A Naked Singularity: A Novel (35 page)

If I thought about anything, it was how little I was thinking about things. Well that and how I had wanted to go home to shower and change but now it was too late. The shower I mostly craved, a shower almost always being welcome but especially under these circumstances.

Changing clothes would have been nice too. Instead I would be wearing a suit, which would make me look like the kind of person who has to wear a suit, which of course was exactly the kind of person I was. Still.

I wondered if she would be wearing those cool, light blue almost paper-like pajamas. Scrubs. Then the driver was looking at me like you planning on getting out buddy? Because we can’t get any more here than this.

And even though I was late I was early because she wasn’t there yet. Her greater sin wiped out mine and made it as if I’d been on time. But what if she wasn’t merely late, this stranger? What if she wasn’t coming at all? In that case it would certainly have been a mistake to sit at a table the portrait of expectation; said table being located in the precise 0,0 center of the square dining room with me half expecting a spotlight and a corny announcer. And I hadn’t wanted to sit at the table because I was perfectly content in the little waiting area they had, where I could pretend my fabulous companion was merely using the nearby restroom and where there seemed to be a sufficient turnover of customer personnel to keep this charade up for hours if need be. But, inexplicably, the bowtied guy with the burgundy leather portfolio seemed intent on getting me to abdicate this area and, with me all guilt-ridden about my late arrival in relation to the optimistic reservation time, I agreed.

I squirmed in my seat.

And the worst part was the way I now felt. Whereas I most certainly was not nervous when Dane asked me before, and in fact could not even truthfully envision being nervous in the near future, I now found that trying not to be nervous, in light of his confident proclamation, was akin to trying to follow someone’s directive to avoid thinking of a pink elephant. And like a fulfilled scriptural prophecy I found myself increasingly concerned with the kind of figure I would cut, where before I merely worried about her visage. After all, Marcela had raved about this woman’s beauty and Marcela herself looked ultrasharp making it unlikely she was easily impressed. And she was a doctor which at the very least seemed to ensure she would not be a blithering idiot.

What would she think of me? I cursed Dane for the fact I even cared. I started to feel actual dread at the thought of her appearing. But maybe this was misplaced. Was I an impressive individual? The first key would be the way I looked. But I truthfully couldn’t remember what I looked like being that my facial recognition weakness applied even to my own face. I could get up and look in the bathroom mirror but I was afraid that if the table was abdicated for even a second it would be immediately cleared by a member of what from all indications looked like an overly eager bus staff. Then I would have to call even greater attention to my plight in trying to retrieve the table from one of the current wait-listers. I pictured a microphone being used to announce that the table was already being used. By a single nervous-looking guy. Who had needed to use the bathroom!

Well I felt reasonably corporeally confident so I resolved to get a look at my face without exposing the table. What I did was take the knife I had been entrusted with, hold it up about eye level, and begin to spy the reflection. This was a bad idea as approximately three to five busboys immediately bum rushed me to replace what they assumed was a soiled utensil. Each seemed determined to be the first and within seconds three to five knives had formed a semicircle around my perfectly still face.

“A mirror sir? I don’t understand,” one said all confused as I took all the knives in the interest of a speedy resolution. I decided to avoid future sudden movements.

In college you waited a certain period of time and if the professor didn’t show you were free to split. The only problem was I couldn’t remember what this period of time was. But why was this a problem? Even if I could remember, who’s to say that would bear any relevance to my current predicament? Who was entitled to more time?

One of my professors, who often skirted the shit out of this grace period, whatever it was, once said that if she could have dinner with anyone she would pick Goethe because he was the last person on Earth to know everything.

Or was that something someone else said about one of their professors?

Tell you one thing, I wouldn’t have picked some tardy quack who makes you feel all insecure.

I would maybe pick CalTech physics professor John Schwarz though. For one, the dude knows his Superstring Theory cold, being perhaps the person most responsible for its development, and it seems likely that said theory may in turn ultimately prove to be the key to the Grand Unified Theory or GUT that physicists since Einstein have been searching for to reconcile Quantum Physics with the Theory of Relativity. Also I’m sure Schwarz, like all these guys, knows his physics history. Given that, at some point during dinner I would turn to him and say:
so John what about this deal whereby God, or Nature, or Fate, or whatever you want to call it seems to replace one ginormous theoretical physicist with another
? He would probably look at me all quizzical then I would remind him that Galileo Galilei died in 1642 only to be replaced by Sir Isaac Newton who was born in 1642, at least according to the Julian calendar used in England at the time. Later, James Clerk Maxwell died in 1879 only to be replaced by Albert Einstein born in 1879. My nephew Timmy would wonder if maybe there wasn’t enough room on Earth so that the predecessors died to make room for their successors. Mary might wonder the same thing but would likely remain silent.

Or I could be about to have dinner with Joe Satriani. Satch. We could talk about the palm-muted rhythm section of
Always With Me, Always With You
or we could talk about his former student in San Francisco, Kirk Hammett, and how Hammett gives him partial credit for that vicious interludy chord progression in
Creeping Death
.

Or what about the guy who trained Joe Louis for the second Schmeling fight?

Almost certainly dead I thought.

But why limit myself? Forget those puny living types. I could have dinner with fucking Beethoven! Ludwig van Beethoven my friends. I would ask him about Antonie Brentano, what went down there. Then I would say, between the appetizers and the main course, something like my sister Alana contends you didn’t really
create
music. Particularly with the late string quartets, she says, there’s no way any mere human could have created that stuff. Instead what you did was more like discover notes that had already been celestially arranged to optimal psycherattling effect. In other words, your function was not unlike that of a receiver picking up radio waves that could never be heard with the naked ear. Which theory, I would say, would seem to be belied by the apparent painstaking manner of your compositional process. What say you Lud?

But really these dinners would be no fun because of the pressure involved. A dinner with Beethoven would involve much gaping on my part and precious little coherence. Dinner with Traci on the other hand would be a blast. She wouldn’t even have to say much. Just the way I pictured she would dangle on the chair.

Whatever the grace period was, it had to be pretty damn close to expiring. Unless I had mixed up the dates or something—normally inconceivable but with my brain not unprecedented. I would wait just a smidgen longer. Or was it smidge?

In the meantime I would eat bread and think only pleasant thoughts.

Like how when I was a squirt the only thing I would consent to eat at restaurants was fried chicken with orange juice. If they didn’t have either I would have pout for dinner.

Or how a deaf Beethoven was completely unaware of the crowd’s rousing reaction to the initial performance of his Ninth Symphony until someone made him turn around. On May 7, 1824 in Vienna’s Kärnthernor Theater that happened.

I guess another important thing about the talent would have to be its potential profitability. I would want to make enough money so that I never had to think about $$ again. I wouldn’t have to screen calls from insistent student loan organizations. I could return their calls and maybe pay off all my debt right over the phone. I thought of what I would do then.

“Disappointed?”

“Huh? Oh hi. Sorry, what’d you say?”

“Disappointed?”

“No, I just. Oh I thought you weren’t coming and I guess I just spaced out.”

I hadn’t even gotten to do that thing where you stand when your guest arrives before she sat down across from me. Only now my brain had belatedly processed the information and I suddenly stood up while she remained seated, making it look like I was about to leave and basically making me feel like an idiot.

I sat back down.

“Just stretching the old legs,” I said. Mercifully the waiter came over about then, allowing us to use words whose content we were only marginally responsible for. Then as suddenly as he had appeared he was gone and we were once again on stage. To the extent that silence is somewhat acceptable in the context of the entire exercise it is almost verboten at the outset. The ball had to be set in motion.

On the Restaurant:

“Yeah, it’s pretty cool. What do you think?” I said.

“I’ve been here before,” she said.

“They certainly are attentive. The staff I mean.”

“Yes, they’re great.”

“Except it now seems to me that this sort of compulsive attention must be motivated by fear. I wouldn’t bet against an evil supervisory presence in this place.”

“I know the owner.”

“Well, I could be wrong.”

On the Weather:

“I hate it,” she said.

“Yeah, it’s brutal. I can’t remember it being this cold before. Makes you want to perpetually hang in front of a fire and have life delivered.”

“Hmph.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Imagine not having a place to stay in this cold?” I said.

“I have a fireplace I never use.”

“You should, it’s one of the few winter benefits. Do you ever have professional occasion to go to the morgue? Is it full of homeless hypothermiacs when it gets like this?”

“What?”

On Her Job:

“Plastic surgery? Really? That’s interesting.”

“Very lucrative.”

“It seems like a mostly New York/L.A. type thing right?”

“What do you mean?”

“Is actual plastic involved?”

“Sometimes. Why?”

“Well otherwise the term would seem to be a slap in the face at the type of person who becomes a patient.”

“I don’t think I have any idea what you’re talking about.”

“You know, like there’s surgery for when something is actually wrong and then there would be plastic surgery for plastic, superficial people who can’t cope with their nose.”

On Misunderstandings:

“No I didn’t mean to imply that at all.”

“Right.”

“I’m serious. What kind of a hostile lunatic would purposely insult their dinner companion? I was just trying to be funny.”

On My Job:

“How can you represent someone
you know
is guilty? I could never do that.”

On How Late It Had Become:

“Yeah wow I didn’t realize how late it was.”

“I have to get up early tomorrow.”

“Me too.”

On Dessert:

“No thanks,” I said.

“No way,” she added.

She lived close enough for me to walk her home and I was Mr. Gentleman doing just that. I wondered why she didn’t mention she lived about a block from the restaurant. I guess if it turned out I was some kind of nut (there are many kinds) I could have used that information to stalk her. Assuming I fell in love with her. No danger of that.

But despite the lowlights, it had been nice to have dinner with someone and I thought I should do it more often. With a different co-star of course. It beat cold pizza before flickering Television.

She was clacking her wide heels up the four or five steps to her door and I was staying put on the sidewalk. Platitudes were exchanged, breath visible. Then:

“Oh, one thing before you go,” I said meekly.

“Yes?”

“I have this pain in my ear. I know it’s not a cosmetic issue but I figured.”

“What?”

“My ear.”

“What about it?”

“It hurts.”

“When does it hurt?”

“Maybe a third of the time.”

“No
when
?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I guess it hurts when I hear noise.”

“Don’t hear noise,” she said.

Lord knowed it’s a cruel, cruel world

Done gave me ten boys when most wanted me a girl
.

—Wee Willie Wheeler, lyrics reprinted by permission of Severed Tendon Music, Inc.

“So we’ll do
Queen for a Day
okay?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re basically familiar with them?”

“Yup.”

“Good. I’m printing it out as we speak, it’s the standard one. You can review it with your client when he gets here.”

“Which is when?”

“My cops just went over to get him from the twelfth-floor bridge, they should be back with him shortly. You can talk to him in here when they get back.”

“Deal.”

“Yeah and I’m sorry we had to do this so soon after the 180.80 date.”

“The next day.”

“I know but supposedly according to my officers your guy had information they need to act on quickly. So I figured if your guy was looking to help himself it was going to have to be sooner rather than later. I was thinking of your guy.”

“Thanks. How long you been with Special Narcotics?”

“Let’s see, this is my seventh year.”

“How do you like it?”

“I like it, I like it a lot. Are you the original attorney on the case? Because I had a Leaves?”

“He transferred the case to me. I’m with a special unit, I only represent rats.”