A Naked Singularity: A Novel (21 page)

“Wow. But what kind of hot dog did Armando come in? You didn’t say”

“Kind?”

“Sure there are different kinds. You’ve got everything from the watery, brown Sabretts of Midtown to the grilled, sheepskin-encased, red Nathan’s of Coney Island.”

“I don’t think the van had that kind of detail Alana.”

“You barely mentioned little Mary either. What does she have to say for herself?”

“The usual, nothing.”

“Still not yapping?”

“Correct.”

“I can picture the hysteria as we speak. So what? That’s what I say. Maybe she just doesn’t have anything to say at this point. You know when you first walk into a gathering? You don’t let loose with an immediate verbal hemorrhage do you? Of course not, everybody hates those maniacs. First you kind of soak things in. I say Mary’s still in her soaking phase and when she’s done soaking and dries off we’re in for some serious insights. Besides I was a little weird when I was a kid and I—”

“Was?”

“—turned out what passes for all right. On another topic I must admit I’m having trouble wrapping my cerebellum around this 24 thing. By that I mean you turning into this number. I mean if
you’re
that old then it won’t be that long—”

“Twenty-eight months.”

“—before I’m that old. What do you make of this? Five years ago if you pointed to someone and told me that person was twenty-four I would have kind of felt sorry for them. Soon I’ll be the person I once pitied!” While she was saying this, Alana was sort of climbing through the window and onto the sofa. Except now she looked stuck betwixt in and out with her body undulating like a seesaw and her belly and the windowsill serving as fulcrum. “No I’m actually liking this,” she said when I tried to pull her in and so stayed there teetering noisily with her black Gene Simmons platform shoes flailing all kinetic behind her.

“Less
volumen
babe,” I said maybe louder than any noise she was making. “You’ll wake the entire house including me.”

“Don’t tempt me, I’ll get this party started up again.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” because she could have.

“But fine I’ll whisper if you insist.”

“I didn’t.”

“I’ll whisper this,” and she did whisper the ensuing but it was a strange whisper with her lips staying ventriloquist still and her eyes transfixed on what? “It’s not a vanity thing you know?” she said.

“What isn’t?”

“Do you?”

“What?”

“Know?”

“No.”

“You do?”

“Know?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“It’s not some lame corporate-feast-on-your-insecurities-fucking-Pepsi-generation-youth-is-better garbage,” Alana said, “that causes me to think about numbers. No, as I see it it’s about intensity. I have to laugh when I hear somebody refer to
carefree youth
or some such nonsense. Youth is everything but. Six, seven years ago I would stay up all night wondering if some guy liked me or not. More than that really, I could have deliberated that entire time on what a look or phrase had
really
meant. Now some guy could propose to me and I’d probably tell him to shoot me a follow-up e-mail so I won’t forget to get back to him. I get tired now. When I meet someone they always remind me of a previous someone in a way that makes any further investigation feel unnecessary,” I could tell from Alana’s intake of air that a lot more ramble was coming so I opened my ears a bit more and said nothing, the best course of action in those instances. “I read somewhere that the music I like now is the music I’ll like for the rest of my life. My fucking brain or something like that won’t find new kinds of music pleasurable from about this point on. What the hell is that? Good thing I like this music. C’mon youth wasn’t carefree it was intense and intense is good. It’s like this house. I never want to come here but when I do I end up liking it. Just to see everything through that prism again you know? A happy youth I must have had overall. Or was I miserable but with a poor memory? Oh whatever. Remember that old record player in the lime green case, the one with the detachable knobs? I saw it in the garage the other day. In the garage Casi! I put it on and it worked. I mean I didn’t have any records to really test it but it was spinning and that was amazing enough for me. I remember the oldsters would start in with the endless clave patterns and you and I would reach for that thing in protest. Then up to your room for a little Reader’s Digest Edition of the LVB piano sonatas, remember thinking RD was like good? And remember we would limit ourselves to the pre-Heiligenstadt Testament ones to exclude our runaway favorite, the cataclysmic Appasionata, with you being definitely partial to the Opus 28 Pastorale because it was supposedly after this one that he told Krumholz he would be taking a new path and me arguing that those kinds of ancillary matters were not fairly considerable and that sometimes, just occasionally, overwhelming popularity is warranted and that the second 27, The Moonlight, with its initial melancholia was the greater work? Remember that? Well if you listen to them now I bet you’ll be sent up to that room whether you’re willing or not. And if you listen the right way then you’re forced to actually
be
that person. Isn’t that just the height of weirdness? That’s what this house is, a giant green record player with detachable knobs, which is usually fine but can sometimes be the opposite. Sometimes it can be the realization that images seem blurrier now, sounds more muffled, and yet somehow we’re inappositely picking up speed. We’re picking up speed and you and I have been thrown out of the kitchen where we used to make ice cream floats, armed solely with ATM cards that have our pictures on them and a little bar graph in the corner that’s somehow linked to our fingerprints but only until they get the DNA coding capability fully functional and maybe your green record player does still technically work but not really and don’t pay it any mind regardless because I have a fifty disc CD player that positively compels neighbors to call the police and LVB sounds twenty times better but not as
good
so I kill the lights and blast it anyway so that when the opening movement of the C minor Symphony nears its close at allegro con brio tempo I swear Casi that the sky is going to literally open up and forget all of Ludwig’s later Ode to Joy crap because now it’s God—for want of a better word—surveying the broken to regretfully diagnose a violent remedy then reaching down and
doing something
about this mess, no longer content to just watch, and you were right about Lincoln Center that time because yes it was great and how could it fail to be but it does have to be louder, or more accurately we needed more money to get closer and make it louder, loud enough that the notes come straight from heaven, replace your bone marrow and you start to question yourself as a physical being and I think the more time passes the louder and louder it will have to get in order to be heard above the din . . . hear that? That’s the din.”

“Who uses their car horn at this hour?”

“I didn’t say he was overly bright.”

“Stay over, tell him you’re staying over.”

“Nah, better go, but tell mom I’ll call her tomorrow.” She looked up with just her eyes. “I adore the phone, don’t you?”

“I abhor it.”

More din.

“Love you,” she said through a hurried kiss. “Don’t forget your present,” she added as she swung backward off the window ledge then out of the window’s raindropped mise-en-scène. I debated which interpretation to apply to that statement but now even quasi-sobriety proved fleeting and without Alana as distraction, and my foot incredibly on the sofa arm, a resurgent visual tremolo threatened to overrun me and the room I was in. I realized then that while Alana and I had done our little remembrance of lost time I had overlooked relevant things happening then and there and so forgot to ask if her work was selected for that gallery opening she had bated her breath for. More importantly, I forgot to ask her if she knew what happens to the homeless when they die. Do they have funerals? What happens to their bodies?

I sank further into the sofa, still eschewing contact with the floor. Your ear hurts I thought. The twin lights became one then quickly none, leaving the room in a permeating, haunting black. Then that car door sucking sound again.

Just think how you’ll feel when even your basest desires are quenched before they’ve even had the chance to fully form
.

—Gary Dullen ®

Someone once told me that whatsoever you fear most ardently young man (he was old) you will just as assuredly, in the long run, be forced to confront and in the ensuing years I had found those inchoately prophetic words to be, like most of that antediluvian nut’s declarations, almost wholly without merit. Therefore, walking on the block of my apartment, thirty-six hours after Alana split, I felt confident I would not have to engage in more social interaction and for that I could thank the cold, which had spread so unchecked it was almost visible now. It drove the Sunday afternoon people indoors, this cold did, and made me feel like a sole post-apocalyptic survivor wandering the ruins of a once-proud civilization while bathing in the unmistakable lure of unobserved conduct. It was so alluring, this quiet solitude, that I found myself slowing to a complete stop that I might fully absorb the sensation until I realized that, incredibly, my body was no different than the ones that had obeyed the Fahrenheit and fled indoors.

But before I went inside, as I climbed the steps to my place, I saw that I hadn’t really been alone after all because it was then that this old-timer suddenly materialized from in front of the doorway and walked towards me. I say materialized because even though I know I was looking straight ahead the entire time I climbed the steps, I didn’t see this grim-reaper-looking fuck until he was practically on top of me, close enough that I could see intestinal steam escaping from the top of his bony head while he put me into increasingly sharper focus. Flat, disconcerting eyes this prick had, which I tried my best to avert but couldn’t as he came closer and closer before finally resting inches from my face. I stopped trying to look away and spoke haltingly in what sounded and felt like an extraneous voice.

His response was a crookedly pointy forefinger coming up glacially then out towards my shoulder. He was trying to grab me this old-timer and only then did I realize that he wore a bare chest drained of all blood and protected by only sporadic patches of salty hair. Then he was opening and closing his mouth desperately like a grounded aquatic. His mouth quickened and quickened but all he could manage to emit was this horrible wheezing and all I could do was stand pillar-of-salt still until his hand landed on my shoulder. He squeezed my shoulder the way you might a roller-coaster harness and I found myself looking around, somehow fearful that I could be accused of wrongdoing. But he wasn’t holding himself up, he was pulling me toward him. His other hand now rising, he was trying to hug me it seemed and I saw to my surprise that I was willing to be hugged. But then I thought better of it and kind of pulled away. It was then that the I’d-decided-centenarian showed an alacrity I had not previously thought possible. For after studying my eyes intently one last time, he wheeled away from me, jumped the four steps down to the sidewalk and ran away kicking his heels up. All this not slowly either. What the?

Inside I made my way up the stairs with minimal noise to see from the slanted rectangle of light on the hall floor that Alyona’s door was open. The trick here was to get past that open door without being seen but to do so in a manner where if I
was
seen I could seamlessly enter the apartment as if I’d intended to do so all along. Also my face would have to portray that imaginary intent until and unless I was sure I had not been spied. So I probably looked a bit like a crab moving sideways into the doorway, where I saw Traci and walked right in to hear Alyona avoid availing himself of all available segues and say:

“Casi this is perfect. You had all that dubious Catholic schooling, don’t you think the Second Coming of Christ has already occurred but nobody noticed it?”

“Just so you know where we are,” Traci said. “I’ve had some of this
useless
schooling myself and I think that by definition the Second Coming is not something that people will be able to fail to notice.”

“Why not?” said Angus who took care to keep his head perfectly still and focused on the screen. “I mean the whole thing’s a joke don’t get me wrong. It’s like, no offense, some elaborate fairy tale. But the question is whether within this illusory framework the Second Coming could be missed? After all many missed it the first time.”

“You’re saying
could be
but Alyona’s saying it already happened and we missed it,” said Traci.

“Nonsense,” Angus said. “We don’t miss anything anymore.”

“I think we miss a lot,” said Alyona. “There’s too much noise out there and we can only take in like one thing at a time. I’m telling you, I think it happened and we were like watching the Academy Awards or maybe the preceding Barbara Walters special. It slipped through the cracks.”

“No way,” said Angus almost anticipatorily. “Such an event would have to be announced. I’ve been listening and I haven’t heard any announcement.”

“On the contrary,” said Alyona. “More than a few people have announced they were messiahs making a return visit. For example, a recent wacko claimed to represent the Second Coming, at least before he set himself and all his compound’s inhabitants ablaze. Might not he have been telling the truth?”

“No,” said Angus his head still immobile. “You can tell from his announcement.”

“What more of an announcement do you want?” said Alyona.

“Television,” Angus said with unmistakable respect.

“I don’t think Jesus would go on Television,” said Traci.

“Wrong,” Angus said. “He absolutely would and the fact that none of these pretenders effectively exploited Television is incontrovertible proof that they were not the real deal. Remember, Jesus worked at a time that predated Guttenberg’s printing press. He found himself in the midst of an oral culture. So what did he do? Did he go around passing out written pamphlets detailing what he believed to a bunch of illiterates? Of course not, he told stories. He told stories because that was the way people acquired knowledge back then. He told really interesting stories too. Parables that were compelling despite the fact they did not often engage with the truth. Parables that were likely to be remembered by people who did not, by and large, write things down. Now if Jesus is God, as many believe, then you can assume he knew what he was doing and did things in such a way as to ensure that his methods would have their greatest possible effect. What would such a person do were he to return to our modern world? Surely such a person would instantly align himself with Television, easily the greatest communication tool of all time. He couldn’t write his message then and he couldn’t write it now—not to a world of illiterates. What’s he going to do? Tell some more of those nifty stories? Don’t make me laugh. Images comprise the only effective language left and God would want to be effective. Television and its various offshoots, that’s where you’d look for him if you thought he’d come back. Believe me, Jesus will speak Television.”