Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

“Right.”

“And you don’t feel it now.”

“No.”

“Me either but I think I wish I did.”

Traci looked out the window then placed her palm on the pane. “It’s freezing out again,” she said. “I can’t ever remember anything like this. Can you? I mean it used to be, okay, a cold day here and there, the kind you would take notice of, but this is every day, day after day.”

“Relentless,” I said. “There’s no relent,” I added.

“Exactly. I read today that the temperature hasn’t reached double digits in like two weeks, I mean where are we? Not to mention the wind, my God.” Traci was drawing on my window. With her finger on the condensation. “The thing about this kind of sustained cold,” she said after a fairly long while, “is that after a while it almost fails to register, know what I mean? It becomes like just another part of us, our world, no more noticeable than the sky or the trees.”

“The sky is white.”

“Right.”

“I mean uniformly white though. That can’t be good right?”

Just then, Traci sprang up out of the couch. She had heard something I hadn’t. “Someone’s downstairs,” she said. “Maybe I can get my pendant.” She jumped out promising to return. I turned to watch her go out and almost fell off my stool. I left the stool on the floor and moved to the sofa which was still warm with her heat. I looked at the window and tried to identify her drawing. I couldn’t.

Traci came back in to say “false alarm.”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know but he looks lost.”

“Besides lost, what else does he look like?”

“Like professorial, meaning eggheady.”

“Toom!” I shouted out the door and I was right. “Up here!”

My master plan had worked, I was pleased.

Traci was leaving. We said goodbye. First her then me.

She disappeared out the door and Toomberg appeared. “I did have your number,” he said. “And I’ve been trying to call you for the last hour but have received only constant busy signals.”

“I guess my phone’s finally had it, sorry.”

“They now manufacture phones of the cellular variety by the way.”

“Never.”

“Anyway I procured your address from Denise but no apartment number was listed.”

“I see.”

“So I was kind of lost.”

“Understood, thank you.”

“I think someone is calling you, out the window. Is not someone calling your name?”

I looked out the window and saw Traci looking up. When I opened the window to hear what she had to say, the cold stayed outside at first. But nanoseconds later it came in, riding an invisible tidal wave and causing me to shake, my teeth chattering, and turn to the side to avoid a direct hit.

“Casi?”

“Traci.”

“Just saying. If I did do what you proposed? If it was possible?”

“Yes?”

“It would be with you.”

She smiled. I smiled back. Then she turned, hugged herself, and walked down the block. I watched her the whole time. When she reached the end of the block she turned right at the corner and out of my sight. I never saw her again.

“Was that the woman I passed on my ascent?”

“Wasn’t she absolutely, transcendentally, achingly beautiful?”

“She was fairly attractive.”

“Keep your shirt on Toom, don’t go overboard.”

“I’m sorry, are you in love with her? I’m not familiar with the conventions.”

“Relax, I’m talking about her attractiveness on a purely physical level. I didn’t make my statement in any amatory way. I’m simply asking for your opinion as to her level of beauty.”

“I’m a married man.”

“You are? And you’re getting married again this weekend? Isn’t that illegal you polygamous bastard?”

“I am not getting married this weekend, I am merely attending a wedding.”

“Guess that’s your story, may as well stick with it. But what of that woman’s heart-delaying beauty?”

“I said, she’s attractive.”

“I pity you Toomie, using that word to describe the situation. Don’t you realize how intoxicating women are? How amazing life is? You know, there didn’t have to be women, and they certainly didn’t have to be this compelling.”

“There had to be women for life to continue.”

“Exactly, I for one would certainly kill myself.”

“I meant from a reproductive standpoint.”

“I suppose that’s true too, if you want to get all technical.”

“You believe life to be amazing Casi? As in amazingly good?”

“As in, yes. Amazingly good. How else can you describe a state of affairs where I can be sitting in this lonely apartment one minute only to answer the door the next to find that woman standing before me? Where she will later stop in bone-piercing cold to tell me that, if she could, she would fall in love with me.”

“Where two seven-year-olds will snatch an infant and beat her to death?”

“There’s that.”

“Just pray nothing similar ever happens to you or yours.”

“I’m in control here Toom. Things don’t happen to me. They happen because of me. Do you have any kids Mr. Melvyn Toomberg?”

“No but did Hurtado conclude the way you wished?”

“Ow. Agony. Stop. That’s different though.”

“What happens more often? An attractive woman appears in your doorway or you deal with someone like Arronaugh or Cymbeline?”

“You know about Cymbeline?”

“Naturally, everyone does.”

“Who’s everyone and what do they know? Specifics.”

“Fine, everyone at work knows that you are going to be charged with contempt because of Arronaugh and Cymbeline.”

“Oh.”

“What did you say to Arronaugh anyway?”

“I don’t know but it was probably contemptible.”

“Did you urge a client to leave Cymbeline’s courtroom because she was going to put him in?”

“Of course not. But I should have.”

“Aren’t you concerned?”

“Why should I be? Somebody’ll smooth it over for me. Maybe Gold, he’s great at that sort of thing.”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen here.”

“So I’ll fight it. Isn’t Tom supposed to be like the greatest lawyer in the Western Hemisphere or something? You think he’s going to let me get convicted?”

“Now you sound like a client.”

“That was stupid. The point is that our psuedo law firm will expend, if necessary, all of its limitless resources on my defense.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re right, you can’t expend all of something that has no limit.”

“Also, from what I’m hearing, the people you’re counting on to help, you may end up viewing as additional enemies.”

“How so?”

“Well the rumor, and it’s just that for now, is that along with the contempt proceeding there’s going to be a contemporaneous in-house investigation.”

“Regarding what?” I was laughing, near-hysterically, I think at the phrase in-house .

“Well, several things.”

“Like what?”

“Like that you might have forged Tom’s signature to get some minutes.”

“Of course, they should investigate me if I hadn’t!”

“That you verbally assaulted Solomon Grinn.”

“Verbally?”

“Assaulted.”

“Assaulted?”

“Verbally.”

“Which time?”

“On more than one occasion.”

“That’s all? It’ll never stick.”

“That you physically assaulted Liszt.”

“Liszt?”

“Physically.”

“His wall?”

“No his person.”

“Whose person?”

“Liszt’s person.”

“Liszt has a person now?”

“The allegation, I surmise, is that you tried to punch him.”