Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

“Sure. Look I watch the MusicTeleVision et cetera. Those are the world’s most beautiful women, digitally and surgically engineered to make me want to buy something. Now I look at Julia Ellis and I see that she’s as beautiful if not more beautiful than any of those women and I know she’s not putting as much effort into it as they are so I conclude she must be one of the most beautiful women in the world. Follow?”

“I’m not prepared to say you’re right but you may not be as wrong as you usually are.”

“Does she have anything else going for her?”

“Besides her astonishing appearance?”

“Yes.”

“She appears to have several other positive attributes.”

“Really? That’s odd.”

“How?”

“Well I find extreme beauty fascinating.”

“Is that so? How unique.”

“No I mean beyond simply being attracted to it like everyone else. One of the things that seem true to me is that God doesn’t often give the extremely beautiful much else. Nor does he, for that matter, give the hyper-intelligent or super-athletic much else either. Think about that. You never hear that the gorgeous supermodel is also diligently searching Theoretical Physics for its Grand Unified Theory. And when they cut to that guy from MIT to explain the inexplicable doesn’t he always look like something a hairless cat coughed up?”

“I don’t know.”

“Leave the knowing to me.”

Now I guess I can be incredibly unobservant at times. So it wasn’t until then, when there was a lull in the conversation and we were waiting for the check that I first realized what a bizarre portrait Dane’s was. He seemed almost inhuman, not really subhuman or superhuman though; more like metahuman. His build was paradigmatically average like the cardboard cutout in your doctor’s office. On it lay a skeletal face that seemed to disappear the longer you looked at it. From his skull straight ink-black hair and overseeing a sharp nose insane green-light eyes.

When we were done we started to walk back. I was going back to court, this time 10 °Centre Street. Dane was going home with another aborted invitation rebuffed. We separated. On the way I ran into Sam Gold, Tom’s cherubic underboss.

About Sam Gold I had recently learned exactly two interesting facts that I was still trying to properly contextualize and reconcile, videlicet: 1.) in over a quarter of a century at the office he had taken zero days off and 2.) his father had been the Manhattan District Attorney. Gold never handled an actual case or anything like that but his conciliatory skills were legendary and much in demand where I worked. He was glad he ran into me and could I do him a favor when I went back to court. Inside I said no with extreme prejudice but externally I agreed.

After Gold left I saw Dane again. He didn’t explain or anything but instead just resumed as if there had been no interruption:

“Saw this movie late last night when I got home,” he said. “It was atrocious of course and for a million different reasons I won’t go into but one thing even the movies can’t ruin is a good caper.”

“Yes.”

“A precise heist.”

“Right.”

“An impossible rescue.”

“Correct.”

“A desperate prison break.”

“Definitely.”

“Are we of like mind Casi?”

“On this yes.”

“On everything, you’ll see.”

“Except they invariably screw it up because even when they depict a successful one it always involves at least one unexpected complication that must be overcome. The reason this is misguided is that the beauty of the caper and the other things you mention, what gives them their allure, is the notion that they can and will be pulled off seamlessly, with algebraic precision and exactly as planned.”

“Interesting, constituting a triumph of what?” asked Dane.

“Intelligence, what else?”

“No, of will. Intelligence how?”

“If the right person plans it properly it will work, you can plan it into success.”

“But then you need the will Casi. The will to execute it the one chance you get. This is where the adrenaline comes from and this is the universal attraction. This is why people love crime, the singularity of will involved. And don’t tell me people don’t love crime to the point of near obsession. Just look at the newspapers, the visual news, and all other forms of popular entertainment, crime is their favorite process. The only question left is whether crime is inherently a perversion, meaning error is necessarily built into it, or whether some degree of perfection can be achieved in that area.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning the commission of a truly perfect crime.”

“Oh.”

“Possible?”

“Guess anything’s possible Dane.”

“And everything.”

“So get cracking on it, could be your legacy.”

So now imagine you are Raul Soldera meaning that although you are dying, as promised, you are not doing it fast enough so that wherever you turn people are upset by this and even you yourself end up not really knowing what to root for since every upturn in physical health leads to greater legal peril and so you spend time internally debating things like whether ’tis better to be strong and caged or infirm but free.

And one of the literally handful of things you own is a weathered trumpet you use to play Salsa, your native Puerto Rico’s creation, at various nightclubs with various others but never without the assistance of one or more attractively controlled substances. And though you are a legitimate musician you are not an immensely talented one meaning your constant use of these substances achieves neither mystique nor cliché but rather is a lot like that proverby thing whereby first you take drugs then the drugs take drugs then the drugs take you but all this happening in like three days really not the years probably envisioned. So now stare at your owner, a seemingly innocuous amount of white powder that you convert to injectable fluid. A demanding owner that wants inside you at all times, that you serve meekly in everything you do whether it’s blowing into that trumpet or selling Him to other chattel just so you can be near Him. Until you sell to the wrong kind and one of the things the judge says when you take the inevitable plea is that if you commit another felony within the next ten years then you must be sentenced to State Prison and you say you understand and there will not be a next time. Which semi-vow you mean because you genuinely fear State Prison so imagine further that you in fact draw this demarcation into your life whereby in the ensuing eight years you continue to run afoul, as they say, of the law but only of misdemeanor incarnations of such. Meaning you will still sit behind a restaurant’s dumpster near used condoms and inject your foot with your owner then shake your companion’s chin to determine whether he continues among the living and in the absence of a final determination slowly peel his fingers from his needle to see if you might not be able to squeeze a few more drops for yourself but you will never again give to strangers for money, it being famously better to receive than to give in this context.

Now you are forty and essentially homeless and one night you spot a forgotten purse outside the nightclub you just played. Only the thing about the purse is not much in it save for the credit card with the woman’s name in raised letters that you stick in your wallet to maybe feel a little important then forget about until its discovery months later by the latest A/O on your latest failed buy who raises it to your face and makes a what-have-we-here type declaration while smiling, the fuck. The next day your improbably smooth-faced lawyer tells you you’re charged with Criminal Possession of Stolen Property in the Fourth Degree and that this is an E felony with a minimum sentence of one and a half to three years in state prison but that he will likely get you out in five days, which he does. Then later he tells you the DA must be an idiot because you’re indicted but he will delay things as much as possible, which he also does. Until the day when further delay becomes impossible as the case is scheduled for trial and they want to start it like that instant. And you don’t want to take 1½ to 3 but you also don’t want to go to trial and get more.