A Naked Singularity: A Novel (73 page)

“Nobody grieves forever Donna says.”

“I wouldn’t know, I don’t know anything about grief. Whatever grief is, I haven’t felt it.”

“You’re grieving.”

“No I’m not. A word has to be invented for what I’m doing. For what I felt then and still feel now, even years later.
Grief
won’t cut the mustard here bub, maybe
torment
or
agony
try.”

“I understand.”

“Maybe those words begin to describe what it feels like in a world that can one day contain a three-foot-high giggle named Peter and the next day not. At night, like a prisoner in solitary, I mentally cross the date off my imaginary calendar as one less day I have to endure. Do you understand? What I look forward to more than anything is death because it can’t be any worse than this here. Are you beginning to get the picture? How little resemblance my status bears to yours? And someone needs to explain to me why I feel dirty all the time. How I can shower then bathe then dress in freshly-laundered garments yet still feel unclean and troubled in my own body. And the worms. Tiny flesh-colored worms made of some unspeakable fungus that writhe and crawl just beneath my skin and out of view. I feel them all the time too. And I’ll claw and tear at my flesh to get them out but all I get in return are these marks. Also what about this empty blackness that starts in my stomach and instantly spreads outward whenever I acknowledge it, and the longest I can manage to ignore it is like a couple hours and even those hours are spent in subconscious fear of the black? And I hate how much more intelligent I’ve become, how much more I know now. Because one of the things they tell you is that time is your friend, the only thing that has the power to heal your gaping wounds. More than that really, that it
will
heal them. And maybe before, when I had no need for these kinds of notions, I would’ve been impressed by this thought. But now I know that the people who make these statements can call themselves scientists all they want in a vain attempt to secure the imprimatur of legitimacy the term would afford them but they cannot change the fact that they are not so in even the loosest sense of the word. You see, armed with my greater intelligence, I know that if a true scientist says with certainty that a molecule, for example, will definitely do X, then it will do X. See? Yet when these pretenders tell me that something will have a certain effect on me they’re basing that prediction on some self-help section of the bookstore they themselves circularly created. And they’re talking about those wildly unpredictable entities called humans so that whatever the percentages in their favor may be, they still tell me nothing about
me
and what
I
can do to get out of this infernal cell. And worse still, I can now say from experience that this
Time
they’re all so fond of is nothing but an illusion. People say
years
like it means something, like it represents some vast expanse. Well I’m now on the other side of those years and I can report that they do nothing, they’re no different than days, weeks, months, or even hours. Every day I wake up and feel no better, every day it happens again, his hand slips out of mine and doesn’t return leaving me grasping at empty air. Each day a freshly opened lesion. I want this pain to end even though it no longer really hurts if that makes any sense. There’s no substance, no drug, no activity or person that can help me. I see life now as it truly is, its atavistic savagery, and so feel nothing but contempt for those innocents able to view it as I once did. It’s as if everyone else is in a beer commercial and I’m the designated driver and do you realize how profane this all looks to someone who’s had their eyes wrested open to the truth? I’m afraid to move for fear of getting some of the world on me,” she slumped to the floor. “I want to be left alone. There is no
help
and even if there was I wouldn’t want any of it. I don’t need anything other than to be alone so I can hug my knees and cry in solitary peace without affectation or shame. I want to cry until everything inside of me is expelled, especially that which I need to live. The very blood and plasma that sustain me I want to cry right out of my body. I want to die from this loss of tears, die from a rended heart. And no I don’t need or even want someone to talk to because I don’t want to talk. What I want now is just to sit and
feel
this. To exercise every day the last option I have, the last thing I can do that gives me a small sense of accomplishment, a sense I might be something more than just mindless animate material; to find a way each day to avoid killing myself.”

“ . . .”

“Can you give me that? Go on. Can you at least do that you worthless, lummoxy bastard? You useless piece of shit. You shithead. That’s right, a shit head. A person whose head is composed solely or at least mostly out of actual shit.”

We are now flying over Alabaman airspace. We will soon begin our descent. Just thought y’all should know that
.

So I knew I had inhaled too many of those pills when hours later I didn’t have the strongest recollection of things like picking up my bag from those cool baggage carousels airports have or getting the rent-a-car paperwork done. And either the directions I had weren’t great or their reader a true dope because I found myself basically driving around aimlessly as if touring Alabamian Highway Food & Fuel installations. After about the third or fourth time I passed the same giant overalled farmer with a burger in his hand I finally spotted a sign that said Atmore something-or-other with a picture of a tiny jail cell. I knew the hotel I was slated for wasn’t far from the prison so I took that exit in hopeful expectation I could feel my way there without the directions I’d thrown out the window in frustration.

My big break came when I saw the giant banana. And I don’t mean to suggest that I knew immediately it was a banana I was looking at when, from a considerable distance, I saw the yellow tumescent structure that menaced the clouds and partially occluded the bottom of the orange sun. While thinking about how an establishment that sells bananas could afford such a structure I remembered that my hotel was called The Orchard and that reference had been made somewhere, maybe a brochure or something, to some kind of cognizable fruit theme. That was enough for me and I accelerated towards the banana. And as I neared the banana I saw it had friends, an apple and a peach at first and later an orange. This
was
The Orchard and each oversized rooftop fruit represented a different wing of this colossal hotel.

Of course the roads leading into The Orchard couldn’t be simple and direct so it took me quite some time and frustration to properly negotiate their labyrinthine excess. When I finally did park the car it felt like an upset victory. I got out with my corny little bag and my box of Kingg stuff, then entered a large room that was far more arboretum than hotel lobby. Everywhere I looked, keeping with the theme, was an indoor tree, rising towards the high ceiling and often warping towards another. And the fruit was everywhere, set out on tableclothed rectangles and inviting you to grab and ingest it. Limitless, perfectly ripe and healthy with encyclopedic variation, the fruit that was continually offered, almost pushed, by The Orchard would become one of the two entities that dominated my stay there. The other being B.M. Santangelo.

B.M. stood for Big Mac he declared as he introduced himself and I questioned, to his face, the legitimacy of using initials to shorten what, in Big Mac, amounted to a nickname itself; to which he responded that he had not the slightest idea what I was talking about since Big Mac was his true, parentally-bestowed, on-the-birth-certificate name. This exchange occurred just a few feet from the front desk, which desk was mere feet from B.M.’s little workstation, a station that reminded me of some kind of kissing booth and where B.M. was positioned to perform his duties as The Orchard’s concierge and from which I never saw him absent despite the fact that I passed said booth at all sorts of varied and unseemly hours, leading me to the near-inescapable conclusion that B.M. Santangelo worked twenty-four-hour shifts one after the other without cease or even interruption. He had shot out of that booth after hearing me give my name and other particulars—a ruddy, fit, and wide exclamation point who jutted his hand out and smiled.

“You’re the feller from New York are you not?” he said after the above exchange.

“I guess, I am from New York.”

“Well I’ve set you up in one of our premier rooms. If you’ll allow me to show you to it, I’ll take the opportunity to display to you some of the more interesting aspects of our little hotel.”

“Little? Can I ask? The size of this place, I mean what’s around here that feeds a hotel of this size?”

“We are the largest hotel on the eastern seaboard even though we are not technically on that seaboard, we don’t board that sea.”

“Huh?”

“As I’m sure you’ve noticed, our hotel is partitioned into separate areas we call gardens, each named after a particular fruit. Now the best of our nine gardens, and the one we’re currently headed to because it contains your room, is the aptly-named banana garden. In addition we have apple, strawberry, peach, pear, mango, watermelon, orange, and kiwi gardens. Any questions?”

“Yes, is Mac like a middle name with Big being the first or is Big Mac like Peggy Sue or Billy Joe, that kind of deal?”

“Hah hah! I like this character,” he said and slapped me on the left shoulder so hard he possibly tore my rotator cuff. “From New York,” he added. Then, “You okay pal?”

“Yes,” I said swinging my arm slowly like a windmill.

“Good because I want your stay at The Orchard to constitute nothing but unmitigated pleasure.” He went on to list the many services offered by The Orchard, pausing occasionally to point and gauge my facial reactions. These services included foremost the extreme availability of superb fruit, pieces of which I joyously sampled as we strolled along on the tour. And I could, B.M. said, have my run of the place and its fruit at nothing approaching extra cost. There were massages, herbal rubs, detoxifying ointments, and many other skin-tingling possibilities. In essence, if you weren’t in her lap you were at least getting one of those hugs that’s all arms from Lady Luxury. This tour went on for a while.

Finally, at the room, B.M. activated, via portable device, my pliably plastic room key then used it to let me in, placing my bag on the little tray they had near the bed for that purpose. At that moment, my guilt got the better of me and I said “look I didn’t say anything earlier because truth is I was enjoying the little tour but I think you must have me confused with someone else.”

“No, I know who you are.”

“I say that because I can’t imagine you’re this solicitous of all your guests so I can only assume you’ve mistaken me for some guy who’s threatening to buy the hotel or something.”

“I assure you, The Orchard would never be offered for sale. Furthermore, I know precisely who you are. You’re from New York. It’s not that difficult really. Fact is we don’t get many unaffiliated singles such as yourself. This weekend, for example, you’re our only guest who’s not with Serpent.”

“With who?”

“Serpent. The Society of Egalitarian Reptile Protectors Entitled to New Technology for long, S.E.R.P.E.N.T. for short. You’ll see S.E.R.P.E.N.T. members everywhere this weekend. They’re having their annual convention in one of our state-of-the-art convention halls and they’ve effectively commandeered our gardens for their lodging.”

“You’re kidding right? Serpent in the gardens? Is this some kind of put-on? Where’s the hidden camera? Next you’ll tell me I’m not allowed in the Apple wing.”

“As a matter of fact no guest is, we’re renovating.”

“ . . .”

“At any rate enjoy your stay and if you need anything, and I mean anything at all, see me right away,” he said leaving abruptly.

And B.M. hadn’t exaggerated when he raved about the room because it
was
great. There was, of course, a wicker basket full of excellent spotless fruit. There was a tremendous incarnation of Television with something called a PlasmaTronic screen. Atop sat a black box that offered guests like me a seemingly limitless panoply of entertainment options that included almost every feature movie, made-for-Television movie, or music video ever created along with every episode of classics like B.J. and the Bear and Happy Days (including one where The Big Ragu transcends time slots to considerable studio squeals). The bed was the size of an airport tarmac, something called Regal Resplendency Size. The workstation was great. The Internet was instantaneous almost anticipating your next move, the phone was transparent affording you an intimate look at its inner hardware, and the fax machine was somehow smaller than the average sheet of paper. The bathroom was larger than my New York living room with a perfectly round Jacuzzi tub containing all sorts of odd arm and foot rests.

It was early afternoon when I started to examine and sample these and the many other amenities the room had to offer. Each bought me successively less joy and despite the obvious potency of the vaunted but inaptly named Tele-Communications Port I was unable to execute a simple phone call to any number in the New York metropolitan area. It had gotten real dark in the room by then so I went around igniting each of the many bulbs in the room until I felt like I was being interrogated. I grabbed a handful of perfect, dark-red strawberries and lay in the middle of the bed. From there, I would hold each individual berry up by its green hat then devour its underlying corpse in one or two bites. Then I would toss, without exceptional miss, the green remnants into the garbage can a few feet away. When I was done the room felt larger than when I had started. And because the entire ceiling of the room was actually made of mirror I could see that it wasn’t just a matter of perception. I was very small on that bed—alone in that room. I stared at the reflection above me. The garishness of the bed and its coverings. The consistency of the fruit theme. I felt so lonesome.

Outside my door, in the hall, no one felt lonely. They frolicked, trading laughs and audio jabs, striving to outnoise each other. Then someone knocked on my door. I was sure it was a mistake that knocking. When I opened the door I saw a smiling woman with a drink in her hand.