Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

“So what then is the best idea you’ve had since you became an attorney?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you what it was,” laughing. “Never mind, I hate that war story, am-I-not-great bullshit.”

“But I asked.”

“True, so I’m trying some dead case down in Florida, a one witness i.d. case but dead. Cabdriver robbed by his passenger. The robber gets out and, get this, slowly walks away. Course the cabdriver follows him in his cab while calling the police on his cell, fucking technology. Well, he loses sight of him for all of twenty seconds before the police nab my guy. He i.d.’s him and eight months later this hump won’t take a plea and I’m stuck trying this piece of shit. Anyway the guy’s got a horrible sheet and’s a real pain in the ass. He’s being railroaded et cetera, the usual deal. You know, I’m working with the DA, you’re familiar.”

“Move on.”

“Fine. Now to this day I don’t know what ethnicity my client was but one of the things that made the case so bad was that he was a unique kind of maybe Hispanic, maybe Eastern-European looking guy. Well I’m picking this guy’s jury when I look at one of the prospective juror’s and I swear this chump looks exactly like my client. I’m talking to the point where when I first saw him I thought what the hell is my client doing in the jury box? So I’m questioning this guy and he’s like horrible for us. You know they’re all guilty, I love cops , really horrible answers. But I’m sitting there and I’m thinking that the fact that this guy looks like my client’s fucking doppelganger has got to be useful in some way. I don’t know, I was thinking maybe during summations I’d point out the resemblance to show the jurors how a mistake could have been made, whatever. The gist of it is I put this nut on the jury. Now the DA is like this three-hundred pound woman who is literally salivating as if she just saw a well-marinated pork chop at the prospect of this guy deliberating on my guy’s fate. Also my supervisor’s watching the trial and he’s like apoplectic when I put this guy on the jury. You’re a loose cannon Dane, I’ll have your attorney card! You know like the black police chief in those action movies. Anyway, the trial gets started. The DA puts some cops on and I’m getting buried as expected. Now she puts the complainant on and he’s laying it on thick. The guy’s driving a cab hundred hours a week to support thirteen kids who live in some grass hut overseas and subsist on twigs and my scumbag client’s got to rob him of his night’s take. Pretty emotional stuff. So she gets to the worst part for us. You know she asks him if the guy who did this horrible thing to him is in the courtroom and if so would he mind terribly pointing him out. Of course, I’m barely paying attention at this point because I’m all focused on my upcoming cross. But even I’m noticing that this guy’s not saying anything. So I look up and this guy’s standing up and looking all over the courtroom! Now I’m starting to get hope when he indicates that yes he sees the guy that robbed him. Well the DA takes her first breath in about thirty seconds and asks the guy to go ahead and point out the robber. Sure enough this sonuvabitch stands up, steps down from the witness stand, points to this poor sap, the look-alike juror, and says that’s him, that’s the guy who robbed me! ”

“Get out.”

“Serious, course mayhem ensues with the DA asking for a brief recess and me objecting saying that the witness’s testimony speaks for itself and she shouldn’t be allowed to talk to him. Finally the judge tells the jury to leave the courtroom while we discuss legal issues. Would you believe this juror stays put. He thinks he’s about to be arrested for the robbery of this goddamn cabdriver! I mean he’s disconsolate and staring at the court officers waiting for them to come and cuff him.”

“Did they?”

“ Did they ?”

“Kidding.”

“Well they didn’t, but let me tell you the complainant was intractable. Even after being told that the guy he’d identified was a juror, he remained convinced it was some kind of trick and kept insisting that the juror was the robber.”

“Good grief. So?”

“So they make my guy some great offer that gets him out of jail and he takes it. I’m convinced that to this day the cabdriver believes our system of justice is corrupt because we allow the defendant to serve as one of the jurors.”

“That’s great,” I said and started wondering if I was supposed to come up with a comparable story because just then I couldn’t and I was reasonably certain this deficiency wouldn’t disappear as more time elapsed. “Sounds nutty down there.”

“Not down there man just the job, how long you been doing this?”

“A little over two years.”

“Oh man, you’re just a kid.”

“Older today.”

“Really? Congratulations, I suppose, then.”

“Okay.”

“What’s the number?”

“Twenty-four.”

“Wow. Now how is that possible given that—”

“My mother lied,” I said and we stopped talking because our food arrived. Dane took two bites, declared the food an unqualified success, then never returned to it. Instead he leaned back as if considering all that had come before and weighing several options.

“A birthday is an odd thing despite being inherently senseless,” he finally said. “I’m referring to the way it looks you in the eye and demands retrospection whether you’re willing or not.”

“Well I have a strong will.”

“It won’t matter. I recently began my thirtieth ellipse around our sun, an anniversary that as you can imagine barks louder than the usual ones. Anyway it was a Sunday and one of those political news shows was on where they pretend to speak on important topics. They were talking about the President and his difficulties during his first year in office and one of the commentators said something like this really hurts him because those close to him say he is a man obsessed with his legacy . I thought about that statement a lot. What do you think about that statement?”

“I think I have no way of knowing if it’s true or not.”

“Course not but what do you think of this concept of a legacy? Because it totally intrigued me.”

“What about it?”

“Simply everything. The first thing that struck me is that it is perfectly legitimate, and not at all presumptuous, for a President to worry about such a thing. After all, this man has a job whereby, one hundred, two hundred years from now people will still be assessing his performance. Think about that. It seems to me that whatever the assessment is becomes secondary to the fact there is one at all.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning take someone at random as an example. I elect myself. As you might have guessed it wasn’t long before I started wondering what my legacy would be. How will history remember me? I’ll tell you. It won’t remember me at all. At all! As far as history is concerned I may as well not have existed. Now I know that to you that seems just about right.”

“Well.”

“But to me this fact is simply astounding. I mean as far as I’m concerned I’m downright enthralling. Now understand what I’m saying here. I’m not saying that when I objectively assess myself I conclude that I’m an enthralling person, although I do. What I am saying is that everything about me is incredibly enthralling to me . For example, I can stand in front of a mirror for forty minutes trying to figure out the best way for me to wear my hair. On the other hand, if you tried to engage me in even a thirty-second discussion regarding your hair, I’d instantly tell you to shut up. So there’s this horrible dilemma whereby I think I’m the most important thing in the world and everyone else thinks I’m practically meaningless. But it’s even worse than that. At least now I exist and am in some sense meaningless. Someday, I hope not too soon, I won’t even exist and then I’ll give new meaning to the term meaningless.”