A Naked Singularity: A Novel

by Sergio De La Pava

  “Done.”

  “Even then I think I would feel that the sadness wasn’t entirely a function of those things. Because what you’ve just said makes me think that the genesis of the human problem, at least as instantiated in me, might just boil down to something akin to user error. Because I agree with you that I’m supposed to be a greater remedial source regarding such an extreme malfunction of justice. It’s a strange kind of agreement though because it doesn’t stem solely from reason. When I agree with a proposition after exercising my ability to reason I do something like accept a series of earlier related propositions as true. Then if these propositions tie together in such a way that they syllogistically lead to a conclusion, I accept that conclusion. Now there’s some of that going on here with this philosophical argument but I think there’s more to it as well. When you say I should help the starving girl who is thirty yards away I agree but I don’t agree the way I would with the statements that one plus two equals three or that bachelors are unmarried. As with all questions of ethics it seems to ultimately come down to a visceral feeling, either obeyed or disobeyed, that impels me to certain conduct. It’s not any amount of intellectual reasoning that tells me I shouldn’t simply walk away from this girl, it’s more like a feeling or emotion and it’s one that for some reason I feel certain anyone else would experience under the same or similar circumstances. I simply can’t imagine the opposite, can’t imagine someone sane not feeling compelled to help and moreover not feeling they’ve done something wrong if they ignore that compulsion.”

  “Disagree.”

  “The question then becomes where this feeling comes from and why it’s so universal? Some would say it’s instilled in us through a combination of physiological and social conditioning designed to perpetuate the species while others would credit something like God and say He instills it in us. Whatever the source, what if this imperative represents a kind of blueprint for humans? Maybe by violating the blueprint we invite a host of problems.”

  “What?”

  “Imagine you purchase a new major appliance. You bring the sucker home and immediately start using it, secure in the knowledge that you know everything you need to know about its successful operation. The thing hums along for years but there’s a hitch because even at the outset you’re aware that the device is somehow operating less than optimally. You ignore this failure because after all it essentially performs its function and repairs can be so expensive. As the years march on the thing deteriorates, to no one’s surprise but at a rate that exceeds the expected. Now imagine that one day you come across the appliance’s long-ignored owner’s manual and you sit down and read it for the first time. It yields its secrets to you and you realize you’ve been using the damn thing incorrectly. Armed with this knowledge you begin to use the thing the right way and you discover that it operates beautifully. The problem didn’t lie in the device nor was it inherent in its operation, the problem arose because of a misconception by the owner regarding the item’s proper operation, how it should be used and what its ultimate and proper purpose should be.”

  “Ha ha ha ha ha! Please! Stop!” Dane held one hand up while slapping the table with the other. “You surprise me Casi. I didn’t take you for such a chump. The basic purpose of human beings is to help each other? And what? To the extent that owners of personhood ignore this mandate they invite misery? Are you kidding? Have you not been paying attention? To life as performed on this stone? This is a fucking competition where your misery constitutes my triumph. It is absolutely incorrect to say that you or I have a responsibility towards anyone else, Jesus! I misspoke actually. The only responsibility anybody has towards anyone else is to crush them like a bug should they get the chance. Have you not read your Origin of Species? What are you a goddamn creationist? Man is only being operated correctly when oriented exclusively toward his benefit and survival. Everything else is nonsense designed to create the very misery you’re talking about. The misery doesn’t come from a failure of benevolence, it stems from its very opposite. What eats at people is their impotence not their selfishness.”

  “Some people maybe.”

  “Everybody! You see your neighbor enjoy a success and a piece of you dies. That is the universal feeling you should be focusing on, the one that thanks God you’re not that starving little girl, for that’s the one that reveals your true nature.”

  “By that reasoning the materially successful should be a great deal happier than those who devote their lives to the service of others for example and yet—”

  “Ah yes, wealth corrupts and all that nonsense. To find true happiness seek the ascetic and center on the truly important. This is even more wrong than what you’ve posited until now. Money and other similar numbers in human life are not a corruption of anything. They are immensely helpful tools that allow you to keep score and therefore partially satisfy this nature of yours I’m talking about. Darwin wasn’t the only useful person in that family you know. His cousin Francis Galton may have been even greater. He essentially discovered the intelligence quotient or I.Q.”

  “You mean invented.”

  “Oh no, I mean discovered! What notion could be more possessed of verisimilitude or intractability than that of varying abilities among humans? Given that, assigning numbers to what had theretofore been the highly nebulous and abstract concept of intelligence was beautiful in its simplicity and inevitability. With this act the competition was joined. And what timing too. Just as technological development was greatly diminishing the importance of physical proficiency and putting the spotlight on human intelligence, Galton and his progeny started numerically branding and ranking cerebellums. This saved the day because nothing beats a ranking. I.Q. and related concepts tell those who are down to stay right where they are and make no sudden movements please. But don’t misunderstand because I come to praise not to damn. I praise because I’m one of the uplifted and my aggrandized self-worth craves constant confirmation.”

  “A legacy.”

  “Yes. And as for money it’s only mankind’s most important invention. With respect to money I think everyone has received fair warning. Money is the reason you have no responsibility to that starving girl. It is simply the single most important entity in the world today. Any discussion of justice, morality, and the like betrays a naïve ignorance of this fact. If you have money none of these ephemera matter. The only people crying for justice and fair play are the poor and therefore weak. Take your guy Hurd for example. Do you have any doubt that if he had an excess of bills his problems would evaporate? Imagine the difference, what was his bail?”

  “Five over five.”

  “Five thousand pathetic dollars, so if he has money he’s out instead of in jail. With money he gets his drugs prescribed to him and doesn’t have to go out into the treacherous streets. And if he somehow found himself with a little crack difficulty and a criminal case to boot, which is unfathomable since the only reason somebody like Hurd sells is to get the money for his next dose, he wouldn’t have to beg some twentysomething DA for a drug program because he would get himself into one. And then when he had to come to court somebody from that program, somebody whose salary he would be helping to pay, would come to court to say how well he’s doing or at least how willing they remain to work with this guy who is, after all, still committed to treatment for what is, after all, an illness and so not his fault. And with all that going for him you can rest assured that Mr. Hurd would not be about to embark on a three to six sentence.”

  “Probably not.”

  “As for your little girl, I have a solution to her starvation problem. She should get on a phone and make a reservation at Le Cirque 2000. You ever been there? The pastry chef is Jacques Torres and he’s a fucking genius. Overall the food is excellent although the portions are a little weak. Once she has her reservation she can sit down to a nice, dimly-lit meal that will solve her woes. What’s that you say? She doesn’t have any money and they won’t serve her if she doesn’t give them some? And
who is this surprising? This is why you needn’t have any sympathy for the Hurds of the world. What’s his defense? That he didn’t know the importance of money? Let’s say Life is just one long tedious movie. Do the Hurds of the world think that in that movie money is like a supporting actor just happy to be getting some work? Please! That kind of stupidity should be punished. Money is the fucking star of this show we’re in. It gets the biggest trailer and its name is at the top of the marquee in largest neon. Hurd and the little girl knew the importance of this eight-hundred-pound gorilla that sits wherever it pleases yet they failed to acquire it. They failed to acquire it even though they knew it would insulate them from all sorts of pains. From all pain, in fact, if sufficiently acquired. You tell me that nobody should die from a lack of money? I tell you it happens all the time, that this fact shows that money is a matter of life and death, and that it is therefore all the more inexcusable when someone chooses to ignore this fact and fails to get his hands on some. You’re aware of the legal concept that a law to be constitutional must be so written as to give potential offenders clear notice of what conduct is proscribed? Otherwise it’s void for vagueness right? Well money has been giving warnings regarding its importance for millennia and those who fail to heed those warnings do so at their own peril and garner no sympathy from me.”

  “Nice.”

  “Here’s a little story to help illustrate. This is me sharing by the way. A few years back I had a girlfriend. She had the prettiest ears you ever saw. So pretty in fact that you could almost say they bordered on the sexually attractive although I must say that the ear is probably the only part of the female anatomy I’ve never thought of in a sexual manner. It wasn’t so much the lobe that was pretty either.”

  “What about her?”

  “She was from Africa. Well she was born here but she still had a lot of relatives over there including her grandmother. Now it comes to pass that the grandmother takes ill. As is always the case with these things it starts out innocently enough with some nausea and stomach upset. First you have to understand the role of this woman in that family. The fact that she has a messed up belly that keeps getting worse sends every relative living here into borderline mourning. The news only gets worse and I have a front row seat to the grim details. Now the grandmother is vomiting continuously and not really eating much at all. On the bright side her stomach is inexplicably swelling rapidly. All this is reported through hurried overseas calls with the overarching question of what could be responsible hanging in the air. Now the grandmother is receiving the best medical care the village she lives in has to offer. The problem is that in that village the best medical care consists of a guy with a bone through his nose waving a palm tree branch on your belly while trying to chant the evil spirits out of you. I’m no idiot, I can see the writing on the wall so I’m telling my girlfriend to get on the next steel bird over there, drop your grandma in it and bring her back here to the land of the indoor plumbing where she can be seen by a doctor who prescribes something other than prayer and positive thinking. I’m offering to pay for all of this. I don’t even care, anything is better than the looks on their faces when the topic would come up and believe me it was the only topic. And the stories too. How the grandmother would do anything for the kids and nothing for herself. How she begged them to come to this country and how it broke the remainder of her heart when they did. And my girlfriend was no slouch in the stories department either having spent every summer between the ages of six and twelve with the grandmother in Africa and now everything reminds her of something special related to those special times spent with this special person. To shorten a long story, the grandmother’s stomach continues to swell, the witch doctor keeps chanting, and back here the family is fretting the lack of health insurance, pondering the legal obligations of U.S. hospitals and gathering money for a plane ticket. You heard right, gathering money for a plane ticket! It’s like, have you ever heard of fucking credit cards? Anyway while they’re busying themselves with that and I’m still offering to pay for every last damn thing, this thing on the African grandmother’s stomach keeps swelling, think John Hurt in Alien, until one day it bursts and she dies from an infection.”

  “Fuck, what was it?”

  “Diverticulitis. The kind of thing a doctor in this country laughs at. Life and death decided by dollar signs, the way it should be. Remember that. Survival of the fattest . . . wallet. And the fattest aren’t complaining because our inherent nature is not to help others but to hinder them and ultimately to win. Hurd’s employer doesn’t seem torn up by Hurd’s three to six does he? Here’s a guy who will not only aid and abet Hurd in his chemical destruction but will also exploit him for his benefit. Hurd is on the street taking all the risk with minimal reward while his boss counts his money out of sight of the cops. At least there the exploitation is out in the open unlike other more respectable industries. Anyway my girlfriend broke up with me shortly thereafter. I’m sure she couldn’t stand to see my face anymore with its reminder of their unforced inaction. This abominable yet oddly touching song by I believe Spandau Ballet was playing while she told me and the hardest part was pretending I was crushed, which I felt I owed her. A shame. I spent a fortune on earrings let me tell you.”

  “When I was an intern in Brooklyn I second sat a case where our client was a last-minute lookout for an impromptu robbery committed by two other girls. She was a toothless prostitute with tracks on her arms, a predicate for a Hurd-type sale, and the nicest damaged person you could ever meet. The two codefendants pled and the case against our girl was weak. She was out after a 30.30 release and she would come to court in skirts that looked like belts. At trial, they had shit too until in saunters one of the fucking co-defendants to testify and blow our girl out of the fucking water. Bear in mind that this witness was the reason our client was on trial in the first place. The robbery had been completely instigated by this woman and she was the one who threatened the complainants with a razor. Of course she wasn’t a predicate and thanks to her cooperation she ultimately got something like a flat year. At sentencing, our client, who during the robbery had essentially stood around looking up and down the street and imploring her friends to hurry up, got the minimum which was goddamn eight. When the verdict came in her husband was in the audience. What hurt most was that as the court officers were putting her in for what would be, at best, eight years her husband was up at the rail trying to get some last words in. I don’t know why and I’ll never forget this but all he kept asking her was whether she wanted the newspaper he was carrying. Like all insistent too. And I’m looking at this guy, with his coke-bottle glasses held together by a Band-Aid, and I’m thinking, what could she possibly want with a newspaper where she’s going? And I wanted to grab the paper out of his hand to like shut him up except I noticed his eyeballs were floating in tears, bobbing up and down, and the way he was squeezing it. The worst was the meekness of it. He looked as scared as he was sad and all this happened in an empty courtroom at like ten at night.”

  “You see? And if today that witness robber were told she could get out three days earlier if your client did another two years, your client would do ten. Bet on it.”

  “Well the singer’s out I’m sure.”

  “You get my point. We’re in a kennel where every dog is cannibalistically craving canine sustenance and here you are talking about extending a helping paw. Every Thursday my girlfriend’s family would gather to pray for the grandmother. Forget that. When I pray I pray to Mammon—the god of avarice. He would’ve saved that woman’s life with laughable ease. His is true omnipotence while your god hears and ignores heartfelt pleas. The sooner you understand and accept that Casi, the better off you’ll be. What are you trying to sell yourself? Are you going to buy into the useless fiction that you operate outside the realm of the marketplace because you’re a public defender? What’s next? You going to go out and buy the requisite brown corduroy sports coat? Grow a ponytail? Then you can stay here twenty years like those
guys you see in AP parts waiting for their fucking case to be called. And you can spend those twenty years hoping against hope that none of your favorite people ever need your help. What about your mother? Do you know what she went through? Have you ever been around a pregnant woman? And then when you finally came out what did she do? I’ll tell you what she did. She stuck her tit, an intimate part of her fucking body, into your expectant mouth so you could eat and not die. They turned their lives over to you those two people. You think they came here from Colombia to wash dishes and clean offices so you could—”

  “How do you—”

  “—take a vow of poverty? A person of your abilities? Who do you think you are? One of these trust-fund babies playing lawyer without a care in the world? The day will come when your mother and others will need you. She will need you to reciprocate for the years of sightless devotion. What she will need is for you to exercise power on her behalf; to ensure that no avoidably bad things happen to her. To do that you will need money and lots of it. You should thank me for helping you realize that.”

  “Against your self-interest no less since there’s only so much money to go around.”

  “You going to finish that?”