Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

“Seriously, is it true you’re working on Tom’s case?”

“Yeah why?”

“It’s just that, well, you do have a great deal of cases. Are you going to have the time to devote to this case? I mean there’s a brief to write. One of us has to go down to Alabama to meet with both the client and the director of the project. Then we have to prepare for the argument and—”

“Easy Toomie please. Don’t get all worked up. I’ve been doing this for the better part of four decades. When I started in this racket you weren’t even a prediction. And we didn’t have these fancy computers either. Or books. We had to memorize the laws back then.”

“Be serious.”

“Don’t worry man, shit is that Tom?”

“Indeed.”

“Did he see me?” I was trying, turtle-like, to retract my head into my body.

“I think so, he’s coming this way.”

“Fucking fate, quick tell me everything you know about Tom’s case.”

“Why?”

“I was supposed to look at that file this weekend and I know he’s going to ask me questions.”

“The burning child correct?”

“C’mon!”

“Well all I know is what I’ve read in the papers and of course these daily periodicals are famous, or rather infamous, for their superficial coverage of—”

“The short version Toom! Never mind, just give us a couple seconds then come up with some reason why I have to go with you.”

“No I’m terrible at that sort of thing.”

“Just… hey Tom.”

“So what do you think?”

“What a mess.”

“Do you think—”

“Hey Casi, we have to get going.”

“Where?” demanded Tom.

“Yeah where?” I added along with a silent prayer.

“We have to see about those… jelly… um… beans… and stuff.”

“Jelly beans? What the hell are you talking about Toomberg? What the hell’s he talking about Casi?”

“I have no, the hell you talking about Toom?”

“You know. The appeal and… the thing… and.”

“Oh yeah. I better go Tom. What’s your day like tomorrow? Actually I have 180.80s. Can we talk the day after?”

“What’s happening with that mandatory tomorrow?”

“I don’t know. I called the DA (lie) but she hasn’t called me back. I’m going to the scene right now actually. I don’t think it’s going anywhere. Let me go.”

…

“Jelly beans Toom? What the fuck?”

“I told you I’m terrible when it comes to subterfuge.”

“Terrible is one thing but jelly beans?”

“Once I committed to the word jelly it was almost as if beans had to follow.”

“Fair enough.”

“Besides, the whole thing is your doing. If you had just—”

“Very true. Thanks Toom. Don’t worry you’re still my favorite teammate. See you tomorrow, I have to go on an investigation.”

I walked out with Debi who was going home early. She had a sharp gait that made mine feel rounded.

“Where you off to?” she said.

“To a scene to try and interview a complainant.”

“You know, you should always bring an investigator or another attorney along. You don’t want to become a witness.”

“No one was available but I agree.”

“I’d go with you but I have this thing.”

“That’s okay. Here’s one Deb. A Mexican duck walks into a bar and says bartender a double of Cuervo and put it on my bill .”

“That’s good,” she said stone-faced.

What I was doing wasn’t very complicated. I had to find Valerie Grissom and get her to talk to me. She was claiming that Darril Thorton had sexually attacked her. My client’s response was that this was a total fabrication an otherworldly force intent on propagating evil had put her up to. I had an address, which was more than we usually have, and therefore optimism. If she’d talk to me it would be a no-lose. I would get some idea as to her potential strength as a witness, possibly even get some impeachment material for a later trial, and most importantly get an early quasi-definitive answer regarding the state of the People’s case, particularly whether or not Ms. Grissom would be appearing in the grand jury the next day the picture of testimonial eagerness.

But none of that was accomplished because I never found her. 322 West 119th Street barely qualified as a building. It turns out that when you read you don’t really take note of each individual letter. Instaed it seems your mind fills in details in service of a greater schematic, namely the words you’ve read millions of times before. Your mind jumps to conclusions in effect. In only such a way could you see a building when you looked at 322. The windows were made of plywood, the apartment doors secured by rusty combination locks. The concrete steps up to the main door gradually self-destructed outward, culminating in jagged ends without handrails where I sat under the assumption that Valerie Grissom had to appear at some point but she didn’t have to and in fact didn’t before I decided to leave.

I jumped in a cab I hoped would fly home. The cab driver was a lovely guy who betrayed no evidence of owning a tongue. He decided to take the Manhattan Bridge. Just short of Canal St. the cab stopped and I saw the billboard peephole that had been set up as visual portal to Man’s Greatest Invention. Currently peering in was a tiny guy with a humongous ass, the black velvet curtain splayed on either side of his neck. The immediate visual impression was of a half-man cut off at the waist, reduced to his lower geography and frozen in front of the sign. Like molecularly bombarded particles engaged in Brownian motion, others in the area loitered in skittish disarray. But as we pulled away they congealed into a rational rhyme. With balletic grace they formed a single file. All together now, lining up behind the ass to look in the hole.

There I was the following morning sitting at a depressing table in a like room with one of those retro billowy soda machines glowing like a plastic rainbow next to its pal with the rotating steel compartments that separated uniformly rejected white-bread sandwiches from their colleagues; and in my hand, between fingers fore and middle with thumb cradling underneath, in a room where precisely this conduct was explicitly not permitted, a profusely smoking cigarette, the kind where the end responsible for filtering had a joyous cavity, the constant flicking of which produced great pleasure in me, and which had inspired me to determine exactly how long I could abstain from that fucking great activity with the not unexpected result that the burning end with its hollow parasitic ash was now considerably longer than the unburnt rest and was obstinately marching towards absurd Pink-Floyd’s-The-Wall length as the painful orange paper embers neared my fingers, C fibers firing like mad, leaving ashen skeletal remains that seemed to defy gravity while desperately clinging to their ancestral filter, when in walked Liszt.

He had previously sworn me to uphold what he termed a sacred obligation, namely an obligation to be of great assistance to him in his quest to quit smoking. I would achieve this by, at the very least, never —even under the direst of circumstances and regardless of how much he should solicit, beg, plead, or importune — giving him a cigarette. He looked at me, the bizarre stick giving him pause, and said, “Ooh, can I have one?”

“Sure,” I said. “Take the rest, I quit.”

“Damn,” he said as I walked out.

“Casi, it’s me.”

“I see that.”

“You know me right?”

“Uh, no. Sorry I uh—”

“I’m the new attorney on the sixth floor, Darren Leaves?”