Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

When Benitez and Duran finally did meet in the ring Duran found that it was not much easier to hit Benitez than it had been at the press conference. Benitez was even better than he had been against Hope considering that Duran for all his insanity had never been handled like this. (Duran’s only two losses at the time were the close nontitle loss to DeJesus and the bizarre quit against Leonard.) The fight started a lot like Benitez/Leonard with a great deal of feints and respect and little action, but by the middle rounds Benitez had taken over, cutting Duran and pasting him with impunity. Duran never solved Benitez’s defense and actually looked outclassed, which was almost inconceivable. In the end, to no one’s surprise, Duran wasn’t even slightly chastened but, his insolence aside, Benitez had won convincingly in another legendary performance.

Regardless of what his future would hold, after the Duran fight Wilfred Benitez had assured himself an extremely lofty place in boxing history. He felt invincible, suprahuman. He had just out-toughed the original tough guy and obviously no one was slicker. He was what any human should ultimately aspire to. He was beautiful and ugly simultaneously. The beauty was evident from the beginning and the ugliness was supplied by the very nature of his profession. Now the Leonard fight must have seemed like a hiccup, one that would be avenged at that. Then he would move up to middleweight and fight Hagler. And once Hagler had been befuddled, if he could retire without another loss, Benitez would get more than a few votes as the greatest boxer ever, period.

Everything was that good. In Puerto Rico he was almost deified. He was healthy, good-looking, and charming with a smile and childlike nature anyone he met loved. His bank account was swollen and awaiting more. Everyone wanted to be around him, happy just to be near him. He was as good at what he did as anyone in the world and he was twenty-three years old.

I was like that Benitez. I had maybe not always put the appropriate work in and had therefore messed up. I too had lost. But likewise I would rise again. Everyone I saw around me looked like they were in my way and I was sick of walking around these people and would start to go through them if need be to get what I wanted, needed.

I thought all this as I sat on my suitcase waiting. Then I noticed a woman walking right at me. I averted my eyes but when I looked back at her she was still staring. She was getting closer and I was wondering what the hell she was looking at. She walked right up to me, never for a second taking her eyes off me, then stared. I stared back and she smiled. Then I jumped back out of genuine fear.

“What is it?” she said.

“I didn’t recognize you until this very moment.”

“What are you talking about? You’ve been looking right at my face for like a minute.”

“Yeah I was like who is this chick and why is she staring at me ?”

“You are so weird, your own beloved sister.”

“I was looking but not looking.”

“Either way it doesn’t explain you getting scared, what’s that about?”

“It’s kind of scary when you suddenly realize someone you’ve been looking at is someone else you know? I mean not the person you thought you were looking at even though you had no idea who you were looking at or why they were looking at you, it scares you is what I’m saying.”

“Apparently. Anyway, here I am.”

“I see that. I hope you didn’t hurt yourself rushing over here to arrive a full hour and a half late. Hope you didn’t pull a hamstring or anything.”

“You said 2:30.”

“Never.”

“Someone said 2:30.”

“No one.”

“You should see the traffic.”

“Then I guess we’ll see it on the way home.”

“Not so much the traffic as your car.”

“What about it?”

“Just the car.”

“Yes but what about the car? What specifically is wrong with it?”

“Fine the car’s fine, a tremendous automotive machine destined to give you years of faithful service.”

“So?”

“I forgot.”

“Ah.”

“But it’s not my fault. Who doesn’t call the night before to remind? Especially knowing how I am.”

“I tried.”

“What happened?”

“Never mind, let’s split. I love you, thanks for getting me.”

“Seriously, it’s quite an imposition. They have cabs you know.”

On the way home, in the car, Alana and I spoke. I told her briefly about Alabama, leaving out any mention of The Orchard. She asked about Armando. I told her it was a damn near hopeless situation, a situation that lacked hope. She said there must be something that could be done and I said no there mustn’t. Then she told me some bad things. She said Marcela had kind of reached then passed her breaking point with respect to little Mary’s silence. She described a bit of imploring screaming that was met by more silence and that was then believed, principally by those who had no medical basis for holding such beliefs, to have resulted in Marcela not feeling so great, which in turn resulted in her being taken to a hospital where she stayed overnight out of precaution and concern for her due-any-day child. And I was further informed that during that brief hospital stay Marcela’s mother, the mother Alana and I shared with her, took the opportunity to disclose that she had some rather mysterious lumps in some rather troublesome areas and that she had not disclosed this fact earlier out of a fear that she would be forced to have them inspected by those making their living in the medical profession, a profession said mother held in decidedly low esteem and from which she never again expected to hear anything resembling good news. The result being that certain tests were in fact done and all that was left to do now was await the results, which waiting it was understood could be done simultaneously with the wait for Mary to talk and Marcela to give birth to another human whose presence would no doubt some day give rise to feelings similar to the ones we were currently enjoying. And I was not to mention the whole lumps thing to anyone because Alana had been sworn to secrecy, a secrecy she placed the highest importance on.

“Yet you’re telling me.”

“Telling you what?”

“You’re telling me about the lumps.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is that despite being sworn to secrecy and despite claiming to take that responsibility very seriously you have nonetheless just given me the information thereby violating your pledge.”

“Yes but only because I am in turn swearing you to secrecy not only with respect to the lumps but also with respect to my telling you about the lumps, comprende?”

“I think so, you’re saying that being sworn to secrecy doesn’t really mean that in a literal sense it just means that if you do disclose the information you must in turn swear the new illicit hearer to secrecy. So I can tell anyone I want to about the lumps as long as I swear them to secrecy.”

“God no, swear you won’t tell anyone.”

“I swear.”

And unlike her I didn’t, although I later thought about it a lot and every time I did it halted my breath a bit. There was more too, none of it secret but all of it unsettling, with terms you hear in campaign speeches made from behind podiums or late at night from gesticulating men eager to tell you they dropped out of college: terms like job security and health care coverage . Terms I can barely stand in those contexts and positively despise when the subject is my family, people for whom I should have long ago made those terms irrelevant. And as Alana said these things she began to fade from view and hearing until she disappeared entirely and I sat alone in the moving car. It was one of those times when you sense that something critical but indefinable that relates to your life and how it’s lived has ended irrevocably and so you feel an anxious loss. Out of this solemn desinence I felt various incunabula threaten to emerge none of which promised anything of even slight appeal.