Being Alien Read Online Free PDF Page A

not quite staring. Alex grinned viciously at me as we sat down. Look at the crazy humans.
    The woman was doing woman stuff, thrusting her breasts out, seducing behind the arguing; the man was running a physical bluff of another sort: fists clenched, chin up, ready to drop her with man violence. Exactly the way a woman and man argue; too typically human.
    They went at it for ten minutes—I wondered what had made them so upset. Finally, another woman beside them said, “But, Yona, Demetrios, it’s only ice cream.”
    All of us humans eavesdroppers giggled. Alex twitched his head as if shaking off a fly.
    When he got off, he took my bag and said, “Human female and male survival strategies in the argument, yes?”
    “Yeah, I guess.” I’d had those symbolic sorts of arguments with Yangchenla. Too often.
    “Down to Milvia and left,” Alex told me. My building was two stories high, with balconies for upstairs apartments and tiny yards fenced with planks behind the ground floor units. In front of the building was something like a huge yucca but with thicker leaves. I scuffed away some mint by the road—the soil looked black. Maybe I could grow a garden, do something familiar even if I didn’t stay long?
    Alex waited while I went up iron stairs that boomed underfoot. The super was leaning against his door frame. I said, “I’m Tom…Gresham. Guy named Alex arranged an apartment for me.” My real name would get me busted; Gresham, I told myself, not Gentry.
    He asked, without shifting, “Hard drugs, dogs, more than one woman a month?”
    “No,” I said.
    “He tell you the rent was $700? Fourteen hundred, two months at $700 each.”
    He was robbing me, I thought. I almost went down for Alex, but instead signed over $1400 in traveler’s checks. The super handed me the key and said, “Rent’s due each month. Envelope will be in the door. You been in Berkeley before?”
    “No, I…no.”
    “Call PG&E and tell them to hook you up. Don’t know if you’ve got lights now or not.” He went back in his apartment and came back with a greasy receipt book, wrote me off a receipt that could have been for anything, and handed it to me.
    I went back downstairs and asked Alex, “What is PG&E?”
    “Pacific Gas and Electric.” I unlocked the door and switched on a light. “Don’t rush to get the bill in your name,” Alex added, “as long as you’ve got power.”
    I looked up and saw glitter flecks in the ceiling paint, then looked around at the furniture—ruptured vinyl and chipped Formica. “Alex, isn’t $700 a month too much rent?”
    “You’ve got two bedrooms.”
    “I could have rented a house for a year for $1400 in Floyd County. A good house.”
    “Yeah, yeah.” Alex obviously had heard about Floyd.
    He continued after a pause, “Tonight, we’ll go see the sunset. Tomorrow, you can take care of business. Want to use the toilet?”
    Pissing in my Terran toilet felt ceremonial. I’d expected to see a strip across the bowl: “Sanitized for your protection.” The place reminded me so much of a cheap motel. Before we left, Alex checked to see that the windows were locked and that the patio door track was blocked with a steel rod. “Being here is like living in a xenophobia movie,” he said, “almost too exciting.”
    On the way back up to Shattuck, I noticed that the side streets at right angles to it had houses on them, the parallel streets apartments. The woman Black Amber wanted me to meet lived in a house.
    “Smoke?” Alex said He pulled out a badge, stuck the pin though this shirt pocket. It was a Cannabis sativa grower/smoker’s photo ID permit. “Berkeley’s not like the rest of the country.”
    “Man, for you to be smoking is dangerous.”
    He pulled out a tiny joint, licked it, then said, “The sunset will be enough for you since you’ve never been in such a big city.” He lit the joint and took two huge hits.
    “Don’t fucking bogart it because I’m being a prick. I’ll smoke