Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

“Or hears our true voices right? You’re going to pick up those things?”

“Yeah I’ll get them. And that’s that. Presto extracto. Agreed?”

“Yes. I guess the mental aspect is pretty much done. It’s all physical from here on out but it’s regrettably more physically demanding than I thought it would be.”

“How so?”

“Well as example there’s the lassoing of the 408 structure, that’s not easy.”

“I can do it.”

“The lugging of a hundred or so pounds each with speed essential, the swords.”

“All eminently doable. Eventually everything intellectual becomes physical. The plan is there. I look at it and see that it’s good. Now it’s time to execute it without remorse or restraint.”

“Why don’t we go through it again in like more detail and make sure we’re not overlooking anything?”

“…”

“No I know we’ve talked about everything an extreme amount of time but I don’t think it can hurt.”

“I had an acquaintance who was a big guitar player. I mean like ten hours of practice a day, every day, lacking fail. He said that on those rare occasions where something such as a minor injury would prevent him from practicing for a few days when he returned to the instrument he found paradoxically that he played better than ever.”

“I understand.”

“Seems the unexpected jolt away from his practice routine, a routine he followed piously for untold years, served to refresh his creativity and allowed him, in some sense, to view his instrument anew.”

“Got it.”

“I think a similar thing may happen here where we’ve spent the better part of three days poring over the least and last of our plan’s relevant minutiae.”

“Point taken.”

“Perhaps this forced abstention that begins tomorrow morning with your trip to Alabama will serve a similar purpose.”

“No need to continue.”

“You see the analogy?”

“Yes.”

“Whereas he was playing the guitar we are—”

“I urge you to abandon this point.”

“I need a number where I can reach you.”

“Yes but don’t call.”

“Right, you return?”

“Monday morning. You’re going to 402?”

“Tomorrow.”

“You’ll practice the physical things we talked about?”

“All weekend. When are you going to the scene Casi?”

“Monday night I guess. Anything else?”

“Just one.”

“What?”

“This might be the smallest apartment I’ve ever been in. Meaning square-footage-wise.”

“And what’s the other problem?”

“No problems, it’s all good.”

“You said, Casi, that there were two major problems, one of which you identified as our failure thus far to retain a psychiatric expert to evaluate Kingg and his mental impairment. The other?”

“So many others.”

“The main other?”

“Well I read the amazingly thorough compendium you put together detailing every case in which that court granted a petition similar to ours. You know what I saw? What unifying thread emerged?”

“What?”

“Innocence. Invariably, on some level, the court feared the defendant might be innocent right?”

“I suppose.”

“No suppositions, just yes. Their defendant lungs shouted their innocence for any and all to hear. Where’s our protestation of innocence?”

“None.”

“Instead we get unremitting and unsolicited declarations of guilt. I’ve been doing this for a quarter of a century and I can count on one hand the number of clients who didn’t proclaim their innocence if the case was even semi-serious.”

“True.”

“Now when it counts I get this guy who won’t even service the notion with his lips, what the hell?”

“I know and unless we have a good-faith basis for arguing his innocence we can’t ethically do it.”

“And practically speaking unless we argue, or at least suggest, that this guy didn’t do it, we have no real chance.”

“Strictly speaking, none of our points depend on a lack of culpability.”

“No real chance.”

“You’re right, but maybe that’s why you’re going to Atmore.”

“Why?”

“Well perhaps to extract something akin to a reverse-confession out of Kingg.”

“You mean to get him to confess his innocence?”

“Well if he tells you he’s innocent then we can argue it right? And if we can argue it, armed with a good-faith basis in spite of the overwhelming evidence, then it can’t hurt our chances right?”

“Too weird.”

“Innocent people do confess Casi.”

“Yes.”

“Just as the guilty often deny to the end.”

“The bitter one. So my job is to turn him from one kind of liar into the other?”

“You mean from truth-teller to liar.”

“Unless he really is innocent.”

“He does look innocent.”

“Which probably means he’s guilty.”

“He says he’s guilty.”

“But that could be an innocent mistake.”

“What if you can’t reverse him?”

“I’ll feel guilty, full of guilt.”

“How guilty can Kingg be anyway in light of his mental apparatus?”

“And how innocent given same? And can he go from one to the other and even back again?”

“With your help, maybe.”

“And you at a fancy wedding where the game hens are Cornish and the liquid spirits flow without pause.”

And so later that night when I slept it felt more like a newly-invented process only slightly suggestive of sleep. And I arose later weighted down with two big questions: one on Kingg and one on Whale. But I decided I only had the energy to deal with one of them that morning; I would call Dane or Toomberg in that pre-airport interval not both. And in my skull each side argued vociferously on its behalf and I vacillated between the two, forth and back repeatedly until I resolved to abstain entirely.

And when I suddenly decided, really knew , which call to make, it surprised me a bit. Now the other option seemed laughably unviable and the proper course so nakedly visible. But when I eagerly picked up the phone I found that the infernal machine didn’t work and so called neither.

To judge from the sparse attendance on the plane no one wanted to go to Alabama that morning. I didn’t either but there I was, going. And those pills you take to combat expected nausea I suspected worked solely by making you so drug-addict needful of sleep that all other states of existence (i.e. nausea v. non-nausea) ceased to exist in any meaningful way. And so when one of the unburdened stewardesses, a decidedly matronly sort who in my compromised state I somehow managed to convert into an object of semi-sexual longing, came by to offer first cinematic headphones then a compartmentalized meal the most I could muster was a dismissive, narcotized wave of the hand, or like two fingers. Which gesture I later came to regret when, empty stomach grumbling and between bouts of deep but intermittent sleep, I became transfixed with the attractive happenings on the square screen before me. And instead of a nice miniature meal on the tray in front of me I had this like glossy packet insane Toomberg had put together and given me to read. The packet contained answers to everything you were afraid to ask concerning not only the particular judge who would decide our petition but really about Alabama as a whole, past and present. For some reason Toom felt that the greater my knowledge about this parcel, the greater our chance of success. So I read what he’d included there when I wasn’t looking at the screen. But now the sight of assorted beautiful people speaking without voice filled me with an ineffable sadness and so I found myself inventing and supplying dialogue for these representational humans. And also the captain was the loquacious type who would probably one day, in true frustrated-incorporeal-spirit form, continue talking from beyond the grave and thus he kept taking advantage of us, his captive audience, via the microphone they give those guys: On that square I saw a smallish girl sitting on the floor using her twin bed as backrest. Her lips moved without effect and in the direction of a freakish purple toy. We were meant, no doubt, to feel we were experiencing the inner life of a child.