Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

Outside my door, in the hall, no one felt lonely. They frolicked, trading laughs and audio jabs, striving to outnoise each other. Then someone knocked on my door. I was sure it was a mistake that knocking. When I opened the door I saw a smiling woman with a drink in her hand.

“I saw you in the hall before,” she said. “Aren’t you coming to the orientation? There’s going to be food and drink and I hear both will be quite good.”

“Huh?”

“Oh I’m sorry, you are with Serpent right?”

“Oh. Yeah I’m with Serpent.”

“Thank God, I would’ve felt so stupid. The way you looked at me I was like, this guy has no idea what I’m talking about.”

“No I’m a reptilian protestor.”

“You mean a reptile protector.”

“Exactly.”

“Wow your room is so much better than ours, can I see?” She started to walk in and I was thinking I hadn’t really told such an egregious lie as I probably had a greater affinity for reptiles than the average person and, if forced to commit, could see myself agreeing that they deserved as much protection and access to new technology as any other vertebrates, although from the phrasing, I then thought, it was probably the protectors themselves who were claiming to be enititled to new technology. And I loved the way she walked as if a light string she wished to avoid snapping was tied between her dainty ankles.

“Jacqueline c’mon, we’ll be late!” said a disembodied female voice from the hall with the urgency common to the realization that the party being called may be about to engage in exclusionary diversion.

“I gotta go,” she said spinning around to face me. “But I’ll see you down there okay?”

“Okay.”

“Yes.”

She left. I stood near the door until I had done so for a longer period of time than I had interacted with her. Then I went back to the bed and lay in it. I closed my eyes and dreamt they kicked me, quite literally, out of the hotel because I wasn’t with SERPENT. Once so expelled I slept on the street.

The next morning I got that thing where you’re not sure where you are when you first open your eyes. The clock on the table was blinking 12:00 and my watch, wherever it sat, was not easily accessible. The position of the sun against the sky was hidden from me by the maniacally effective drapes. I had no idea if it was early or late, had ample time or none. I could’ve found out but I didn’t. Instead I slid further under the vacuum-sealed blanket and returned to sleep. When I woke from that sleep, purposeful ignorance was no longer an option. I got up, found my watch, and saw that I would have to hustle. I got ready and went downstairs.

“I can tell you where it is, I can even show you how to get there, but I also have to tell you that I don’t think you should go there.” So said B.M. Santangelo that morning in B.M.’s concierge booth as Big Mac Santangelo tapped on the keyboard in front of him using his index fingers only and pausing often to click his mouse. He was getting me directions, directions that would take me from The Orchard to Holman Prison’s Death Row. He indicated verbal satisfaction and the printer began to spit out paper. Surprisingly, the printer was one of those old kind that made a racket and took its time syllable by syllable. When it was done B.M. Santangelo snatched the paper, removed the perforated edges, then extended the result towards me while staring as if to say have you no reaction to what I just said?

“You don’t want me to go there?”

“I recommend you do not go there, that’s correct.”

“Why not?”

“What do you want to be going to that place for?”

“I don’t know that it’s a want situation, I have to go there.”

“Nobody has to go there.”

“Well I do. It’s the reason I came here, the reason I’m staying at The Orchard and everything, you understand?”

“I think it’s entirely probable that you feel that way but I have a responsibility to my guests. I consider it an almost sacred responsibility to ensure their well-being, and that responsibility now requires that I advise you not to go there, not to take the approximately forty mile trip to that place.”

“Thanks for your concern B.M. and thanks for the directions but I’m going now.”

Surrounding Holman Prison in Atmore, Alabama was nothing that warranted a specific name. And it wasn’t so much that I entered that facility as it was that I just found myself inside. And little of inanimate physical essence that I saw there on either day made any lasting impression on me or even seemed to minimally register at the time.

What I can’t help but recall is Jalen Kingg and The Guard.

To get to see Kingg I had to constantly show an extreme amount of paperwork. The last person I showed this paperwork to was The Guard who was hirsute and lean but commanding in a way that made the many bars in the vicinity seem extraneous. And I thought, in the many minutes I spent waiting for him and his friends to establish that I did not bring a cake with a file in it, that Death Row was so named not in reference to the future that awaited its inhabitants but rather in reference to the inert quality of the life found within. The still, mute air.

The Guard came back and told me that Kingg was on his way. He said there were rules I would have to observe and I nodded. He pointed:

NO Cell Phones

NO Beepers

NO Paging Devices Of Any Kind

NO Smoking

NO Eating

NO Drinking

NO Shouting

NO Yelling

NO Screaming

NO Spitting

I nodded again, thinking we were done, but there was more so he pointed elsewhere:

DO NOT Touch The Inmate

DO NOT Give Anything To The Inmate Except For Legal Material

DO NOT Accept Anything From The Inmate Except For Above

DO NOT EVER Allow The Inmate To Touch You

I said okay and he said good then we just stood there, he and I, alone and waiting.

“You know you’re the first right?” The Guard said.

“Yeah,” I replied. “No, I mean, no, the first? First what?”

“You’re the first visitor Mr. Kingg has had.”

“Today?”

“Ever.”

“No.”

“Yup.”

“What are you talking about? I’m sure his mother came out before she died.”

“Never.”

“Other family he has.”

“None.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Sure?”

“Yes.”

“What about his lawyer, I’m not his first. Didn’t his lawyer on the direct appeal meet with him?”

“No.”

“What about someone from the project or whatever it’s called, the people that got me involved in this?”

“No one.”

“I’m sure you’re wrong. I think they meet with everyone whose case they take. Maybe you were off that day.”

“I work every day there are visits.”

“Maybe you called in sick.”

“Twenty-three years on the job, never called in sick or taken vacation.”

“Your wife must love you.”

“Single.”

“Oh.”

“Twenty-three years on death row partner, I’ve seen them all come then go.”

“Hm.”

“Not many want to work this post you know.”

“I didn’t.”

“Not an easy post, I’ll admit that right up front. See I don’t know if you know how it’s done here, because I’ve never seen you here before, but we use the chair here.”

“Yes, I know.”

“So you know about Yellow Mama, that’s what we call her.”

“I do.”

“Well then you probably know about her, shall we say, fickle nature.”

“Hm.”

“I know about it first hand because I’m the one who literally pulls the switch as they say.”

“Oh.”

“That’s right, no one else would do it when I first got here. Which is an odd thing in and of itself don’t you think?”