Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

“Fuck, what was it?”

“Diverticulitis. The kind of thing a doctor in this country laughs at. Life and death decided by dollar signs, the way it should be. Remember that. Survival of the fattest… wallet. And the fattest aren’t complaining because our inherent nature is not to help others but to hinder them and ultimately to win. Hurd’s employer doesn’t seem torn up by Hurd’s three to six does he? Here’s a guy who will not only aid and abet Hurd in his chemical destruction but will also exploit him for his benefit. Hurd is on the street taking all the risk with minimal reward while his boss counts his money out of sight of the cops. At least there the exploitation is out in the open unlike other more respectable industries. Anyway my girlfriend broke up with me shortly thereafter. I’m sure she couldn’t stand to see my face anymore with its reminder of their unforced inaction. This abominable yet oddly touching song by I believe Spandau Ballet was playing while she told me and the hardest part was pretending I was crushed, which I felt I owed her. A shame. I spent a fortune on earrings let me tell you.”

“When I was an intern in Brooklyn I second sat a case where our client was a last-minute lookout for an impromptu robbery committed by two other girls. She was a toothless prostitute with tracks on her arms, a predicate for a Hurd-type sale, and the nicest damaged person you could ever meet. The two codefendants pled and the case against our girl was weak. She was out after a 30.30 release and she would come to court in skirts that looked like belts. At trial, they had shit too until in saunters one of the fucking co-defendants to testify and blow our girl out of the fucking water. Bear in mind that this witness was the reason our client was on trial in the first place. The robbery had been completely instigated by this woman and she was the one who threatened the complainants with a razor. Of course she wasn’t a predicate and thanks to her cooperation she ultimately got something like a flat year. At sentencing, our client, who during the robbery had essentially stood around looking up and down the street and imploring her friends to hurry up, got the minimum which was goddamn eight. When the verdict came in her husband was in the audience. What hurt most was that as the court officers were putting her in for what would be, at best, eight years her husband was up at the rail trying to get some last words in. I don’t know why and I’ll never forget this but all he kept asking her was whether she wanted the newspaper he was carrying. Like all insistent too. And I’m looking at this guy, with his coke-bottle glasses held together by a Band-Aid, and I’m thinking, what could she possibly want with a newspaper where she’s going? And I wanted to grab the paper out of his hand to like shut him up except I noticed his eyeballs were floating in tears, bobbing up and down, and the way he was squeezing it. The worst was the meekness of it. He looked as scared as he was sad and all this happened in an empty courtroom at like ten at night.”

“You see? And if today that witness robber were told she could get out three days earlier if your client did another two years, your client would do ten. Bet on it.”

“Well the singer’s out I’m sure.”

“You get my point. We’re in a kennel where every dog is cannibalistically craving canine sustenance and here you are talking about extending a helping paw. Every Thursday my girlfriend’s family would gather to pray for the grandmother. Forget that. When I pray I pray to Mammon — the god of avarice. He would’ve saved that woman’s life with laughable ease. His is true omnipotence while your god hears and ignores heartfelt pleas. The sooner you understand and accept that Casi, the better off you’ll be. What are you trying to sell yourself? Are you going to buy into the useless fiction that you operate outside the realm of the marketplace because you’re a public defender? What’s next? You going to go out and buy the requisite brown corduroy sports coat? Grow a ponytail? Then you can stay here twenty years like those guys you see in AP parts waiting for their fucking case to be called. And you can spend those twenty years hoping against hope that none of your favorite people ever need your help. What about your mother? Do you know what she went through? Have you ever been around a pregnant woman? And then when you finally came out what did she do? I’ll tell you what she did. She stuck her tit, an intimate part of her fucking body, into your expectant mouth so you could eat and not die. They turned their lives over to you those two people. You think they came here from Colombia to wash dishes and clean offices so you could—”

“How do you—”

“—take a vow of poverty? A person of your abilities? Who do you think you are? One of these trust-fund babies playing lawyer without a care in the world? The day will come when your mother and others will need you. She will need you to reciprocate for the years of sightless devotion. What she will need is for you to exercise power on her behalf; to ensure that no avoidably bad things happen to her. To do that you will need money and lots of it. You should thank me for helping you realize that.”

“Against your self-interest no less since there’s only so much money to go around.”

“You going to finish that?”

“No, I lost my appetite.”

“I’ll take it.”

“By my count, you said one thing that was interesting amidst that whole harangue.”

“What’s that?”

“Did you say you’ve smoked crack?”

“That’s right.”

“What the fuck were you doing smoking crack?”

“It’s hard to explain but essentially what I was doing was seeking perfection.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s a long story.”

“One I want to hear.”

“Sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Well my entire life I’ve been enthralled with the concept of perfection. Contrary to common perception, as almost everything that’s true is, I believe that it is certainly possible to achieve perfection provided you properly limit the scope of your playing field.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Are you not attracted by the perfect?”

“The perfect what?”

“Perfection in any form. By way of example let’s talk about mathematics. Do you know what a perfect number is?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t think so. Well pay attention you might learn something. A perfect number is a number that is the sum of its multiplicative factors.”

“I know.”

“So for example six is a perfect number. It’s perfect because the numbers that can divide six without remainder are three, two and one. These numbers are the multiplicative factors of the number six. Note that if we add these three numbers, if we add three plus two plus one, we also get the number six. Similarly twenty-eight is a perfect number since its multiplicative factors, one, two, four, seven and fourteen also add up to twenty-eight. There you are. Now let’s put aside for the moment my belief that although I have only ascertained about thirty-nine of these numbers there are in fact an infinite amount of them with infinity itself being a form of perfection.”

“Okay?”

“What’s your reaction when I tell you about these numbers?”

“Um.”

“Because my reaction when I heard about these numbers and really whenever I hear about anything that I equate with perfection is best described as something like adulatory love. With respect to perfect numbers, I’m not alone either. In ancient Italy there was a secret society founded by Pythagoras, yes he of the Pythagorean Theorem, devoted to the study of numbers. This Divine Brotherhood of Pythagoras, as they were called, essentially worshipped numbers in general and in particular ascribed mystical and magical qualities to perfect numbers. They felt what I know. Perfection rightfully inspires an awe that is religious in nature. Not coincidentally, there aren’t many people left walking around praying to a god they do not think is perfect. Of course they make the stupid mistake of ascribing perfection to a separate entity when it is in fact Perfection itself, as its own entity, that they are worshiping.”