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

so did that necessarily mean I had to go in since I had no legal or contractual obligation to avoid being rude nor had I promised anyone I wouldn’t be rude and in fact rudeness must be a rather natural state of human being since time immemorial to have necessitated invention of the word
rude
right? And even if this one time I acted in this eminently common manner would that be sufficient, standing alone, to make me a rude person? Moreover, if I did go in how quickly could I split given that I had just worked about seventeen straight hours? I mean without being rude.
    “Suit and tie at this hour,” Alyona said opening the door. “That’s got to be brutal.”
    “Not fun.”
    “Hope I can find them Casi, think they’re in my room somewhere.”
    I went in with Alyona, almost instinctively, having never resolved my little internal debate. “Casi my good man,” said Louie. “Come in dude, join the party.”
    “I am in,” I said.
    “I mean
in
in,” he said. “This is Traci.”
    “Hey Traci how are you?” (The Traci part of this was a new trick I had recently picked up from a dental waiting room Glamour published the requisite decade earlier, which trick called for people like me to
repeat the name immediately for better memory retention
and shortly after reading that the dentist told me his name but I immediately forgot it because I couldn’t repeat it with that little vacuum thing resting on my lower row of choppers.)
    “Hello,” Traci said.
    “Casi?”
    “Angus.”
    “Who’s cooler, the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “C’mon which?”
    “I have no preference.”
    “If you had to choose, gun to your head.”
    “I guess I would then say Loch Ness but I stress that a gun would have to be involved.”
    “See?” said Angus pointing at Louis.
    “Defend that choice because four out of five say Bigfoot,” said Louis.
    “Just cooler I don’t know. I’m tired.”
    “C’mon make something up. But like the kind of things we say.”
    “The kind of things you say? Fine, how’s this? The thought of a guy who looks at vaginas for a living dropping some toy in a body of water and spurring decades of debate in a certain underdeveloped segment of society reassures and comforts me with the power of designer truth. Happy?”
    “Wait, it was a hoax?” said Louis.
    “I will say this on Bigfoot’s behalf however. There
was
a movie,” said Angus a look of careful reconsideration on his face.
    “Movie?” groaned Traci.
    “Yeah, movie-theatre and everything. So we’re all settled in ready for this movie to start when suddenly from a door near the screen comes this like huge eight-foot-tall guy bearing a striking resemblance to Bigfoot—the very same Bigfoot about to star in the feature we plunked down five bucks to see. Well for once this sort of thing works and of course there follows a rush of about fifty eight-to-ten-year-olds flooding into the aisle and running up the incline to the exit. Anyway goddamn Bigfoot gets the brilliant idea that he’s going to like pursue the kids for a while, you know ham it up. Well long story short he steps on a box of melted Raisinets, becomes involuntarily airborne and lands on like some seven-year-old girl who proceeds to have what theatre management termed
a brief respite in cardiactivity
. I think they banned those kind of promotional stunts at that theatre for like the next thirty-five years. You can’t do cool shit like that with Loch Nesses the way you can with Bigfeet. So basically I change my vote.”
    “Me too,” said a resigned Louis. “I love hoaxes.”
    “You love hoaxes?” said Alyona. “What do you think fucking Bigfoot was? Some clown named Ray Wallace photographing his wife in a Sasquatch suit!”
    “The hell’s a Sasquatch suit?” said Traci.
    “Like a leisure suit.”
    “No, more like a zoot suit.”
    “Or a monkey suit.”
    “Or your birthday suit.”
    “Or a chicken-skin suit.”
    Where we were was the living