A Naked Singularity: A Novel (11 page)

Each stair brighter yet colder than the one below it like the sun was daring you to see how little effect it was having.

Two men above me at forty-five degrees and brooking no passage while speaking so that every nearby ear was forced to listen:

“It’s too damn cold for this time of year, too early in the year for this shit. I’m telling you man when I get dressed in the morning before I leave the house I put a goddamn lambskin condom on my dick to keep it warm. Y’ever seen a lamb complain about the cold? Still, it don’t even work, I’m a start putting two of them on before I leave the house.”

“Heard that.”

“Now about this other thing, I’ll say this. The man has to be large and in charge. It’s like I tell my bitch. You my queen but I’m the King and that’s the way it has to be man. The man has
gots
to be the boss you ask anyone. It’s what you call the natural order of things and the woman have best understand that, dig?”

The listening guy claimed that he indeed dug and more discussion ensued until the woman rising alongside me, sick of exhaling loudly and circling her eyeballs, started asking them questions. The various voices got louder and the woman did this great thing where after she made what she felt was a particularly pointed remark, but which in reality was shot through with meekness, she would move the hair away from her face with a lovely hand, which maneuver was quite yummy. At the end of the stairs, on top of the city, she went left to my right and I watched her shrink wishing I would one day see her again. But where I was you could never arrange that kind of sequel. You just never saw the person again was what happened.

I walked through City Hall Park, past the iced fountain and through the gloved hands pushing flyers, to the lobby of the only building in the area that looked like it shouldn’t even contemplate generating revenue. There was a new sign between the newsstand and the elevators. It said the entity that signed my criminally feeble paychecks had floors four through nine and that its Complex One was on nine. It said the Attorney-in-Charge could also be found on that floor and that his name was Thomas Swathmore. I wondered if this last part hadn’t been better written in pencil.

I grabbed the two tabs and started skimming them back to back in front of the elevators. Holding them that way you could almost feel the competition heating up between them. The Post was all over Tula with a picture of a rattle below a giant OH BABY! Inside was a description of the grim horror with quoted reaction all the way from Holland. There was a poll too. Thirty-three percent said the kid would turn up the very picture of health. Fifty-two percent said no way look into adoption and fifteen percent wanted the pollster to repeat the question; of those fifteen percent, seventy percent later admitted to having understood the question the first time. Meanwhile, sixty percent said it was wrong to do a poll on such a subject but participated anyway while forty percent thought it perfectly legitimate to do such a poll but wanted no part of it. The Daily News countered. Seems our mayor was the newly christened CAPTAIN VIDEO given his newfound interest in
video-enhanced law enforcement
. There was a map. The red areas were new smile-for-the-camera zones. The green areas would remain as before, i.e. patrolled solely by the naked eye. Lastly, the blue areas were in dire need of a video presence but the vigilantes were too afraid to be stationed there.

I stepped off on nine to see Denise’s eyebrows rise and her mouth open slightly meaning I was precisely the person she was looking for but couldn’t yet address because of the phone at her ear. Afterwards she smiled hello and “Malkum Jenkins called, he’s in court waiting for you.”

“Nice to know, that it?”

“Tom’s looking for you.”

“Great. Since?”

“Maybe quarter to nine?”

“Time is it now?”

“Forty-two after ten.”

“I see, not good. Listen Denise if you’ll be so kind as to keep this little conversation confidential, I will now rotate my body in the appropriate manner and return home.”

“Sure.”

“Already one of those days let me tell you.”

“Sorry honey, he’s in his office.”

“Thanks.”

I walked until the brief hall ended then popped my head forward to spy Tom’s green door, three-quarters closed and adrift in a sea of varying browns. I listened and heard no speech that sounded as if it were being issued from behind clenched teeth then took exaggerated cat burglar steps to my office in the opposite corner. I was alone in there for a change although I saw it would be temporary. The furry jacket on the back of Leon’s chair, the kind with the leather ovals that tell old-timers like its owner where the elbows go, meant he would soon return and the white sneakers with pink touches on Julia’s desk meant she was nearby as well. I sat at my desk between theirs.

I stared at the jacket and just like that wanted to be Leon Greene, Esq. I wanted those life moments of highest suspense and relevance to be in my immutable past. Wanted to have been at that desk for thirty-five years and not find the slightest thing wrong with that. And in those years I would not once have worn casual clothes to work even if I wasn’t going to court or meeting one of my clients, all of whom incidentally I would give the benefit of the doubt despite decades of empirical opposition, and in all that time I would never have raised my voice or used salty language at the office either. And I would bring that quiet dignity to the office every day without fail by the sharpest eight-thirty and would remove it no later than four-thirty, with the same forty-five minutes excluded for the lunch Helen would pack, and allow myself only one glass of wine a night with my light dinner at five-thirty and maybe trade some words about our kids and their kids and draw steadily increasing paychecks and save for retirement and talk about pensions and never produce any evidence of having noticed that every square inch of the third inhabitant of that square, one Julia Ellis, was skin-raisingly gorgeous and at precisely that moment I realized I no longer wanted to be Leon.

Although Leon wouldn’t be essentially hiding in that office avoiding Tom either. No, if Tom were looking for him, Leon would report front and center. Even if he was Casi and so never got to the office before ten and that day was pushing eleven and had a separate lengthy list of transgressions each singly capable of producing supervisory ire. So I pretended to be Leon. I stood up and took purposeful strides to the door where I almost ran into Dane.

“Where you off to in such a rush, to snatch up a square?”

“Yeah.”

“Figured.”

“What? Square? What square?”

“Right.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t heard about the pool, you do work here right?”

“What pool?”

“The macabre office pool your colleagues are running on Baby Tula’s fate? Dead or alive being the major demarcation with all sorts of ensuing possibilities. Five bucks a square.”

“That’s what you came in here for? To see if I would attempt to exploit the disappearance of an infant for monetary gain?”

“Not in the slightest. I’m here because you remember the case I told you about last night, the one you should work with me on? Well I just got the video, let’s eyeball it.”

“Video?”

“Whole thing’s on video, I told you.”

“Oh.”

“Come on, to the video room Robin.”

“Have to see Tom first, I’ll meet you in there.”

I took a deep preparatory breath outside Tom’s then a woman who seemed to recognize me but for whom I could not reciprocate handed me some papers and said
sign this
before spotting someone else and rushing off in that direction.

I walked through the door and immediately into a knee-high cardboard box. Now I was face-first in more boxes and crawling on them to the chair in the corner from where I looked at their owner and said:

“What the?”

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I meant to do that. What is all this?”

“Moving offices man, eighteen years in those boxes.”

His walls were bare with light rectangles and squares where frames had hung

“You been in here that whole time?”

“Been in here since I was you. Funny, people think it was some kind of symbolic gesture not moving to a better office when I kept getting bounced up but look at this shit, would you want to move it? Not that neatness—”

No. Tom’s hair, it was as if he had managed to sleep on all sides of his head simultaneously. And the loop of his tie was always partially visible under his unbuttoned collar.

“Guess it could be worse,” he said. “I could be packing involuntarily to leave for good, you know?” He grinned and put his feet on his desk.

I looked at the papers in my hand. Their title was PETITION TO DEPOSE T. SWATHMORE and below a little statement of facts was a lot of signatures.

“What do you got there?” he said.

“You looking for me?”

“Yeah, you know, if I ever come in here again, check the computer and see that you arraigned seventeen felonies in an arraignment shift—”

“Oh c’mon.”

“You already have the highest caseload in the office.”

“The cases kept coming in, what am I supposed to do? Brilliant Debi puts Linda in arraignments on her penultimate day.”

Tom was talking and gesticulating and the rectangle at my feet with the center star of broken glass wanted it known that the trustees of Harvard College on recommendation of the faculty had conferred upon Thomas Swathmore the degree of Bachelor of Arts along with all the rights and privileges that thereunto appertained and I knew the law school felt similarly whereas the petition in my lap weighed down by signatures alleged
a pattern of abuse and intimidation
except with respect to
favorites
. I sensed silence and Tom looking at me.

“Right,” I said.

“What do you mean right? Right is not responsive.”

“No I mean, what are you talking about?”

“This mandatory you picked up.”

“Right, what about him?”

“I have to take it from you.”

“What are you talking about? I’m all over it.”

“It’s too much too soon.”

“That’s crazy. I’m going out to the scene today it’s probably not even going to be indicted.”

“What is it?”

“Sex assault, they’re known to each other and there’s a delay in reporting. No medical attention either. Like I said, I’m all over it. Don’t worry so much.”

“Okay but keep Debi and Conley posted on what’s happening. All right?”

I turned the petition over, face down onto my lap.

“If you
were
packing involuntarily, big deal, you know Kevin Miller?”

“Sure.”

“He says you’re the best trial attorney in the city. For now anyway.”

“Oh for now huh? Who the fuck talks to me like this kid?” He was laughing and looking around for invisible support.

“So it’s true?”

“No, I doubt it’s true.”

“Let me quote, something like
the closest you can get to perfection in a complicated endeavor
, about Rollins I think.”

“Probably, but I don’t think so.”

“Why not? You see Fallon on the news last night, all fake-outraged about his client’s innocence, what a clown.”

“Clown? No he’s damn good, we came in here together.”

“Get out, I didn’t know that.”

“Sure, in this very office.”

“You were tight?”

“Still are, I’ll tell him your feelings. No, we used to go on each other’s investigations. Ten, eleven at night we’re in neighborhoods you wouldn’t believe. Now this Alabama death penalty project, did I hear you were involved in that too?”

“This picture, it looks like you’re throwing something, what is this, who’s this?”

I showed him the picture of the smiling girl whom he identified as his daughter.

“You yell at her?” I said.

“Ah, that was dumb, but I told myself when I became head that I would not run an untrained office you know? People here six, nine months already looking at their watches, I don’t know what it is. So I lost it a bit there I guess. Speaking of, how exactly do you have time for a death penalty case?”

“Please, that’s a group situation, three attorneys. We have a meeting this afternoon where we get the transcripts and all the discovery then each group does an appeal-type deal.”

“That it?”

“Pretty much, there’s this Murder Two.”

“What?”

“Not mine, just considering working on it with another attorney.”

“Who?”

“He’s not on our floor, new guy, lateral from Florida.”

“Florida? Don’t know him, we get five new guys a day though.”

“He’s good.”

“What’s so good about him?”

“He’s fearless, I hear, I think, what do I know?”

“Or reckless.”

“Well I don’t know,” I started to walk out. “If I’m in it I’ll make sure everything gets done and my guess is he can try a case.”

“Look don’t get the impression that I don’t appreciate it because I do. I got about twenty attorneys going to their union reps and looking to file a grievance because their caseloads are too high. Then I got a handful like you who want to take on anything they can get their hands on and who are doing some truly great work. What I’m saying is you’ve been doing this two years not twenty and I know this will surprise you but you don’t know it all, acquittals notwithstanding. So slow down and be very thorough. That’s more important than being good in the way that you’re good. And who you align yourself with is important too. My feeling on some attorneys is that they can be naturals and great fun in a courtroom but that kind of thing is overrated. How many cases go to trial? Two, three percent at most? What kind of work do you do on those hundreds of cases that don’t go to trial? Isn’t that a better indication of the kind of attorney you are?”

“What’s with the bike still?” I engaged and disengaged the brake. “It’s like two degrees out there.”

“I love it. The air wakes you up and gets you going, ready to come in here and fight some more.”

“All the way from the upper west?”

“Every morning.”

“It’s pretty beat up too, maybe a new one.”