Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

Across the hall in Part N, which functioned like F but handled only certain drug cases, the Deeble case continued its slow desolate descent. For some clients, principally those in love with drugs but well past the idealization stage, six days in jail, with attendant meals and a presumed lack of drugs, actually seemed to benefit them. The new client often look cleansed with fresher mind and cushier carriage. Deeble bucked that trend disadmirably. She was the color of urine. Green urine. The whites of her eyes were improperly called as they matched the color of her skin. And they were still. Even when her body would animate the eyes would lay dead. She seemed to inhale a disproportionate amount of the available oxygen as she spoke and I felt a corresponding urgency to accomplish.

I wanted to put her in the grand jury. Not so much for what she would say as for what the grand jurors would see. No way was what she said to that thought and the DA echoed this sentiment when I repeatedly tried to get a misdemeanor offer. No was everywhere, slamming my inquiries of Deeble regarding whether or not she could make bail and crippling my appeals to the judge to reduce that bail. There was nobody in the audience for her. Nobody I should call. Nobody needed to know what was happening with her case. And when, after five o’clock, the DA announced she had been indicted it happened with such a dawnish quietude that the whole thing felt like a jealously shared secret between Glenda and me.

But before I leave a false impression, those things and my reunion with DeLeon happened between long fits of nothing during which I did much of my day’s requirement of biologically-mandated daydreaming, the random thoughts inexplicably triggered to appear only to disappear as quickly as they came.

One of those was Wilfred Benitez. Only it was weird because when I thought about Benitez that day I didn’t think of the Benitez who outpointed Cervantes at seventeen to become world champion or even any of the later Benitezes. Instead what I thought about, or more accurately what I imagined, was Benitez at like two or three years old in his Bronx apartment. I wondered if the seeds of physical genius began to sprout that early. Because what I kept imagining was his dad breathlessly calling Wilfred’s mother into the room. Look! Watch! ¡ Mira ! He would say. When I go to poke him in the nose he moves his head away or knocks my hand away before I can do it! Yes I see, pero be careful he’s just a baby. No I don’t think you understand. No matter how fast I try to do it he always moves his head in time. Uh-huh, so? Don’t you get it? His reflexes are incredible. Can’t you see? Well how do you know that not every kid does that? Are you crazy? Look. Again. See what I mean? It’s like he has radar or something.

Of course that’s exactly what it was like for the man who later came to be called “ El Radar .” But I wondered, was the radar always waiting to be used and ultimately mastered or was it constructed in a harsh gym where even the walls sweat? Did fellow playground toddlers learn the hard way not to make attempts on Wilfred’s toys? And what happened when they tried to hit him back? Did he slip their punches the way he would later, at age twenty-three, slip Roberto Duran’s right hand at a New York City press conference announcing their fight? Or did he block them like he would millions others, slightly raising his shoulder to deflect their brunt all the while keeping absurdly serene eye contact?

I could, so did, mentally construct moments like that all day. Non gym moments where someone might have spotted something. Might have seen something that they, even though non-expert, instantly recognized as out of the ordinary. Special. Then they would transfer that spark they had viewed to its owner, the child Wilfred. They would look at him and maybe see more than just one of countless Bronx Boricuas .

I’m sorry Mrs. Benitez but this is a nursery school. The kids here are three, four years old. We simply must take steps to ensure that incidents like these do not continue to occur. No, you’re right. He’s not the only one who fights, but with the others the results aren’t nearly as devastating. Well yes. I suppose it is our job to break these things up before they get too bad but how shall I put this? When Wilfred’s involved it all seems to happen so fast. Quite fast in fact. Almost like lightning I would say. Beautiful lightning actually. What I mean is that, well you’ve seen lightning Mrs. Benitez I won’t elaborate. And so on.

And when Wilfred’s parents put the apartment’s only fan — the kind that used to make a big deal about its ability to oscillate — in their room, I bet Wilfred and his sibs would go out on the fire escape where the air would at least occasionally move, even if only by accident. I bet this because I remembered fire escapes. And people walking on the streets below or looking on from other escapes might have made a quick mental note of the fact that little Wilfred was out there. Most likely one or more of these people would feel compelled to comment that really it was negligence of the highest order to allow such a wee child out on the fire escape, and if the complainant was a non-Puerto Rican then that would quickly be identified as the root cause of such criminal negligence; and really something should be done but not involving the police who we can all agree should mind their own business when it comes to Hispanic child-rearing lunacy.

But surely nothing approaching that much mind would’ve been paid to Wilfred Benitez. Unless of course we’re talking about a previous witness to his spark. Such a person’s eyes might gravitate foreverafter to Wilfred as he entered a room or did a fake escape from a fire or swung a broomstick at a tennis ball or whatever preschool physical geniuses do. And maybe one day that person would approach Mrs. Benitez and say that her son was not average. That there was something about him. And maybe just this once, futuristic money would not be mentioned. And with the mounting years the amount of people who would do this, who would talk about her son Wilfred in this way, would increase greatly so that by the time an eleven-year-old Wilfred was a gym regular she could expertly parry their well-intentioned words and emotions, taking care to absorb only what pleased her.

And so like the more thought I gave to Mrs. Benitez, the more convinced I became that the oscillating fan in her room was not her idea at all but was like more or less forced on her by Mr. Benitez. He would say things like he works hard and the kids have their entire fan-buying future in front of them and she would grudgingly go along but when it got unbearably hot, truly so, she would exert her will and on those nights she would spread a sheet on the sofa and other smaller sheets on the floor of the living room so that every Benitez might share the one fan as it oscillated throughout the night, fro and to each appreciative member.

And it was Good that this woman would later nod and swell as they talked about her son.

But then after a while the voices I imagined weren’t about Benitez at all. They were about me. And the voices spoke to my mother. Never seen anything like it before they would say. Miles ahead of where so and so, yes him, was at this stage . And the people saying this weren’t chumps like you and me, they were the foremost experts in their respective fields and they exhibited genuine urgency too. Now the greatest beauty of it all was that my Talent, whatever it was, was so immensely profound that it wouldn’t require any of that annoying Hollywood-montage-best-song-on-the-soundtrack-type training/nurturing that is invariably led by a recovering alcoholic, formerly great, last-chance-at-redemption guru. Instead it , the Talent I mean, would simply squire me around. It would define me with its purpose and occlude the remaining universe of choice so that if someone asked me why I did what I did I could truthfully answer that I had no choice. Ah dreams.