Free A Naked Singularity: A Novel by Sergio De La Pava

an auditory hallucination informed by recent memory whereby a recondite voice said
hey being that we’re friends now we should perhaps have a copy of each other’s keys so we don’t get negligently locked out and so forth
which in turn spurred the instant storyteller into acting like a cinematic Lotharian suitor by throwing icy acorns at the second-story window of one Alyona Karn in place of ringing a doorbell that never worked. Alyona’s uncle was the proud owner of the general recipient of my acorn pelts and of my apartment contained within. In addition to being the sixty-year-old father of a preschooler he allowed Alyona to live there footloose and rent-free provided he would superintend. Alyona in turn, and unbeknownst to uncle, allowed two others, Angus Glass and Louis Sands, to live in the apartment without paying rent in exchange for their promise to pay all necessary bills and expenses; necessary meaning digital cable, satellite programming, broadband internet, phone, food, toothpaste, electricity, water et cetera. This pleased him to no end and more than once he bragged that
I have in essence extricated myself from our system of pay to play. Currency has no meaning to me. I am a twenty-eight-year-old who does not have a bank account yet my refrigerator is always full. Bills arrive in my name and get paid without me so much as opening the envelope. This
—
extreme nonconsumerism
—
is something that has come to be associated with illegality has it not?
    Now several acorns had successfully flown their sorties, cutting through the frigid air to form interrupted parabolas, when I began to conceive the inconceivable. Could they all be asleep? Not home? Was there a difference if either meant sleeping on the street? The three of them were good customers of Columbia University. Alyona was purchasing a doctorate in Philosophy with an emphasis on either the eighteenth century British empiricists or else the work of Sextus Empiricus I could never recall. Angus was a twenty-six-year-old undergrad gravitating without the slightest volition towards a Bachelor’s in Psychology and Louie a graduate student trying to master business with both eyes towards his first and true love: Advertising. Alyona and Angus never left the house and, to my knowledge, the three of them never slept, certainly not while it was dark out, yet there I stood with diminishing acorns in raw gloveless hands and, to all appearances, vastly alone. And I was just beginning to reflect on how I came to be so alone when I heard the sweet, redemptive sound of a door opening followed by cognizable human words.
    “What are you trying to do, break our windows at a time when their continued integrity is of the utmost importance?” The speaker allowed maybe a third of his face to appear from behind the door and I saw that it was Alyona. “Come on, you’re letting the red out and the blue in.”
    I moved inside the door to hear it close behind me. “My hero,” I said and emitted that little shudder you get with the initial blast of heat. He was shaking his head no as if I’d been all prodigal or something.
    “You know what the key to getting inside a locked building is?” he said.
    “Funny.”
    “So?”
    “It’s relaxing in my apartment,” I said moving up the stairs to the promise of greater heat but careful not to outpace my rescuer as that would have been weird.
    “Good thing you listened to me then huh? I’m starting to think I’m . . . um.”
    “Prescient?”
    “Negative.”
    “Clairvoyant?”
    “Maybe.”
    “Were you sleeping?” puzzled look. “No because you have that hat on, I didn’t know those were worn anymore outside of comic strips.”
    “They’re not. And no because we have a guest, courtesy of Louis.”
    “Let me guess.”
    “Gorgeous.”
    I spent the time on the stairs wondering if I could wait in the hall while Alyona got my key’s identical twin then just run up to my third floor apartment. Would that be rude and if