Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

“What are you trying to do, break our windows at a time when their continued integrity is of the utmost importance?” The speaker allowed maybe a third of his face to appear from behind the door and I saw that it was Alyona. “Come on, you’re letting the red out and the blue in.”

I moved inside the door to hear it close behind me. “My hero,” I said and emitted that little shudder you get with the initial blast of heat. He was shaking his head no as if I’d been all prodigal or something.

“You know what the key to getting inside a locked building is?” he said.

“Funny.”

“So?”

“It’s relaxing in my apartment,” I said moving up the stairs to the promise of greater heat but careful not to outpace my rescuer as that would have been weird.

“Good thing you listened to me then huh? I’m starting to think I’m… um.”

“Prescient?”

“Negative.”

“Clairvoyant?”

“Maybe.”

“Were you sleeping?” puzzled look. “No because you have that hat on, I didn’t know those were worn anymore outside of comic strips.”

“They’re not. And no because we have a guest, courtesy of Louis.”

“Let me guess.”

“Gorgeous.”

I spent the time on the stairs wondering if I could wait in the hall while Alyona got my key’s identical twin then just run up to my third floor apartment. Would that be rude and if so did that necessarily mean I had to go in since I had no legal or contractual obligation to avoid being rude nor had I promised anyone I wouldn’t be rude and in fact rudeness must be a rather natural state of human being since time immemorial to have necessitated invention of the word rude right? And even if this one time I acted in this eminently common manner would that be sufficient, standing alone, to make me a rude person? Moreover, if I did go in how quickly could I split given that I had just worked about seventeen straight hours? I mean without being rude.

“Suit and tie at this hour,” Alyona said opening the door. “That’s got to be brutal.”

“Not fun.”

“Hope I can find them Casi, think they’re in my room somewhere.”

I went in with Alyona, almost instinctively, having never resolved my little internal debate. “Casi my good man,” said Louie. “Come in dude, join the party.”

“I am in,” I said.

“I mean in in,” he said. “This is Traci.”

“Hey Traci how are you?” (The Traci part of this was a new trick I had recently picked up from a dental waiting room Glamour published the requisite decade earlier, which trick called for people like me to repeat the name immediately for better memory retention and shortly after reading that the dentist told me his name but I immediately forgot it because I couldn’t repeat it with that little vacuum thing resting on my lower row of choppers.)

“Hello,” Traci said.

“Casi?”

“Angus.”

“Who’s cooler, the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot?”

“I don’t know.”

“C’mon which?”

“I have no preference.”

“If you had to choose, gun to your head.”

“I guess I would then say Loch Ness but I stress that a gun would have to be involved.”

“See?” said Angus pointing at Louis.

“Defend that choice because four out of five say Bigfoot,” said Louis.

“Just cooler I don’t know. I’m tired.”

“C’mon make something up. But like the kind of things we say.”

“The kind of things you say? Fine, how’s this? The thought of a guy who looks at vaginas for a living dropping some toy in a body of water and spurring decades of debate in a certain underdeveloped segment of society reassures and comforts me with the power of designer truth. Happy?”

“Wait, it was a hoax?” said Louis.

“I will say this on Bigfoot’s behalf however. There was a movie,” said Angus a look of careful reconsideration on his face.

“Movie?” groaned Traci.

“Yeah, movie-theatre and everything. So we’re all settled in ready for this movie to start when suddenly from a door near the screen comes this like huge eight-foot-tall guy bearing a striking resemblance to Bigfoot — the very same Bigfoot about to star in the feature we plunked down five bucks to see. Well for once this sort of thing works and of course there follows a rush of about fifty eight-to-ten-year-olds flooding into the aisle and running up the incline to the exit. Anyway goddamn Bigfoot gets the brilliant idea that he’s going to like pursue the kids for a while, you know ham it up. Well long story short he steps on a box of melted Raisinets, becomes involuntarily airborne and lands on like some seven-year-old girl who proceeds to have what theatre management termed a brief respite in cardiactivity . I think they banned those kind of promotional stunts at that theatre for like the next thirty-five years. You can’t do cool shit like that with Loch Nesses the way you can with Bigfeet. So basically I change my vote.”

“Me too,” said a resigned Louis. “I love hoaxes.”

“You love hoaxes?” said Alyona. “What do you think fucking Bigfoot was? Some clown named Ray Wallace photographing his wife in a Sasquatch suit!”

“The hell’s a Sasquatch suit?” said Traci.

“Like a leisure suit.”

“No, more like a zoot suit.”

“Or a monkey suit.”

“Or your birthday suit.”

“Or a chicken-skin suit.”

Where we were was the living room, which had three different non-complementary throw rugs. In the center of the room, both literally and figuratively, was Television. Angus sat exactly 8.3 feet from its screen and precisely twelve degrees to the right of its imaginary extended midpoint. On the rare occasion he rose from that spot, the sofa maintained a little scoop where his ass belonged. According to Angus, this particular positioning of the viewer was said to create optimal video-aural receptory performance according to several well-respected studies performed by several similarly-respected institutes. The rest of the room paid homage to its star as well. The furniture had been strategically positioned to encourage crystalline reception. The sofa seemed to lean towards Television like a needy plant towards the sun. Speakers of varying sizes appeared in odd places and assumed unlikely, almost pornographic, positions. The result was that Television’s sound had you sensurrounded with resistance being futile Earthling. And on top of Television that night sat a new silver box; the red and green lightbars it contained vying for attention.

“What’s that thing?”

“New HDVDCR man,” said Angus. “The Casio Carousel, that’s its name. This puppy can handle up to fifteen Entertainmentities at one time. I can press this button and go to any of the fifteen in an instant. I can also operate the device in such a fashion as to create a never-ending loop of entertainment. Again all at near instantaneity. The booklet even says that if I ever have to wait more than three seconds for one of the entities to play I get my choice of my money back or a part in their next commercial. Do you own a stopwatch?”

“It doesn’t come with one?”

“Hmm.”

“Have you heard of a Television that turns on automatically when your favorite shows are on?”

“I don’t understand, why would you turn it off?”

Television: Magilla Gorilla for sale…

“See. That I have a problem with,” said an exasperated Louie as the channel changed three times during the course of his statement. “How can Magilla Gorilla be for sale just like that? What, you walk into a basic pet store and buy a gorilla?”