A Naked Singularity: A Novel

by Sergio De La Pava

  “I think we can all agree that you in a long, deep sleep is an attractive option,” said Debi.

  “Finally, comes the only possibility we should actually fear, the fourth and final one,” said Conley, content for the moment to ignore. “In this possibility, death is a state of being and it is worse than life. Take your pick. Constant pain, psychological torture, whatever. There you have it. There goes the mystery. One of those four possibilities will be the truth just wait and see which one it is.”

  “Even if we gave you that these are the only four possibilities,” said Debi.

  “You have no choice,” said Conley. “They’re the only ones.”

  “Even so. Why would that signal the end of mystery? It’s no minor thing to wonder whether you’re going to be in a state of constant agony, bliss, or somewhere in between for a long time. Given those stakes, I think our preoccupation with the subject seems just about right.”

  “Oh relax. Three out of four possibilities is great! You can’t ask for better odds than that. Given those odds, the way we cling to life borders on the embarrassing. I have an ancient uncle lying in a hospital bed severely decomposing but pulling out all the medical stops in an effort to last a few more weeks. He’s got a hole in his throat for breathing, a bag coming out of his gut for shitting and he wants to know when he can go home. Why? He prefers certain and constant agony to a seventy-five percent probability of pleasant death! Where’s the placid calm that’s supposed to attach to the near-dead? To me it makes little sense. Some degree of curiosity is normal but the obsession my God. The books, the, the religious nonsense, the—”

  “The DVDs” Liszt jumped in. “The other day I rented a DVD called UNFIT FOR TELEVISION: DANCES WITH DEATH. It was bizarre. It was all this video footage of people basically dying.”

  “Nothing’s more basic,” said Conley.

  “For example?” said Debi.

  “One dude was attacked by a shark, you saw copious blood in the ocean.”

  I was looking at what had no doubt caused this conversation. Television was in Conley’s office holding rerun images of Rane’s handiwork. Edwin Vega as Superdad behind the counter with both hands on his neck. He looked like so many people I knew. The action had been paused but I knew the ending. On Conley’s desk, the paper was open to a picture of Baby Tula and the offsprung story.

  I knew the DVD Liszt was talking about too. Angus had rented it and I was there the night he watched it. I caught the end of it.

  Some years before, I’d been in Mexico on some mindless college bullshit. Posted everywhere, mostly on shredded telephone poles flooded with rusty staples, were signs selling someone who answered to COLOSIO. COLOSIO this. COLOSIO that. I finally asked one of my cabdrivers who this Colosio was and why it was necessary that his name be everywhere. He’d been running for President but not anymore. He was dead.

  On the DVD I saw why. From a very public, very crowded rally, the narrator tells you which one is Colosio and commands you to watch closely. As you watch, Colosio tries to make his way through this great amalgam of people. Another man approaches him from the right of the screen to within three or four feet. He shoots Colosio in the head. Red skull fragments land everywhere, scattering the crowd and ending the campaign. Everyone reacts. No one grabs the shooter.

  The next and last clip was from an outdoor railroad station. There are three separate tracks people are crossing without incident. A train approaches slowly on the first set of tracks nearest the camera then stops well short of the station. Seeing that this train has stopped for good, impatient people on their way to work continue to cross the tracks. Now you can sense another train approaching. You’re not sure if it comes on the second or third tracks.

  Then you see it. You see the train coming quickly towards the camera on the second set of tracks and from the same direction as the train that has stopped. You see this about the same time you notice a man and a woman crossing in front of the stopped train and walking towards the second set of tracks. Given the title of the disc you now focus on this man and woman who do not appear to be together. The man crosses the first set of tracks, notices the approaching train and stops suddenly.

  “No,” I said.

  The woman breaks into a trot towards the second set of tracks with the suddenly loud train approaching. She’s looking down at her bag. A distracted inventory of her possessions. It all happens so fast.

  The train doesn’t run her over, like the expression, it hits her. Her neck barely hangs on to her head. Her left leg flails across her body as she sails through the air: a lifeless skinbag of bones. Angus replayed it three or four times. Each time I moved towards the door then stopped and watched. It was the eyes. Angus could have played that evil clip of her derogation twenty times and I would have watched each one. I didn’t want to. I had to.

  The man next to her also watches as she flies through the air, his mouth is great wide open. She flies in the direction of the camera outracing the nose of the train.

  She seems to gain speed just before going out of view.

  By the time I finally got to my office Julia and Leon were gone. I listened to my messages. The first was a familiar voice from the night before. You good man you it said with further variations on that theme. He had gone to the precinct like I said and he felt much better. The police had been made aware of the situation with his potentially murderous wife and they were going to be vigilante he said. He still didn’t tell me his name but he promised to call next week.

  The other message was from Dane:

  You didn’t let me tell you why it doesn’t work. Why it doesn’t work when people have kids in order to escape oblivion. Superficially, it seems like it would work. The person who creates a child really does become more important in that someone is initially dependent on them for their survival. For a while someone exists who actually shares their view of themselves. Of course this little person will soon reassess that feeling and conclude that they and not the parent are the most important person in the world. The parent can now add someone else to the list of people who disagree with their self-assessment. Additionally, they’re now saddled with the added burden of reconciling their view of their child with that of the rest of the world. These are the insane people who want you to faint when confronted with the superior intellect or beauty of their decidedly average offspring. Well of course there’s more, but not now.

  I erased these messages and gave some thought to where I was, where I was at that specific moment and where I would have to go. I had done nothing on Darril Thorton, my most serious case. Same for Kingg’s appeal which we were being asked to turn around in what had to be record time, not to mention Tom’s case on which I would surely be doing the brunt of the thankless-but-time-consuming work pursuant to customary practice. And now Soldera had evaporated.

  Everybody was leaving or had just left. Their cases would be transferred and I would undoubtedly get some of them if I stayed. More people looking at me as if I had answers for the race against undefeated Time that we would undoubtedly lose. The office was morbidly quiet and I started to feel an anxious loneliness. I left.

  On the elevator it was just Debi and me:

  “Here’s one,” I said. “A doctor, an accountant, and a lawyer are in a roller coaster accident and meet their untimely end. They’re in front of the pearly gates when St. Peter approaches them with a proposition. Answer one question correctly and enter heaven where of course all is bliss. He turns to the doctor and says name the twentieth-century luxury liner that sank after hitting an iceberg. The Titanic the doctor says all happy and St. Pete immediately lets him in. Then he turns to the accountant and asks roughly what year was that? 1911 says the accountant hesitantly. Close enough says Pete and he lets him in to meet up with the doctor. Finally, he turns to the lawyer who’s getting ready to join his friends and says: name everyone who died.”

  No reaction at all and at that very moment I decided to retract The Pledge as impossible to fulfill.

&nbs
p; The snow had stopped and it wasn’t quite as cold anymore so I decided I would avoid the subway and walk the mile or so over the Brooklyn Bridge. While walking towards the bridge I watched a man regaled in full Superman costume run past a woman and snatch her purse. The Man of Steal then ran faster than a speeding bullet into the subway station’s yawning entrance, his billowing red cape squiggily trailing behind him as he disappeared. Everyone was kind of looking at each other not really sure of what had occurred and not wanting to besmirch the good name of a beloved superhero. I waited around for the requisite time when something bizarre happens, made the similarly expected eye contacts and shrugs, then kept walking.

  Just off the bridge, on the Brooklyn side, was a park. I was cutting through this park when an errant wiffleball whizzed near my head. “It’s all in good fun until someone loses an eye,” I said as I threw the ball back to the smallest of the four kid players. They sized me up optically then asked if I would be the official pitcher. I was running late on time so I agreed. The kids couldn’t have been older than ten or eleven but they sure took their wiffleball seriously.

  At first my crafty southpaw delivery confounded these rapscallions. All except for one whose name I gleaned was Jimmy. Jimmy wore an orange baseball cap backwards and he strode to the plate with the confident swagger of all great athletes. Whenever he hit he made verbal and pantomimic reference to Ken Griffey Jr. with the idea being that he was him. He crowded the plate too creating a temptation, which I somehow resisted, to deliver some serious chin music. Then he’d take my diluted offering and slap it somewhere for a base hit or worse.

  Despite getting repeatedly tattooed by this kid I managed to keep the game close for both teams. Eventually the last inning arrived with the non-Jimmy team leading by a run. I promptly retired the first two batters then lost the plate. Now I was starting to really try, but you can’t turn it on just like that and I couldn’t get these damn kids out. The two kids on my team were actually exhorting me with things like c’mon dude! and you can do it! which was more than a little embarrassing. The other two kids led by Jimmy were talking serious trash at me and I have to admit it was somewhat unnerving. Mostly I just wanted to get the hell out of there before someone saw me locked in a life and death struggle with two pudgy ten-year-olds on behalf of two others.

  The count was three-and-two with the bases loaded and Ken Jimmy Jr. at the plate, his team still down a run with the payoff pitch upcoming. I was late. I had things to do. Had to get going across that river.

  I went into my windup, looked up at the darkening sky like Fernando Valenzuela, and uncorked a filthy backdoor slider. It was ticketed for the low outside corner until it rudely dropped off the table. A suddenly overmatched Jimmy waved at it feebly and struck out to end the game.

  chapter 5

  Comenzando al comienzo.

  “Why, you’re cooking?”

  —¡Of course que sí! But you’re late.

  “I know, got held up at work.”

  —¿Pero don’t you get out at five?

  “It’s not like that mom, I don’t punch out at five on the dot. I have to get my work done before leaving.”

  —¿You mean overtie?

  “No, I don’t. Be there in about an hour.”

  —¿Didn’t you get my message yesterday?

  “Yes.”

  —¿And you don’t call me back?

  “What’s this? Telepathy?”

  —I know pero the next day. I was worry. I hate that city. El otro día on the news.

  “Be there in an hour.”

  —Don’t forget Marcela and los kids.

  “Forget. How could I forget?” I had.

  —Bueno. Drive carefully y que mi Dios lo bendiga.

  “How dramatic, I’m twenty-three miles away. If you’re going to pray, pray there’s no traffic.”

  —¡Shhhhh! Don’t be malo. I love you.

  “Love you too.”

  Last time I saw Marcela I told her she needed to hurry up and pop out that third kid so that each of the three sibs would be precisely thirty-three months apart, the kind of symmetry I inexplicably craved. Instead she opened the door, still shaped like an inverted question mark, hugged me tight, then responded that Bill was at one of his jobs but she didn’t know which because he left his cell at home which he never did except when he did. I sat at her wobbly piano and raised the white heart picture frame to my confused face.

  “Who’s this guy?”

  “Very funny.”

  “Yeah but the copious hair, the missing weight.”

  “Speaking of, do you feel older little brother?”

  “Every minute, this is the oldest I’ve ever been.”

  “Aw, you’re so cute,” she said and pinched my cheek. “Be ready in a minute.”

  She left the room and was replaced by Timmy. Timmy was severely precocious, a feature I generally disliked but in him detested. He stood in the open part of his tiny living room wearing a faded red jumpsuit with yellow balloons and stared at me as I moved to the couch. I knew he was about to say something because his mouth slowly yawned open and also I had a pretty good idea what the subject would be: his singular obsession.

  “Is it true that everyone dies eventually?”

  “Good grief.”

  “Is it?”

  “So far so bad. Why?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that until now no one’s really made it past 115 years or so.”

  “So that means everyone dies.”

  “Not necessarily but it counts as damn strong evidence.”

  “Casi!” from Marcela.

  “I mean darn strong kid.”

  “Why?”

  “Why is it strong evidence?”

  “No, why does everyone die?”

  “No one knows Timothy but what do you want life in perpetuity? If people didn’t die where would we put the new ones? We’re quite overcrowded as it is.”

  “So people die to make room for the newly born?”

  “I’m not prepared to say that’s the sole reason but it might be a factor.”

  “So the day my little brother is born someone will die?”

  “No. Well. I mean someone will die that day but you won’t know that person and the two events won’t be related.”

  “But you just said it might be a factor.”

  “Don’t be a wisenheimer, I got you a present.”

  “Mary too?”

  “Yes, do you want yours or should I give it to Mary also?”

  “No I want it.”

  “Here you go.”

  “Thanks! Wait what is it?”

  “What is it? They’re x-ray specs.”

  “What are x-ray specs?”

  “They’re great.”

  “What do they do?”

  “Kids today. You put them on you get that there x-ray vision all the kids are talking about.”

  “What kids?”

  “What kids he says. The kids at school, what other kids are there?”

  “Nobody’s talking about x-ray vision at school.”

  “Well they will be once they get a load of you wearing these and seeing through solid objects and the like.”

  “What will I see?”

  “Put them on and find out. What are you waiting for? You’re going to be able to see what’s inside people.”

  “Bones?”

  “Well yes but think big. If you squint hard enough you can see what’s inside bone!”

  “You mean mar—”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “Can I put them on later?”

  “Course.”

  “Thank you for the present.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  During this conversation, Timmy had been reluctant to even take possession of the magic specs. In mid-colloquy Mary had appeared and immediately cuddled up next to me on the couch with her head on my shoulder and her thumb in her mouth. Now Timmy took his x-ray capability with him and went to his room.r />
  “Hi beauty.”

  The ensuing silence probably shouldn’t have surprised or unsettled me the way it did, not given the mute weeks it was preceded by, but had this been a movie the screen would then have gotten all squiggly before revealing first an eight-month-old Mary delivering words to mass delight then ten months later asking compound questions without easy answers and recounting incidents in painstakingly verbose detail but always with lucid clarity, (back then you heard what she was saying but you couldn’t really listen because to listen you had to pay attention and to do that you had to at least figuratively take your eyes off her which you couldn’t, no one could; you couldn’t because she was a perfectly beautiful and angelic cherub with smiling eyes and rosy plump cheeks that sagged to just below her chin, anyway was her favorite word), until after a similar leap arriving at the recent past when she simply and suddenly forsook all language. She hadn’t withdrawn, Alana once pointed out to less-than-zero reaction, and if anything she was more affectionate than before. She appeared to still understand everything quite well and quacks were adamant that there was nothing physically wrong with her. Nonetheless her decision had an air of finality about it so that all her responses were nonverbal and should she need something she either mimed or did without.

  “I got you something, want it?”

  She nodded yes, eyes all wide.

  What I gave her was a toyish necklace I had bought from an unlicensed general vendor on the street. He recognized me from one of his previous arrests and hence the alleged great deal. Were they hearts? If they were they looked anatomically correct and what was I thinking? Ridiculous really but now Mary raised her chin, pulled her anomalously long hair back with her chubby hands and waited for me to act.

  I spun her around and fastened the clip around her neck. She turned, pulled my head down, planted a smooch on my cheek, then ran off to show her mom.

  “That’s very pretty, what do you say Mary?”