A Naked Singularity: A Novel (78 page)

“Fine the car’s fine, a tremendous automotive machine destined to give you years of faithful service.”

“So?”

“I forgot.”

“Ah.”

“But it’s not my fault. Who doesn’t call the night before to remind? Especially knowing how I am.”

“I tried.”

“What happened?”

“Never mind, let’s split. I love you, thanks for getting me.”

“Seriously, it’s quite an imposition. They have cabs you know.”

On the way home, in the car, Alana and I spoke. I told her briefly about Alabama, leaving out any mention of The Orchard. She asked about Armando. I told her it was a damn near hopeless situation, a situation that lacked hope. She said there must be something that could be done and I said no there mustn’t. Then she told me some bad things. She said Marcela had kind of reached then passed her breaking point with respect to little Mary’s silence. She described a bit of imploring screaming that was met by more silence and that was then believed, principally by those who had no medical basis for holding such beliefs, to have resulted in Marcela not feeling so great, which in turn resulted in her being taken to a hospital where she stayed overnight out of precaution and concern for her due-any-day child. And I was further informed that during that brief hospital stay Marcela’s mother, the mother Alana and I shared with her, took the opportunity to disclose that she had some rather mysterious lumps in some rather troublesome areas and that she had not disclosed this fact earlier out of a fear that she would be forced to have them inspected by those making their living in the medical profession, a profession said mother held in decidedly low esteem and from which she never again expected to hear anything resembling good news. The result being that certain tests were in fact done and all that was left to do now was await the results, which waiting it was understood could be done simultaneously with the wait for Mary to talk and Marcela to give birth to another human whose presence would no doubt some day give rise to feelings similar to the ones we were currently enjoying. And I was not to mention the whole lumps thing to anyone because Alana had been sworn to secrecy, a secrecy she placed the highest importance on.

“Yet you’re telling me.”

“Telling you what?”

“You’re telling me about the lumps.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is that despite being sworn to secrecy and despite claiming to take that responsibility very seriously you have nonetheless just given me the information thereby violating your pledge.”

“Yes but only because I am in turn swearing you to secrecy not only with respect to the lumps but also with respect to my telling you about the lumps, comprende?”

“I think so, you’re saying that being sworn to secrecy doesn’t really mean that in a literal sense it just means that if you do disclose the information you must in turn swear the new illicit hearer to secrecy. So I can tell anyone I want to about the lumps as long as I swear them to secrecy.”

“God no, swear you won’t tell anyone.”

“I swear.”

And unlike her I didn’t, although I later thought about it a lot and every time I did it halted my breath a bit. There was more too, none of it secret but all of it unsettling, with terms you hear in campaign speeches made from behind podiums or late at night from gesticulating men eager to tell you they dropped out of college: terms like
job security
and
health care coverage
. Terms I can barely stand in those contexts and positively despise when the subject is my family, people for whom I should have long ago made those terms irrelevant. And as Alana said these things she began to fade from view and hearing until she disappeared entirely and I sat alone in the moving car. It was one of those times when you sense that something critical but indefinable that relates to your life and how it’s lived has ended irrevocably and so you feel an anxious loss. Out of this solemn desinence I felt various incunabula threaten to emerge none of which promised anything of even slight appeal.

Then Alana returned and spoke more of the same and though we were in the car and thus could have gone to the people she spoke of relatively easily instead I just nodded and dropped her off at her apartment. After that I drove around a bit, not really knowing where to go or how. Until finally I went home, threw my bags on the couch, erased all my messages without listening to them and went right back out the door. On my way down I heard a loud, vaguely-familiar voice in Angus’s apartment. The noise from in there swelled at an accelerating rate until I knocked on the door and heard in response a flurry of activity followed by a cricket-exposing-type-silence. Then Angus opened the door looking artificially animated and wary. I saw that there was no one but him. But before I could investigate he grabbed me by the shirt and pulled me in screwball-comedy-style. It felt odd in there.

“Remember what I said yesterday?” he said.

“We didn’t talk yesterday.”

“You sure?”

“I just got back a few hours ago.”

“That’s right you were in Arkansas.”

“Alabama.”

“Two states? How long were you gone? I saw you the other day didn’t I? The day before the day before yesterday no?”

“No, never mind.”

“Well you’ve nevertheless heard this I’m sure,” he leaned over and dropped something on my lap. It was that day’s New York Post and it was so proud of itself. The Post was exercising its exclusive right to announce the exact time and place where the Tula video, the Video Vigilantes footage of the baby-killing seven-year-olds, would be premiered. That very Monday at 6:08 p.m. was what it said using large numbers. In The City Hall Press Room it added with the haughtiness that comes from exclusivity. “And look at that,” Angus added pointing to the triangular mirror clock on the wall that digitally reported 6:06 p.m. I looked at Angus who had dropped onto his sofa, elbows on knees, chin on hands.

“I’m going to go,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t want to see it.”

“Have you lost control of your faculties?”

“Why? I’m not interested.”

“I don’t see where you have a choice. Look this is my favorite part, see the solemn look on the mayor as if his mere presence at such a distasteful event requires an almost superhuman effort on his part? See the face?”

“You look pretty run down yourself Angus.”

“I’m excited.”

“You don’t look excited. You look almost saggy really.”

“Well now’s not really the time to discuss it but it has been a strange couple days to say the least.”

“Where are Alyona and Louie?”

“Shhh here it is.”

Television seemed bigger than I remembered and might even have been new and improved as Angus routinely replaced perfectly functional sets if he believed he could detect any diminution whatsoever in their representational performance. At any rate, the result was that the people inside it didn’t seem much smaller than the two of us watching. The Casio Carousel on top announced in yellow its IDLE status.

Then the room was suddenly bathed in a surreal silence and the reason for that was the people depicted on the screen. Those people appeared to not know what to do next. There seemed to be no one there who was in charge. Someone like a mayor is never really in charge in a situation like that and that was evident from the way he looked around waiting for instruction. Our silence persisted with neither of us thinking of moving or otherwise disturbing it. Then, at the exact moment that Angus’s triangle changed its numbers to 6:08, the mayor acknowledged some unseen person with his chin, rose from the row of folding chairs that had been carefully arranged on a stage to face a quiet invited audience, and walked to the podium. The podium bowed under the weight of its multi-microphone hat; each microphone clearly identified by its owner while vying to hear the mayor best. Toad spoke, haltingly at first but then with growing confidence when a Television with a built-in VCR (or was that a built-in Carousel?) was wheeled into the room and rushed to his side. The mayor spoke with what he thought was the appropriate solemnity. He pointed toward the people he had just sat with, one of whom was identified as a Video Vigilantes bigwig by the crawl at the bottom of the screen, and clapped his hands without sound. Then he held up an odd-looking tubular device as a foreign head suddenly appeared behind the microphones to inform the invisible audience that there would be no questions until the footage had been completely aired. This new guy thanked The Post and in response the camera cut back to the row of chairs. There one of the guys nodded gravely while the previously helpful crawl stood mute. The mayor was at Television now where he proceeded to insert his tube. The whole event had such a high-tech sheen to it that I was surprised by the third-rate letters that appeared on the screen to announce we would soon be viewing The Tula Kidnapping Etc. and that the so-titled footage was A Video Vigilantes Production. What next appeared on the screen in no way resembled a dispassionate frills-lacking recording though. Instead we saw an active camera zooming in and out and panning from side to side. Different angles were tried and rejected. Black and white rejected in favor of color and various filters used before settling on a slightly blue one. Those preliminary matters determined, the picture revealed a green, old-fashioned baby stroller appearing from the left of the screen as the audience gasped. Now the people on the stage seemed to bend toward their screen as across from them Angus did the same. I wished I had left.

I looked away then back again. I felt no suspense, only horror then relief when the screen emitted a ghastly pulse of yellow light before going black. I wasn’t sure at first what exactly we’d just seen. The producer had done that thing where your screen at home is the equivalent of the external screen at the location so it wasn’t until seconds later when the camera panned back to reveal a stunned but noisy group at the press conference (the mayor had literally thrown his hands up) that we understood the fault lay in our city’s hall and not in that living room. A guy there took charge and began to fiddle with the appliance and even the mayor finally got up and gave it a respectful whack to the side but it was fruitless. Then the overhead bulbs that provided the only remaining light in the press room also went out. This last failure led to a complete surrender, one that took us back to the news studio then to regularly scheduled programming.

“Well that’s quite the letdown. How’s that for timing huh?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I have to go.”

“Okay, I have a legal question before you split though.”

“Shoot.”

“Do you think The Post now gets to announce the rescheduled date for the footage? I mean is this blackout, brownout, or whatever it is, a contingency they prepared for?” I shrugged and left. I heard the door close behind me as I went down the stairs and before I could even hit the street I heard that strangely familiar voice start up again. I got back in my car and drove to the area of 410. Exactly thirty-one hours remained before the relevant 3:00 a.m. I looked around at this scene of a future crime and was struck by how absurd the whole idea was. I left my life for a few days, returned, and that made the whole thing seem impossible, almost comic. I felt intense doubt. I envied the people I saw walking around me. People who would not for a moment consider what I had considered and would never have reason to. It was important, I thought and everyone thought, when you get to a certain age and point in life, to have created a specific conception of who you were, the things you did and didn’t do. I decided that the planning with Dane had been fun and thrilling in a weird way but it never really corresponded to any potential truth. Its subject matter never concerned something I would ever actually attempt. And that realization seemed to fill the area with a bothersome defeatism.

The next day I would go to work and Dane would want to know why the ignored calls et cetera. I would tell him that as far as the caper went I was out, was never truly in. I would add that he was of course free to do as he wished with no interference from me, each man being famously the agent of his own victory or defeat. I would speak those words, the whole thing would be over, and I would enjoy a peace I had not felt in weeks.

I got out of the car. It was maybe not as cold as I remembered it pre-Alabama. People were everywhere on that street too, small clouds shooting from their mouths as they milled around flat-tire repair shops and fried chicken places with bulletproof glass. And I remember how all those people looked around and laughed in unison when a sound like a record being played backwards was suddenly heard throughout followed by the sight of every light on the street suddenly dimming rapidly until reaching complete darkness. The many stores that seconds earlier had the streets surrounded and seemed so intractable now vanished. In this sudden black it was difficult to make out any object or take a certain step. Then as abruptly as the blackness had come the lights were resurrected; creeping up in intensity until they shone even brighter than before, omnipresent and ready again to illume the way.

But if I were the author of my own being, I would doubt nothing, I would experience no desires, and finally I would lack no perfection
.

—Rene Descartes

David Hume was his favorite Alyona once said. This was during one of our first real conversations, at the end of which I think we exchanged keys to our respective apartments although I almost immediately misplaced his. I said I guessed there was nothing wrong with Hume provided it was acknowledged that Descartes was The Man. At the end of the conversation I went home and made this list:

    1. Descartes

    2. Kant

    3. Wittgenstein

    4. Kripke

    5. Lewis

    6. Hume

A list with which I would now strenuously disagree but I am merely reporting what it was at the time.

Anyway it was Hume who observed that everything we say we know about what he called matters of fact (e.g. that the sun will rise and set every day) we learn through our understanding of cause and effect. We see one event always follow another and as a result come to the conclusion that the preceding event
caused
the other and that in the future the events will continue to share this causal relationship. We extrapolate too so that, for example, we don’t have to have ever actually seen an unsupported bowling ball to know it will fall. We know this from having seen other similar objects behave. Nor do we have to be familiar with the natural laws that cause the ball to drop as evidenced by the fact that even young unschooled children know what will happen.