Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

“Julie?”

“Oh yeah, Percoset, Codeine, Cocaine — powdered only — Ibuprophen.”

“Who’s Julie?”

“My daughter.”

“Tina has a sister?”

“There’s no Tina, it’s only Julie.”

“Oh.”

“Continue.”

“Well by the time I get to Katie’s room I’m positively ravenous.”

“For?”

“Food. Now you would think a dorm at an all-girls school would have something better to eat but all they had were these Señor Smoke burritos.”

“Hold it.”

“You’ve heard of these. They’re—”

“Forget the burritos. Did you say Katie goes to an all-girls school?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Now your wife… um”

“Anne.”

“Yes, good old Anne. Does she go with you to drop off Katie?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Roommates?”

“What?”

“Does your daughter—”

“Katie.”

“—have roommates?”

“Yes.”

“Are they there?”

“Yes.”

“What are they wearing?”

“All different things.”

“Like?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re getting paid to know.”

“Fine. Some are wearing those faded football shirts.”

“Over what?”

“Seemingly nothing.”

“No panties?”

“Well I’m sure panties.”

“What else?”

“Others are wearing nighties.”

“What kind?”

“What do I look like Calvin Klein? Nighties!”

“Is that all?”

“I guess others are wearing men’s pajamas.”

“The tops only or the full ensemble?”

“Full.”

“What kind of footwear we talking about?”

“Some of those cute fuzzy slippers, but mostly bare feet.”

“Painted toenails?”

“Predominantly.”

“High arches?”

“Some.”

“Now do you talk to them?”

“Of course, why do you think I’m driving Katie two hours to school and why do you think I insist on carrying her bags up?”

“How do you do it?”

“How else? I do that thing where you use your daughter as a crowbar to feign some sort of understanding of their experientially constricted lives. You know ah yes, Katie too is thinking of doing a year abroad in Guatemala, how was it ? and declarations of this nature.”

“A tried and true method. I’ve employed it countless times myself. The beauty of it is that, if done correctly, the overall impression left is oh you’re dad’s cool and funny and he really knows a lot about Guatemala as opposed to, there’s a fat, follicly-challenged fifty-year-old who has the ability to talk to a dimwitted twenty-year-old about her career aspirations while not betraying that he is simultaneously imagining that same aspirant engaged in all forms of depraved debauchery.”

“Correct, but again this is all digression. The point, to advance the plot, is that I find myself ingesting two of these Señor Smoke burritos.”

“What kind?”

“Three Bean followed shortly by Jack Cheese. Now I don’t mind telling you that, surprisingly, Mr. Smoke makes a fine-tasting burrito, this despite the vagaries and flavor-robbing properties of cooking with microwaves. At any rate, the burritos pleased me greatly. More than that really; the consumption of these two burritos created an almost spiritual pleasure in my alimentary canal and created such affection in me for its creator that had Monsieur Smoke suddenly appeared in the room and asked me to drink some suspect Kool-Aid I would have at least swished it around in my mouth awhile.”

“Then what?”

“Well once I’d exhausted all possibly legitimate reasons for still being there and am threatening to turn into the aforementioned fat fifty-year-old, I take leave of the scantily-clad coeds and get in my car.”

“Model?”

“Toyota.”

“Make?”

“Land Cruiser.”

“Luxury model?”

“Yes.”

“Ronald.”

“Thank you. Now I’m about halfway home.”

“Time?”

“Oh Two Hundred hours.”

“Two a.m.”

“Thank you, now let the man continue. Continue Ronald.”

“I come across a 7-Eleven.”

“Open?”

“Twenty-four hours.”

“In a row?”

“Yes.”

“You stop.”

“Yes. I stop because I’m hungry again and I’m thinking maybe bag of chips. As I enter the establishment, however, I come face to face with a cardboard Señor Smoke advertising his south of the border wares. As I face Herr Smoke shootout style and contemplate my next move, the two employees behind the counter are arguing over whose country first tested nuclear weapons only I can’t figure out if they want to be first or not. Before long, I’m punching the oversized buttons on their microwave and contained within are two more Señor Smoke delicacies.”

“What flavor?”

“This time Baja Beef and Huevos Rancheros. After paying the jingoistic combatants, I resume my journey while inhaling the two burritos. I arrive home and go to sleep without incident, mindful that the next morning I must sum up on my case.”

“Of course.”

“Now it’s the next morning and my opinion of Señor Smoke has suffered a near-precipitous fall.”

“You may have overmedicated.”

“Yes, the thought does occur to me at the time that I might not be entirely without blame.”

“Señor Smoke’s not completely off the hook but you were complicit.”

“Yes. Nonetheless, however the blame was to be later allocated, I got the distinct impression that my body would soon engage in open, gastrointestinal revolt. Naturally, none of this was helped by the normal butterflies one feels prior to giving a summation. So being the responsible attorney that I am, and cognizant of my upcoming performance, I took every opportunity to sit on the toilet in an attempt to proactively deal with the anticipated problem. Of course, none of these attempts work and we can now resume the story inside of McGarrity’s courtroom as he signals for me to begin my summation, because it was then, as I began my carefully prepared closing remarks, that the previously-mentioned revolt began in earnest.”

“What exactly do you feel?”

“Well, for one thing, my rather large stomach is palpably convulsing to the point where the end of my tie is bouncing up and down. Luckily, the initial grimace on my face coincided with me saying that the People’s case sucked or words to that effect. In addition, I now feel an overwhelming need to release the gaseous buildup of the last nine hours and the preferred route appears to be my anus. So now in addition to this childbirth-type pain, I’m also required to use my sphincter to slowly negotiate the gas out of my ass without making any noise. But of course, while I can control the noise, I cannot control the smell which is like something akin to digging up a dead skunk and performing an autopsy on it inside an Indian restaurant’s dumpster. Now as luck would have it, the air-conditioning wasn’t working and a fan had been set up and pointed directly at the jury box. The fan kept wafting the odor smack into the horrified faces of the jury. Of course, once I open the floodgates I can’t stop and I’m ripping them machine gun style — but with a silencer. Eventually, the jury figures out that I’m to blame and they’re looking at me like finding my client guilty won’t be enough; they want me incarcerated. It also becomes apparent that while the release of gas provides some relief, I will soon need to divest myself of the actual burritos if I’m to ever see another sunrise. So now, as the jury’s eyes begin to tear, I take a dramatic break and go over to where my client is seated as if conferring with him. Well he’s all happy and says that the jurors seem to be really upset and responding to what I’m saying and some even look like they’re crying. I now feel like I have at most two minutes before an emotionally scarring accident occurs so I ask to approach. Now when I get there I can’t tell the judge I have to go to the bathroom because I will then have effectively removed all doubt in the courtroom that I am responsible for the almost ignitable smell currently enveloping the area. What I do instead is concoct a legal slash factual issue which has just come to my attention by virtue of discussion with my client and which necessitates a five-minute recess so I can rework my summation. With a little pleading I get my way and soon I’m in a full Olympic-Trials-type sprint for the bathroom all the while emitting loud and troubling noises. Well I barely make it on to the toilet before the Three-Bean-Jack-Cheese-Baja-Beef-Huevos-Rancheros explosion but I do and my troubles seem over.”