A Naked Singularity: A Novel

by Sergio De La Pava

  As I neared the outside of Cymbeline’s courtroom the atmosphere seemed a lot looser than I remembered it. My chin was down as I was hoping to avoid anybody I knew and when I went inside I sat in the last row of a surprisingly full courtroom. Hours passed and nothing happened, Cymbeline didn’t take the bench and no cases were done.

  At quarter to one I figured I would have to come back in the afternoon. But then some clown I didn’t know walked in followed closely by Sam Gold who didn’t see me. The Sergeant nodded when he saw them then motioned to the clerk. The clerk in turn called Cymbeline to say the defense attorney had appeared then he called for a DA to stand. Said defense attorney looked nervous and Gold kept whispering in his ear.

  Then a DA, looking just as green, arrived followed soon thereafter by a court reporter. And when the judge materialized it wasn’t Cymbeline. It was a new judge I hadn’t seen before and I didn’t catch his name but I heard say he had come over from the Bronx and would be taking over Cymbeline’s part indefinitely. And I heard more, that the nervous attorney in the well was a new lateral hire bought in to replace the fired Casi. Don’t ask. That before leaving mysteriously Cymbeline had decreed that all of this Casi’s cases were to be transferred to her part but that such move had been rendered moot by his subsequent firing, although this new attorney had taken over all those cases just the same.

  Only three cases were on the calendar that day and as each was called the new judge would ask the clerk and the parties for a little background. And I had never thought to look at the calendar so I was more than a little surprised when calendar number one was called and Glenda Deeble was brought out from the back, her manacled hands trailing her as she entered. Save for the considerably more swollen stomach, she looked no better or worse, just the way she would apparently always look. The clerk explained that she had two cases. That she had somehow inexplicably made bail on the original methadone sale only to pick up a felony assault on a police officer stemming from another prostitution arrest. Which was the DA’s cue to insert that there would be no offer on either case and they were recommending consecutive time for something approaching a ten-year minimum. The attorney wiped some sweat off his meaty brow, the judge made a face that was hard to interpret, and Glenda said something no one understood as they led her back in.

  Number two on the calendar was a co-defendant drug case. I watched Terrens Lake and Malkum Jenkins come out together followed by an explanation that even I had a hard time following at first about how Jenkins had a pending VOP and sale in Sizygy and was in a program but picked up another sale in which it was alleged he sold with Lake who himself had two other cases, one of which he had already pled guilty on but had yet to be sentenced. The numbers thrown around then weren’t pretty either and my replacement perspired some more. It was agreed that Lake needed a new attorney since the guy who took the plea was nowhere to be found and there was a conflict on his newest case. They were put back in as one.

  The last case was The People (I thought every last one the city had) versus timorous Raul Soldera. I stood up out of habit then sat back down quickly. He looked worse, his time flowing more rapidly than ours and the wear apparent. The DA did the little synopsis this time. He explained that Soldera needed to be sentenced then and there. That he had warranted and had to be returned involuntarily.

  “Why wasn’t he sentenced at the time of the plea?” the judge said having lowered his chin to see above his eyeglasses.

  “He was sick your honor.”

  “Was? Have you looked at him?”

  “Yes judge but he warranted.”

  The judge looked up and stared at the DA. He shuffled some papers and mumbled then looked at the defense table where Soldera sat.

  And what took place next I wasn’t sure was really happening at first. Because that judge was asking Soldera’s new attorney if he had an application with respect to the interests of justice and this defendant’s conviction, to which the attorney responded with true bewilderment but the DA somehow caught on pretty quickly and started protesting that any such motion has to be in writing. The judge looked at the DA then started scribbling furiously. He told a court officer to give the paper to defense counsel and have him sign it, which even this guy knew enough to do but only after first looking at Gold. And when the paper was returned to the judge he turned immediately to the DA and asked him if he wanted to respond to defendant’s motion to dismiss in the interests of justice. Then the DA rambled a bit off his cuff, not normally a DA strength, until the judge looked up and verbally wondered are you done? When the DA indicated that he guessed he was, the judge gave his ruling:

  “I have before me a so-called Clayton motion to dismiss in the interests of justice just submitted by the defense,” he said looking at Raul. “I also have before me a defendant who frankly looks like he should welcome death and who is here on a nonviolent charge that probably should never have been indicted in the first place. The defendant is released and his case is dismissed.”

  Soldera looked at his attorney, this man he’d likely met minutes before, with a look that seemed to say does that mean what I think it means? Gold went up to the rail and spoke words I couldn’t hear. The Judge got up to leave.

  “Mr. Soldera,” he said, “go and sin no more. Or at the very least, what do you say we avoid this particular sin?” Then he left through the back and the part closed for lunch. Soldera, Gold, and the new attorney walked by without seeing me and I heard Raul tell the new guy he was the best attorney he’d ever had. I thought about going up to the court officers and asking for the Judge’s name but decided that, really, it didn’t matter.

  When I stepped out into the hall I looked to my right in response to a low guttural moan and saw something looking at me from down the hall.

  It was Ballena.

  It looked at my face.

  I jumped back into the courtroom, went straight for the well where I flashed my attorney pass at the clerk, and disappeared into the area behind the courtroom before anyone could voice an objection. This time I knew where I was going and before long I was running down the stairs taking two and three at a time. By the time I opened the door to the street I was covered in sweat. I climbed out of that pit the door opened into and although the area appeared to be safe for the moment I thought I should get the hell out of there as soon as possible. I walked towards Centre Street and saw no one at all.

  Then I hit Centre and looked to the left to see the back of The Whale maybe half a block away. I felt a great fear then. It caught and strangled the breath in my throat and wouldn’t let go. I put my back to the building and watched The Whale walk away from me. And anyone who passed it coming toward me would invariably look back in horrified disbelief while others even crossed the street to avoid coming near it so that human traffic appeared to involuntarily part before the immense figure. I twirled the gold key in my pocket a couple of times just watching.

  Then I let it go and followed The Whale.

  I thought then that Alyona couldn’t be right because, while you would certainly expect to find someone like me in a world that had been quarantined from the healthy, there was no way someone like Marcela or Mary would be there with me. Along with a lot of other people I could think of.

  Ballena made a left on Canal and I followed less than a block away. The paper that morning had a little feature called This Date in History and I thought of the first time Benitez had one of his fights go the distance. This was against Victor Mangual and it must have been the first time Wilfred began to grasp that he couldn’t just do whatever he wanted in the ring. That Life didn’t work that way. I wondered if he could even remember that day anymore and I guessed that Mangual probably felt pretty good when he recalled that day so there was that too. I thought how despite what Benitez and others look like today, people still slip in between ropes and into boxing rings. How every week, somewhere in the world, someone gets caught with a vicious left to the liver that steals their breath. How they grimace and drop and are then pre
sented with a choice. How, unlike those who are barely conscious and obey their first instinct to try and rise, these fighters have a real choice to make. And they’re okay to the head so they know fully what’s happening and also often know they’re not going to be anything near the next Benitez so ultimately it doesn’t really matter if they get up or stay down. But they get up anyway. A lot of them stand up through the pain and get ready to absorb more if only because they think that’s what they’re supposed to do.

  I quickened my pace and the distance between The Whale and I lessened a bit. I realized I never found out where in Florida Dane was from and where he would be returning to and I wondered if maybe he and Angus might not meet one day. Maybe Toomberg was in Boca Raton and they could all get together there.

  Then I thought that if Dane was right then the person assigned to hang me had better hope I didn’t see him coming. And I was going to do something about that girl with the distended stomach too. I decided then that I would maybe keep practicing law. Yeah I’d lost my way a bit there but there was still time to get a cozy office in that area where I could wait for leggy women in black veiled hats to appear with cases that would involve me in all sorts of madcap adventures. I let the space to The Whale grow. I didn’t worry he would suddenly turn and spot me since I knew from experience that any such movement by him would announce itself in advance and with enough warning for me to duck out of sight.

  The distance between us grew. The restorative sun that shines on sinner and saint alike warmed my face and I resolved to leave. Everywhere around me was in a still quiet. Then the slow soft strains of an actual violin filled the air. When I turned my head I saw a luminous girl no older than twelve standing behind an open violin case at her feet. She held the end of the bow with just three fingers and her perfect circle of a face seemed to comment on every note. The Missa Solemnis? Maybe. I stared at her as if from a spell and heard what I can only describe as Truth.

  But when I looked back it was no ephemeron but rather The Whale, immense and eternal, staring directly at me. It displayed its version of a smile as surrounding people stopped what they were doing, looked grimly at the distorted scabrous face, then followed its eyesight-line to me. They looked at me as if with pity. Ballena stood perfectly still, waiting, I thought, to see which way I would run before pursuing. At first I moved nothing except my head and mouth and that only to tell the violinist to beat it, which she sort of did.

  Then I took, on unsteady legs, tentative steps towards Ballena. The snarl smile on The Whale grew as it came forward to meet me. I kept walking and the beast continued to grow before me until even the slightest detail of its face could be discerned. The eyes didn’t line up, the chin seemed almost serrated, and the teeth were more like fangs. And the few people in the immediate area had no idea what they were about to see but seemed to shy away from us nonetheless. We were maybe eleven feet apart.

  At that instant in Time, from that location in Space, I heard the beginnings of a menacing noise off to the margins of where we stood, like scores of cosmic locomotives loosed and gathering in the distance, a low rumble that swelled with the passing seconds but otherwise remained the same, and the sky managed to darken with the sun lit brighter than ever; I saw the horizons rise as if to merge directly above us while the ground beneath our feet began to sink; jagged swaths of earth along with the structures and people atop were disappearing concentrically as if into a drain and countless humans whistled by making sounds that were either pleas for mercy or yelps of celebration; I saw events and deeds displaced from their proper setting and from notions like past or future and I stared, through regret, at all the ill I’d wrought.

  There I stood, rooted, waiting for the disordered wave to arrive.

  The wave sped in approach and would either carry stellar material from the farthest reaches of the universe and bury it violently into our very bodies or else take what was already within us, that which was central to our core, and from it form new stars.