“Can’t you get this thing to go any faster?” said Milo.
Biettermann snorted.
Biettermann made him edgy but in truth there was something he liked about him, too. The long hair straggling over such eager eyes. Want played on Earl’s features the way it played on an animal’s. He was leaning up close to the windshield, one hand on the wheel, the other drumming the shifter. The brainy people that Milo knew — he remembered Earl’s perfect calculus exam — didn’t behave like the guy next to him. They didn’t drive as though a checkered flag had been dropped. The tires screeched, and the GTO shot through a gap in the traffic; then they were out in front, racing south toward Oakland, the wipers revealing an astigmatic world in brief half circles of clarity.
“I was kidding about faster,” Milo said. “Maybe be a little careful.”
“I know you were kidding, man. I laughed.”
At a red light in front of the new BART station, the rain was slackening, the wipers painting ever-renewing Venn sets onto the glass.
“Actually, Andret,” Biettermann said, “you’re the one who should be careful.”
“Me? Of what?”
“Of her.”
They peeled out again.
“You’re talking about Cle.”
“I am.”
“I am completely careful with her, Earl.”
“I don’t mean it like that.”
“Then how do you mean it?”
They caught another red. This far south, the streets were quieter, the wipers squeaking against the glass. Earl looked straight ahead. “Not careful with her, Milo. Careful of her.”
“What are you talking about?”
“She’s dangerous, my friend.”
“All right.”
“Me,” Biettermann said, “I like dangerous.” He turned now and regarded Milo, not unsympathetically. “But you don’t.”
“You’re right, Earl. I don’t.”
When the light changed, Earl pulled away more reasonably. At Milo’s corner, he said, “And why’s that?”
“And why’s what?”
“Why don’t you like dangerous? What are you afraid of?”
It was an interesting question, the kind of question mathematicians enjoyed posing to one another: an inquiry into the apparently obvious. Milo thought about it. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’d have to think about it.”
In front of his building they shook hands — the soul shake again — and Milo slid out into the drizzle. As he unlocked the apartment door he heard the squeal of the GTO. In the chilly basement, he set down his things, then put on water for tea and called her. No answer. When the water boiled, he added a finger of whiskey and set the cup on the night table. Then he called again. Still no answer.
Lying under the covers as the rain ticked against the windows, he thought about Earl’s question. In every single drop on the glass he could see the incrementally rotated orb of the solitary streetlight that was shining down from the post across the way. This in itself was a puzzle. The world, if you let yourself consider it, was a puzzle in every plane of focus. Why was he so afraid of it?
Then the corollary: Why did he want to live?
Shortly before sleep, the answer came, at least to the corollary: he wanted to live so that he could solve a great problem.
—
ONE DAY, HE was in a teahouse with Cle when Biettermann walked in and gave her a kiss. This time, she didn’t deflect it. Then Biettermann sat down, and the three of them spent the morning chatting in the cramped chairs. From next door, old Jefferson Airplane vibrated the table. Biettermann nodded his chin to the beat, his hair bouncing over his eyes. “The pleasure we get from counting,” he mumbled, “without knowing we’re counting.”
“What’s that?” said Cle.
He glanced up. “Music.”
She laughed.
Milo shook his head. “Leibniz said that, Earl.”
“Indeed he did, my friend. Indeed he did.” He nodded at Milo. “Round one to you, I guess.”
Milo looked away.
For the rest of the morning, they sat in the rattan chairs talking about nothing. It was an activity Milo despised, but he wasn’t about to leave. At one point, Biettermann used an unfamiliar word. Then a few minutes later, just before he finally left for a class, he used it again.
As soon as he was gone, Milo said, “What the hell did that mean?”
“What did what mean?” said Cle.
“That pompous little word he kept bringing out.”
“Entheogen?”
He wrote it on a napkin.
“Look it up, Andret.” She winked at him.
“All right, I will.”
“Wait a second,” she said, leaning closer. “Wait a minute — that bothered you, too, didn’t it? Not to know a word that he knew.”
“I’m interested in knowledge.”
“Of course you are.”
Silence.
Now she was smiling. “And while you’re at it,” she said, “here’s another one for you. Theodicy. That’s another word Leibniz used. As long as you have the dictionary out, you might as well look ’em both up.” She sipped her tea. “He wrote a whole book about it, as a matter of fact.”
“All right,” he said. “I will. I like to learn.”
She leaned toward him, her hand grazing his leg. “By the way,” she said, “I like to learn, too.” She rubbed her lips along his cheek and stopped at his ear. “And in case you’re confused,” she whispered, “Earl’s got it backwards. He’s Leibniz. You’re Newton.”
—
THEN, ONE CHILLY night in December, a night during which he’d been forced to sit at a different desk — the room he normally worked in was being recarpeted — he became aware, briefly, of the presence of something. Some force or even some being just behind him. A charge in the air. For a moment he had the sensation that a net was about to be tightened around his arms. He fought it. By an act of discipline he was able not to turn his head.
—
OF COURSE THERE was nothing there. But now and again the idea would materialize without warning — a feeling on his shoulders.
He refused to turn.
If he did, if he gave in to the urge, he saw nothing, of course. Just the blank rows of study carrels and the line of storefronts down Euclid, colored by lights. They stretched to vanishing in the darkness.
He would face forward again and close his eyes. For a change of scene, he’d begun spending time in the main library instead of Evans. Still, there could be other mathematics students around. If Milo Andret’s eyes were open, the other students would notice. Milo Andret worked with his eyes closed. He was Hans Borland’s protégé. The savant.
At this point he was usually done for the evening.
Occasionally he would drop all pretense and just walk over to one of the big windows and stare out toward the bay. The air from that direction smelled of fog and turned the streetlights into rows of yellow moons. Sometimes this was enough; but usually, he would need to leave. To calm himself he would take a longer route home. The couples with their dogs. The rows of wooden bungalows lit by porch lamps. The orange-rind scent of the trees. All of it gathered by the steady beat of his step. At the apartment he would go immediately to his notebook, which was dense now with figures. In such straightforward work he could forget himself.
And thankfully, the night itself never failed to wash him. In the morning he would wake early and begin recording again. In the tradition of Copernicus or Leonardo, he was extrapolating from nothing but his own data. His perfect two-windowed view of the universe. Figures upon figures.