Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

The moment I hung up, the door knocked. Well someone knocked on my door and it’s hard to screen such a thing when you’ve just been screaming into the phone loud enough for the entire tri-state area to hear. I never asked who it was before opening either as I liked to be surprised. Accordingly, I abstained from looking through the peephole. If I had, I would have been ready for what I saw when I opened: Traci smiling and possessing a high degree of delectability.

It seemed there was a pendant. Traci had left this pendant in Louie’s apartment and wanted it back. It had been arranged that she would stop by then, when Angus would be there, and get it from him. Louie and Alyona were not supposed to be there, and they weren’t, but neither was Angus. “I think I hear him in there, I hear voices anyway, but he doesn’t answer the door,” she said. Did I know where he was? She heard voices. When I told her that Angus never turned Television off, even when nobody was home, she said she knew that but this was different. Different because, “the voices didn’t sound like Television but it was weird because they also didn’t sound like they emanated from real people. They sounded like something in between those two things, in the middle.” But since they also didn’t sound like Angus she was now convinced I was probably right and nobody was home. She could wait inside I thought aloud. We could leave the door open so we would hear if one of the three stooges showed up ready to rescue her pendant. No, I didn’t mind.

The pendant had hung on her grandmother. The grandmother was now dead and didn’t need pendants. She should’ve never worn it outside her house. Traci.

The sofa was comfortable.

“It better be, it takes up about eighty percent of the room’s surface area.”

“I was going to say, this is a very small—”

“ Cozy was, I think, the term used by the real estate agent.”

“Yes, this is a very cozy apartment.”

“I wish it was fucking airy .”

Laughter.

“How come Alyona and those guys’ apartment is so much… less cozy?”

Because it was a weird building. I lived in the only brownstone in Brooklyn Heights that wasn’t a box or rectangle. It was a bottleneck. The pressure fizzled and bubbled below in the fat part of the bottle. There it compressed and mounted as it rose up and into the narrow mouth of the bottle. That’s where we were, the escape.

“So you feel pressure?”

“No, but because it sounds sort of cool when you say it that way that’s my story and I’m sticking with it.”

I didn’t sit on the sofa with her. I sat on this crazy, wobbly stool with my feet on the arm of the sofa. Against the other arm lay Traci. She had slipped out of her shoes and sat on her folded legs, her hands clasped together atop her knees. I’m going to say she had flaxen hair, even though she didn’t, because I like that word. Flaxen. Her eyes I have no good single word for but how could I have previously failed to notice their emerald luminescence? The face was all cheekbones but not too sharp, just right. The entire time I made these observations Traci had been speaking. I had listened not at all, and now she was unmistakably waiting for a response.

“Yeah,” I said plaintively like all whattya gunna do ?

“So you think I should?”

“Hard to say,” especially when you haven’t the faintest idea what the discussion is about.

“I figured you would be the person to ask.”

“Sure, you’d think.”

“Being that you obviously went to law school.”

“Law school, right. Law school yeah.”

“…”

“Yeah, it’s just a tough question you know? Maybe it would help if you restated the problem. In the plainest language possible.”

“Should I go to law school?”

“That’s as plain as it gets.”

Suddenly Traci didn’t look so great anymore, asking me if she should go to law school. Who cared? Go or don’t go. What, really, was the difference? Who took career advice from the likes of me? And I hated people who used the word career in referring to themselves. Not that she had used that word far as I could tell. Like people who wore fancy hats. Just expose your dopey skull, do your time on this rock, then go wherever it is we go when all’s been said. Of course I should point out, in fairness, that if a woman wore a hat I practically melted. That, and the fact that the black, bowler-type hat Traci wore then was highly scrumptious, made me forget my annoyance almost as soon as it had arisen. While thinking these thoughts it seems I had managed to keep my mouth moving and somehow satisfactorily answer Traci’s question. We could move on.

“So you and Louie?”

“Finished. If we ever even got started.”

I was smitten now. She had smote me. I loved her voice. It was gravelly and weak like it had recently been overtaxed. What a revelation being there then, with her. I needed only play this situation just right. The mutuality of our interest was in the air, hanging and waiting. Even the simplest dullard would have no trouble converting the current situation into a long-running, torrid interaction. Even so, the utmost precision and care was called for. Every word would have to be measured. Every nonverbal cue refined to shiny perfection. Just this once I could personate normalcy, do the things everybody else does without spending a second thought. I could pretend. I’d seen it done before and had no doubt about my ability to mimic. Above all, I had to be conventional. Had to play it cool.

“We should fall in love,” I said.

“Love?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m not sure I get what you mean.”

“You’ve heard the expression falling in love ?”

“Yes.”

“You know generally what it refers to?”

“Yes.”

“So let’s do it, let’s fall in love with each other.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Why? Doesn’t it look like fun?”

“What look like fun?”

“Love. I mean look at all the breath expended on the subject. The movies, the books, poems, songs. That many people can’t be wrong. Love!”

“Yes, love. But what is it and what does it mean to fall in it?”

“You don’t know what it is? You’ve never felt it?”

“Probably not the kind you’re talking about. You? Well, obviously…”

“What?”

“You’re telling me you’re in love with me yet we hardly know each other, practically strangers.”

“First of all, I never said I was in love with you. Secondly, the amount of time we’ve known each other is irrelevant. I know a wacky Italian poet who scarcely knew the woman he adored and who would later guide him through Paradise.”

“You didn’t just say you love me?”

“No, I proposed that we fall in love with each other since all indications are it would impact favorably on our lives, make us happier.”

“How romantic, too bad you can’t choose to fall in love.”

“No?”

“No, you either feel it or you don’t”

“How would you know?”

“It’s obvious, there’s a loss of control there that precludes choice.”

“So you’re saying no?”

“Right, no.”

“Because?”

Laughs.

“Because you can’t decide to fall in love. It either happens or it doesn’t Casi.”

“Guess you’re right, but you sure have strong feelings on something you couldn’t even define a minute ago.”

“What do you mean?”

“What is love?”

“Love is like a… feeling… where… you just love.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Look we all know what love is even if I can’t put it into words just this moment.”

“You’ll know it when you feel it right?”