Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

“The DVDs” Liszt jumped in. “The other day I rented a DVD called UNFIT FOR TELEVISION: DANCES WITH DEATH.It was bizarre. It was all this video footage of people basically dying.”

“Nothing’s more basic,” said Conley.

“For example?” said Debi.

“One dude was attacked by a shark, you saw copious blood in the ocean.”

I was looking at what had no doubt caused this conversation. Television was in Conley’s office holding rerun images of Rane’s handiwork. Edwin Vega as Superdad behind the counter with both hands on his neck. He looked like so many people I knew. The action had been paused but I knew the ending. On Conley’s desk, the paper was open to a picture of Baby Tula and the offsprung story.

I knew the DVD Liszt was talking about too. Angus had rented it and I was there the night he watched it. I caught the end of it.

Some years before, I’d been in Mexico on some mindless college bullshit. Posted everywhere, mostly on shredded telephone poles flooded with rusty staples, were signs selling someone who answered to COLOSIO. COLOSIOthis. COLOSIOthat. I finally asked one of my cabdrivers who this Colosio was and why it was necessary that his name be everywhere. He’d been running for President but not anymore. He was dead.

On the DVD I saw why. From a very public, very crowded rally, the narrator tells you which one is Colosio and commands you to watch closely. As you watch, Colosio tries to make his way through this great amalgam of people. Another man approaches him from the right of the screen to within three or four feet. He shoots Colosio in the head. Red skull fragments land everywhere, scattering the crowd and ending the campaign. Everyone reacts. No one grabs the shooter.

The next and last clip was from an outdoor railroad station. There are three separate tracks people are crossing without incident. A train approaches slowly on the first set of tracks nearest the camera then stops well short of the station. Seeing that this train has stopped for good, impatient people on their way to work continue to cross the tracks. Now you can sense another train approaching. You’re not sure if it comes on the second or third tracks.

Then you see it. You see the train coming quickly towards the camera on the second set of tracks and from the same direction as the train that has stopped. You see this about the same time you notice a man and a woman crossing in front of the stopped train and walking towards the second set of tracks. Given the title of the disc you now focus on this man and woman who do not appear to be together. The man crosses the first set of tracks, notices the approaching train and stops suddenly.

“No,” I said.

The woman breaks into a trot towards the second set of tracks with the suddenly loud train approaching. She’s looking down at her bag. A distracted inventory of her possessions. It all happens so fast.

The train doesn’t run her over, like the expression, it hits her. Her neck barely hangs on to her head. Her left leg flails across her body as she sails through the air: a lifeless skinbag of bones. Angus replayed it three or four times. Each time I moved towards the door then stopped and watched. It was the eyes. Angus could have played that evil clip of her derogation twenty times and I would have watched each one. I didn’t want to. I had to.

The man next to her also watches as she flies through the air, his mouth is great wide open. She flies in the direction of the camera outracing the nose of the train.

She seems to gain speed just before going out of view.

By the time I finally got to my office Julia and Leon were gone. I listened to my messages. The first was a familiar voice from the night before. You good man you it said with further variations on that theme. He had gone to the precinct like I said and he felt much better. The police had been made aware of the situation with his potentially murderous wife and they were going to be vigilante he said. He still didn’t tell me his name but he promised to call next week.

The other message was from Dane:

You didn’t let me tell you why it doesn’t work. Why it doesn’t work when people have kids in order to escape oblivion. Superficially, it seems like it would work. The person who creates a child really does become more important in that someone is initially dependent on them for their survival. For a while someone exists who actually shares their view of themselves. Of course this little person will soon reassess that feeling and conclude that they and not the parent are the most important person in the world. The parent can now add someone else to the list of people who disagree with their self-assessment. Additionally, they’re now saddled with the added burden of reconciling their view of their child with that of the rest of the world. These are the insane people who want you to faint when confronted with the superior intellect or beauty of their decidedly average offspring. Well of course there’s more, but not now .

I erased these messages and gave some thought to where I was, where I was at that specific moment and where I would have to go. I had done nothing on Darril Thorton, my most serious case. Same for Kingg’s appeal which we were being asked to turn around in what had to be record time, not to mention Tom’s case on which I would surely be doing the brunt of the thankless-but-time-consuming work pursuant to customary practice. And now Soldera had evaporated.

Everybody was leaving or had just left. Their cases would be transferred and I would undoubtedly get some of them if I stayed. More people looking at me as if I had answers for the race against undefeated Time that we would undoubtedly lose. The office was morbidly quiet and I started to feel an anxious loneliness. I left.

On the elevator it was just Debi and me:

“Here’s one,” I said. “A doctor, an accountant, and a lawyer are in a roller coaster accident and meet their untimely end. They’re in front of the pearly gates when St. Peter approaches them with a proposition. Answer one question correctly and enter heaven where of course all is bliss. He turns to the doctor and says name the twentieth-century luxury liner that sank after hitting an iceberg. The Titanic the doctor says all happy and St. Pete immediately lets him in. Then he turns to the accountant and asks roughly what year was that? 1911 says the accountant hesitantly. Close enough says Pete and he lets him in to meet up with the doctor. Finally, he turns to the lawyer who’s getting ready to join his friends and says: name everyone who died .”

No reaction at all and at that very moment I decided to retract The Pledge as impossible to fulfill.

The snow had stopped and it wasn’t quite as cold anymore so I decided I would avoid the subway and walk the mile or so over the Brooklyn Bridge. While walking towards the bridge I watched a man regaled in full Superman costume run past a woman and snatch her purse. The Man of Steal then ran faster than a speeding bullet into the subway station’s yawning entrance, his billowing red cape squiggily trailing behind him as he disappeared. Everyone was kind of looking at each other not really sure of what had occurred and not wanting to besmirch the good name of a beloved superhero. I waited around for the requisite time when something bizarre happens, made the similarly expected eye contacts and shrugs, then kept walking.

Just off the bridge, on the Brooklyn side, was a park. I was cutting through this park when an errant wiffleball whizzed near my head. “It’s all in good fun until someone loses an eye,” I said as I threw the ball back to the smallest of the four kid players. They sized me up optically then asked if I would be the official pitcher. I was running late on time so I agreed. The kids couldn’t have been older than ten or eleven but they sure took their wiffleball seriously.