A woman who reeked of a musky perfume stood next to him at the pole, and every time the train stopped she bumped his shoulder.  He looked at her with annoyance and pulled his wet collar away from his neck, which somehow made his neck feel hotter.  The woman wore a leopard print dress and had spiky orange hair; her enormous eyes were thickly lined with black goo.  She ignored his gaze, and the next time the train stopped she bumped him even harder.  Their shoulders were at the same height; she must have been at least six feet tall.

            Delighted to get off the train, he discovered the morning air above to be as lifeless and heavy as it had been on the subway platform, but after walking in his burning shoes the two blocks to Park Avenue, he found that his twenty-second floor office was blessedly cool.  He worked for a publishing company that produced encyclopedias and various supplementary materials.  A mess as usual, his desk was covered with papers, and his chair held a stack of articles submitted by freelance writers.  Harry walked by with his ancient coffee mug.

            “It’s fixed?” asked David.

            “Yeah, finally.  Jesus, Dave, you look like hell.”

            “Oh, thanks, Harry.  That’s good to know.  You, on the other hand look like…”

            “What is it?  You’ve got a girlfriend, right?  She must be insatiable.” 

            “I wish!  Since Rona left me I’ve had exactly one date and she talked about her father the whole evening.”

            “So, why do you look like you haven’t slept for a week?”

            “You’re the science expert, you tell me.  It’s the damn dream.  You know, I told you about it.”

            “You mean the eyes?  Come into my office.”  Harry pulled out a volume of last year’s encyclopedia and flipped through the pages.  “See this?” he said, pointing to a color diagram of an eye.  “See, many animals have a structure at the back of their eyes that works like a mirror and reflects light back to the retina.  It enables them to see better in dim light.  It produces eyeshine.  That’s why you see animals’ eyes glowing at night in your headlights…”

            “Oh, God, I just remembered something that happened when I was a kid.  We were driving down from upstate at night; I think we were on Route Twenty-Two.  I saw these orange eyes shining near the edge of the road, and it really scared me.  I never mentioned it to my folks because…”

            “That’s exactly what I’m talking about.  A perfectly normal phenomenon caused by the tapetum lucidum, the structure that reflects…”

            “Well, it doesn’t explain my nightmare…”

            “I’m not a freakin’ shrink, David!”

            “But it takes some of the steam out of it, understanding the eye thing; anyhow, thanks, Harry.”

            Feeling a bit better, David began cleaning up the work on his desk.  By late morning he realized he was shivering with cold.  Harry stuck his head in the door. 

            “What do you say we get out of this refrigerator and grab a hot dog in the park?”

            “What is it with this place?  They have only two settings on the air conditioner—broil and freeze.  But I don’t know if I’m ready to go back out into that heat.”

            “Relax.  I saw the forecast online.  A high pressure front moved in.”

            “You know, David, you should borrow a relaxation CD I just got.  You could play it when you go to sleep.  It might jog your REM cycle so you don’t wake up with that dream at the usual time.”

*     *     *     *

            The heat and humidity had blown off producing what David’s mother used to call a beach day: hot sun, low humidity and a breeze.  They walked through the sunny streets to the park.

            “Let’s go up to the zoo,” said Harry.  David looked at him curiously but followed along.  The high scent of flowers and the low, insinuating smell of soil expanded in the hot air.  Women strolled by in filmy-looking clothing that suggested the hot, rounded flesh beneath and the breeze shimmied the drying leaves.

            “I feel much better.  Somehow, I think the dream is finished, kaput.”

            “Come on, I want you to see the big cats.”

            They walked towards a large tiger, lying on its side and panting, its glorious head lifted up so it could look around with half-closed eyes.  Its wide paws were limp, the stubby velvet toes like a stuffed animal’s. 

“Look at those eyes,” Harry said, and the animal opened them wide to stare sweetly at the two men, showing golden irises with black dots in the centers.  “They can see in dim light because of the tapetum lucidum and pupils that can expand from pinpoints to almost the size of the entire iris.”  The tiger yawned and stretched its legs, revealing mounds of muscle.  Heavy yellowish claws slipped out of its furry digits and then disappeared again. “ See those teeth?  The canines are longer than other predators’, including lions.  You’re looking at a work of art by mother nature, designed for catching and killing prey.” 

“But it’s so beautiful,” said David, and his nostrils felt seared by the tiger’s heavy scent, piercing, yet as sweet as rotting flesh.

“We think it’s beautiful because we respond to any form that efficiently serves a function.  Why do you think we admire the female form?  Designed to conceive, deliver, and suckle an infant.  You know why we find high cheekbones attractive?  They go with strong jaws, and before we were fully human, we had canines that could be used for defense…”

“All right, Harry.  I’ll remember that if I ever get a hickey again.  Let’s go back to the office.”

“You go ahead.  I have to go back late—I’m conditioning Roger not to expect me to follow the rules he sets up for the unwashed masses.”

David walked through the park to the nearest exit, not the one they came in.  He rushed across Fifth Avenue at a diagonal during a brief lull in the traffic.  Halfway across, he heard a roar, distant, yet with unbelievable carrying power.  Even here in the middle of the city noises, it vibrated through his body as though it spanned frequencies below those he could hear but could still feel.  He stopped dead, and a speeding taxi flew by so close that he put his hand out as if to ward it off.  Except for this gesture, the taxi wouldn’t have touched him, but his palm hit its warm, metal side for an instant and spun him around.  Luckily there were no other cars in his path, and he made it safely to the sidewalk.

“You okay, Mister?” A short Hispanic man in a yellow shirt held his arm.

“Yes, I’m fine,” he said, looking into the man’s brilliant eyes. “Thanks.”

Surprisingly unshaken, he returned to his office and worked all afternoon with great energy.  The air conditioning was now off, and by four-thirty the atmosphere had gone from cool and still to hot and dead.  The windows could not be opened, and David put his head down on his desk to rest his eyes for a moment.  He fell asleep immediately and the dream came to him.

There he was again, tied up in the dark place.  He saw the light that became two lights that became eyes.  He felt a sense of dread but not like before.  The fear only glazed the surface of the dream; deep down he knew he was dreaming and was not afraid.  He watched almost calmly as the eyes drew closer.  Now he could see they belonged to a mythical beast—catlike but as big as a house.  It opened its huge jaws revealing another pair of shining eyes. 

David, his back stiff and sore, stood up and stretched.  He was about to leave when he saw Harry’s tape machine on his bookcase, and stuffing it into his briefcase, he hurried to the elevator. 

The door opened, and as he entered, Harry came in and then a white-haired woman wearing an orange linen dress and carrying a little dog.

“Cute,” said Harry, and he reached over to pat the dog’s head.  It drew back its lips in a vicious snarl, then, lightning fast, snapped at Harry’s fingers.  He withdrew his hand just in time.  “Whoa!  What a little monster,” he grumbled.  The woman gave him a dirty look, and David began to laugh.

“You know, Harry,” he said, “That animal is a work of art.  I mean it’s nature’s killing machine.  You shouldn’t be annoyed at it because it does what it was meant to do.”

The elevator stopped with a thump and the whirring of the fan got louder, then clicked off.  They waited silently for a minute, as if by not acknowledging the breakdown it would go away.  Then they all shuffled their feet, the woman sucked her teeth and David sighed loudly.

“Oh, no,” Harry groaned softly.  “This makes me crazy.  I can’t stand being stuck in a small space.  I’m gonna be sick.”

The woman opened her eyes wide and took a step back.  Her little dog began to emit rapid, guttural barks.

“We all have our little foibles,” said David.  “Go ahead and puke if you want to; it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”  The woman inhaled sharply and readjusted her hold on the dog.  David put his arm around Harry’s shoulders.  “Hey, Harry, I’ve got this great relaxation tape.  You want to hear it?”

Harry smiled.  “You can take that tape and stick it where even a cat’s eyes couldn’t see.”  The elevator started to move again.  It stopped abruptly at the lobby.

David unlocked the door to his apartment gratefully.  It was two and a half blocks from Queens Boulevard, and the traffic noise was dim.  He opened all the windows (they faced east except for the south windows in the living room, which were shaded by maple trees).  The fresh breeze blew in, making everything seem clear.  He’d take a shower and then go to bed for a long quiet sleep.

Naked, his hair still wet, he was about to crawl into bed when he remembered the tape machine.  He jumped up and got it from his briefcase.  The relaxation tape consisted of a man talking in a monotonous voice about self-hypnosis and a sort of purring sound in the background.  At first it made him want to laugh, but within five minutes he was sound asleep.  He was awakened a few hours later by the phone. 

“Hello?”

He heard what sounded like deep grunts.

“Hello.  Who is this?”

More inhuman-sounding grunts.  David hung up, then froze.  There in the dark outside his second-floor window—two gleaming red eyes!  He felt the hair on his arms raise up, then he laughed and smacked himself on the forehead.  It was just the little red light of the tape machine reflected in the window.

He got up and looked at the clock, only nine-thirty.  He felt refreshed and sure that the dream was finished for him.  Should he go out?  He could walk over to Queens Boulevard, go to a bar.  He dressed carefully, feeling that he might even pick up a woman, and walked through the mild night air to the busy street.

There was a new cocktail lounge on his side of the boulevard; the blue neon sign in flowing cursive letters and the dark interior looked inviting.  Inside were black leatherette booths and zebra striped wallpaper. 

David sat at the bar and ordered a Scotch and soda from the young female bartender.  A woman had seated herself on the next stool without making a sound.  She had a long, narrow body and rather short, wiry legs; she turned her face to him and smiled.  He thought, “high cheekbones,” and smiled back.  Her eyes were too green to be real, and he realized she was wearing colored contact lenses. 

“This is a nice place,” he said.  “They just opened a few weeks ago.”

“Okay,” she answered.  “I don’t come here often, you’ve never seen me anyplace before and I went to school in California.  Oh, yes, I was born right here in New York, and I don’t want to talk about my job.”

David laughed and said, “”So, what’s your sign?”

“Yield.”  They both laughed.  The woman ordered a daiquiri. 

“It’s not really such a nice place,” he said.  “The decorator must have been thinking Nairobi.”

“That’s okay.  I know a better place.”

“Where’s that?”

“My house on Long Island.  I inherited my parents’ house in Montauk.  But I’m staying here tonight with a girlfriend.”

“Too bad I don’t have a car,” said David, and he looked at her uptilted eyes, short tawny hair and pretty little mouth.  “But I do have an apartment.  It’s only a couple of blocks from here.”

“Yes?”

“What do you say we have our second drink there?  I’m very well-behaved and I make drinks very gently and masterfully.”

“Ooh, sounds like a pretty good offer.  I don’t know.”

“Come on.  I find you very attractive.  Let’s…”

“Look, if I had thought you were serious, I wouldn’t have kidded around with you from the get-go.  You can just put your tongue back in your mouth; I’m not going anywhere with you.”  She slapped a five-dollar bill on the bar and walked out before her dink even got there.

Astonished, David watched her retreating figure and ordered another drink.  He felt mildly disappointed, but more amused than anything else.  “What the hell,” he thought.  “I feel released from my bad dream, why not celebrate by getting a little drunk?  All I have to do is negotiate a couple of blocks on foot to get home.”  He sat and amiably downed two more Scotches, and left feeling happily dizzy and silly.

When he stepped outside, he noticed a little bookstore that was still open on the other side of Queens Boulevard.  He thought he might be able to find a self-help book on claustrophobia for Harry.  It would be a funny gag-gift because in spite of the relaxation tapes, Harry hated self-help books and pop psychology. 

David walked carefully across the little service road to the cement island and on into the roadway.  The light was with him, and he cut to the left in order to follow the shortest route to the store. 

Out of nowhere he heard a roar, and two blinding lights bore down on him—an enormous truck, red and blue stripes, the lights.  He heard the air brakes and thought, “Run!  Run!”  but his feet wouldn’t move.  His shirt flapped and his hair lifted in a whoosh of air. 

He saw the two lights become one, bathing the world in whiteness.  The single light retreated, diminished to a tiny point, then went out.

THE END

Daniel Berman works in educational publishing and avoids speeding trucks whenever possible.

THE BUMP AND GRIND

Daniel Berman

Not that I’m nervous or anything.  In fact, I’m probably the hardest person to spook you ever . . .  But then after the life I’ve led, it isn’t surprising.  It’s just that, sitting here in this booth, all lit up, I sometimes imagine I see things coming at me out of the dark.  I can’t see into the corners, and being in here, in the light, on display . . .

Funny, I never thought about it before, but it’s like when I used to strip.  You’d be up on that stage with all the lights on your body.  You couldn’t see who was out there; probably a good thing, too.  I’d pretend the audience was filled with people like Cary Grant, Gregory peck—all with hard-ons.

I’d take off the gloves slow, unzip my dress like I couldn’t wait to get out of it, but I was making myself hold back.  All the while I’d wiggle and work my hips.  It was fun the first couple of years.  I liked hearing that loud music.  And when I’d whip my tits out, they’d feel so big, so naked.  I hated wearing pasties; I wanted them to see my nice pink nipples.  But I didn’t take off the G-string.  No.  I’d get down to just heels and the G-string, body makeup all over me, starting to melt and get sweated off.  Then I’d walk around that stage feeling like the sexiest broad in the world.

Shit!  What was that noise?  I can’t see anything.  Except for the filthy wall near my booth.  (What is that white slime that oozes down subway walls, anyway?)  I can also see the turnstiles, of course.  Though nobody hardly ever goes through them.  Isn’t it stupid, sitting here all night in a station nobody needs?  My biggest thrill is watching the trains go by.

Anyhow, I used to like stripping.  I knew I had a great ass.  Oh, my tits were big and all, but my ass was really like shaped, you know?  And everyone, even the other girls, said I looked good on stage.  I have this sallow, olive skin.  But in the lights, set off by my black hair (Yeah, it was jet black back then.) my skin looked creamy.  But then Sal, the owner of the last dump I worked in, he wanted to headline someone else.  I was only thirty.  But she was eighteen, and even I could see the difference.  She had that juicy look.  You know, like every part of her was smooth and plump and tight.  Funny thing was, you probably couldn’t see the difference up on stage.  But that’s when I quit.  I wouldn’t settle for second billing.

After, I worked in an office for a while.  I couldn’t type, but they hired me to sit out front, answering the phone and wearing tight dresses.  Then I met Jake . . .

Oh yeah, I was married for four years.  Never had any kids, though.  Jake and me, I guess it was a real love match.  He wasn’t rich or handsome, but he had a real sweet smile.  Men are so funny.  They think you want them to do tricks in bed, hump you for hours before they come.  They think if they have a big cock . . . The ones that are really good at it, it’s like they don’t have to try, like they just know what you want even if you don’t.  No, Jake wasn’t any great shakes in bed.  Do you think I cared?  All I had to do was look at him and I was hot.  It was better with him than with the best lover in the world.  I guess it was because of how I felt about him.

Then he met a redheaded beautician and dumped me.  I still don’t get it.  I know he really loved me, but he left with her.  Then he came back, crying and begging, but I told him I wanted a divorce.  Maybe I did the wrong thing.  But every time I looked at him, I thought about how that smile was the same one he gave her.  Yeah, I really thought it was just for me before that.  It was like we knew something nobody else knew and he smiled at me about it.  I don’t know what it was we knew.  I tell you though, I feel like I still know it when I think about him.  In a funny way it was because I cared about him so much that I couldn’t take him back.  I didn’t want him thinking I was a pushover.

I always remember this day we spent together right before he left. Don’t ask why, but we decided we just had to go to Staten Island.  Staten Island!  We’d never been before, so we took the ferry and went. 

It was such a cold day, not many people, and the water looked so smooth and thick, like syrup.  We shivered outside, watching Manhattan get farther away with our arms around each other, laughing for no good reason. 

When we got there, we didn’t know what to do, but we didn’t care.  We walked around, then we saw this little restaurant.  Just your typical neighborhood Italian place, but it seemed, I don’t know, friendly.  We sat there for a long time after we finished eating.  We sat and smiled at each other.  I remember the tables and the floor, even the napkin dispensers and sugar containers were so clean; it made me feel good.  The light came though the big window.  And it was so clear, I don’t know if it was the light or what, but when I looked at Jake, it was like I could see into him and he was beautiful to me.  On the way back we sat inside the ferry and dozed.

I don’t know why, but I always remember that day.  I was so happy that I felt I was bigger than my own body.  I felt like Jake and me, we were one thing and it was so big and so strong and so, like healthy.  And I remember tiny little pieces from that day at the oddest times.  These little pieces, I mean like I remember when we were eating and Jake blinked when he looked at his plate.  Or when the waitress dropped a fork and caught it before it hit the floor.  Stupid stuff, that means nothing and lasted a tiny part of a second.  I guess I have that whole day memorized and the way it comes back to me in those tiny stupid pieces, I could be remembering it for the rest of my life and never remember the same piece twice.

I was so happy that day.  But I hate to remember it because it’s like I’m seeing it down through a narrow, long tunnel and it’s so far away and so small that it’s in another time and place and maybe another planet and maybe it never really happened at all.  I don’t like that.  Because, and I hate to admit it, I want it back.  But it’s where I can never get to it. 

Goddamn that asshole!  What a stupid son-of-a-bitch to throw it all away.  But maybe he couldn’t help it.  Maybe he was too scared not to throw it away.  I could have taken him back, but I didn’t.  Maybe it was because I was scared.  Scared of how he looked in the light coming through the restaurant window.  Scared of how beautiful he was to me.

Oh, there’s Ernie.  What a crazy.  The first time he pressed his face up against the glass like that, I thought someone had mashed some raw hamburger against the booth.  Now, I’m used to him; it’s just his way of saying hello.  I see he has a new coat—tweed.  It fits pretty good except it comes down to his ankles.  Well, he needs to keep warm, sleeping in a doorway.

God, it’s boring here.  Sometimes I pretend I’m talking to somebody in my head. Sometimes I even draw little pictures.  I read, but I have to be careful not to fall asleep.  You’re supposed to watch the station.  Like, if somebody tried to beat the fare I’d really run out of here and collar him.  Hah!  I wouldn’t leave this booth.  I feel pretty safe in here.  It’s pretty hard to rob a token booth.  Of course, they can get you when you come to work—you open the door to the booth and wham!

That’s the worst time, coming to work.  I wear my uniform a size too large; (I still have a good figure.) and I try to look tough.  Even though I work for the Transit Authority, it’s not my idea of fun to ride the subway to work at eleven at night.

You won’t believe this. Once my best friend Carrie and me—

she’s a regular nutcase, so much fun—we planned to fake a robbery and split the take.

We had it all worked out.  She’d come by cab, I’d give her all the money, then after she left, I’d call the cops with a story about a guy with a gas hose.  This was before they changed the booth design.  I can lie good when I want to, and I knew they couldn’t break me down.  So Carrie, she gets here, and we look at each other and start laughing.  We laugh so hard I have to pee!  And you know, we’re not supposed to leave the booth unattended.  I keep a coffee can for just this reason, but I knew I couldn’t control the stream, I was laughing so hard, and it’d get all over. 

So—get this—Carrie sits in the booth and watches it for me while I run to the toilet.  By the time I get back, all we had to do was look at each other and we’d crack up.  Carrie wound up staying through my whole shift.  I never talked so much in my life.  Seems like we talked about everything under the sun; then we went to breakfast.  That Carrie is too much.

This is a kind of weird job to have, isn’t it?  After Jake and me split is when I took the test and got it.  The pay isn’t bad, and I still have some money and jewelry from when I was stripping. 

Understand me, I never did any hooking.  That jewelry was all legitimate gifts I never asked for, or stuff I bought myself.  In a couple of years I’m going to sell the ice and quit this job and buy a little house in Maine. Carrie and me went up there on vacation a few times, and I love it.  I’ll go up there and get some kind of a job, maybe a cashier in a restaurant.  I’ll make some friends, and my old friends will come to visit.  I know Carrie will. 

And men?  Don’t worry about it.  Even now I get asked out.  But the ones that ask me, I don’t want.  I have a plan about that, too.  When I go up to Maine, I’m going to change my look.  No more henna.  I’ll let my hair go gray and wear that clunky hand-made jewelry and no lipstick.  I’ll take some drawing or painting lessons and Yoga and meet some New Age artsy type people.

There’s my only regular customer!  He always says good morning to me and tips his cap.  Not that I can hear him, but I know that’s what he’s saying.  This old black guy, Simon; now you might think I’m crazy, but I say he has class.  Every day of his life he goes to work.  I think he’s a porter.  He always looks so neat, he’s always got a friendly word.  He acts like, I don’t know, it’s easy for him to work every day for forty years.

Well, I know it’s not easy.  Oh, he knows it too, but he’s not going to waste time thinking about it.  He’s just going to do what he has to do and ask nothing from nobody.  And at the same time he manages to be happy.  You could just tell Simon has it all together.  He must believe in something.  Maybe it’s religion or his family.  Or maybe it’s himself, or just life. 

Maybe that’s it—life; he believes it all means something.  Or even if he doesn’t, he decided it’s better for him and the people who like him to pretend it means something.  It’s like he’s seen it all, bad and good, and he’s still a good person and he respects himself for it. 

Some day I want to be like that.