“Assistant Professor Andret.”
“Well, thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Assistant Secretary Pierce.”
Her building was a narrow townhouse set behind a huge sycamore. She stood a couple of steps above him on the brick stairway, searching for keys in her purse.
“Here,” he said, reaching. “Let me get the door.”
He didn’t exactly fall, but when he righted himself she was holding him by the elbow.
“Are you all right?”
“Perfectly.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. However, Assistant Professor Andret regret not delivery today lecture to Downtown Club for Pisa this evening — as I choice, you’re welcome.”
She laughed.
He bent to retrieve his hat, and when he straightened he found himself standing against her again. She moved up one stair.
“All right, Assistant Secretary. Maybe is true that Assistant Professor Leonardo Fibonacci he self — maybe I could just sit down for a second, Helena. I think I need some water.”
“All right. You can come up. But just for a minute.”
As they climbed the stairs to her apartment, she kept turning around, saying, “Are you really sure you’re all right?”
“Yes,” he said, pulling himself up the banister behind her. The staircase went on and on. “But your railing’s loose.” He rattled it, although now it seemed perfectly tight. “Heisenberg,” he mumbled.
Her apartment was on the top floor. When they finally reached it, he removed the fedora and held it against his chest, like a minister at the home of a parishioner. As soon as she’d succeeded in opening the locks, he followed her inside and hung it on the hook.
“Here,” she said, pulling out a chair from the small table. “Sit down. That was a long climb. I’ll get some water.”
“Water is my enemy,” he said solemnly.
This silenced her. He had no idea what he’d meant. But he knew she wouldn’t ask for an explanation. At this point, he could have spoken about Hilbert manifolds and she wouldn’t have asked for an explanation. In the scant kitchen she pulled a glass from the cupboard and rummaged in the freezer until she found an ice tray, then had trouble freeing the cubes from it. He ignored the chair she’d pulled out and sat down on the couch instead. In front of him on the coffee table was an art book. The first few pages were oil paintings — nonsense art or maybe abstract landscapes. He set it down and looked around. The apartment itself was singularly tiny. A couple framed prints propped on the mantel above a bricked-in fireplace. A desk crowded into the hall. Underneath it he noticed some kind of uncombed terrier shivering on a mat. He hated dogs. Through a half-closed doorway, he saw the bed: a single.
“Well,” he said. “What were we saying?”
She came in from the kitchen, handed him the water, and took a seat at a miniature stool — to his surprise, it slid out from the wall like a subway bench. The couch he was on was short but deep, and at the far end of it he felt himself sinking into the cushions. After a few moments, he moved to the center. He spilled some water but moved on top of it. From her spot on the wall, she was saying something about the secretaries in the department, her legs crossed at the thigh and her hands clasped over her knees. He realized that she was afraid to let a silence fall. He himself could think of nothing he’d appreciate more.
Next to the door of the bedroom his eye fell on a crucifix. It hung on a chain from a hook above the light switch.
Well.
He felt a burst of sourness. The illogic of religion had always galled him. It occurred to him that the whole evening was going to be a waste.
At that moment, however, she went to the cabinet and returned with a bottle of wine.
“Would you like me to open that?” he said, struggling up from the couch. At the table he took a closer look at the cross. It was a dime-store thing. The hook was an old nail. This was better. He turned and focused on the wine label, wiping off the dust. It was burgundy.
He’d never actually tasted burgundy.
“All right,” she answered at last, although he’d already ripped off the foil and pushed the opener into the cork. “Go ahead and open it. I doubt it’s very good. But it’s more my speed than what you ordered for me in the bar.” She sat down on the subway seat. A moment later she rose again and went to the record player in the corner. After a short pause, the air was decorated by the first notes of a piano sonata.
—
IN THE MORNING, he let himself out early. The sun hadn’t even risen as he closed the apartment door and stepped into his shoes in the hallway. Though he knew nobody else in the town of Princeton, New Jersey, he hurried home with the hat pulled low over his face. At the edge of her neighborhood, he turned and made for the woods. He shouldn’t have taken the crucifix, but it was in his hand now. In the cool shade of the first stand of trees, as dawn was coming through the boughs, he leaned down quickly and dropped it into the mat of rotting leaves.
Occam’s Razor
AT THE FIRST meeting of the faculty that year, Knudson Hay, the chairman of the department, introduced all the incoming assistant professors, who were seated in a line of folding chairs across the front wall of his sizable office. Milo’s chair stood in the middle of the group. When his name was called, he nodded briefly, as had everyone before him. But then, from somewhere in the rear, a voice called out, “Congratulations, Andret.”
When he looked up, he couldn’t discern the speaker. But he noticed that a few of his first-year colleagues had reddened.
—
THERE WAS A pause, then in the background the clearing of a throat. The phone had rung while he was fixing dinner. It was six in the evening. He recognized the formality of the old man’s tone.
“Listen, Andret,” Hans Borland said neatly, “I was calling to inform you of something. First, how’s that friend of yours?”
“I don’t know who you mean.”
“The Wells girl. Jim Wells’s daughter. Cleopatra.”
“Oh, that — well, that’s over, Professor.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Through the window, he watched a girl walk past in shorts. “I’ve moved on.”
“I’m sorry to hear it, all the same.” He paused. “Listen, Andret, I recommended you for this position, you know that, right?”
“I know, Professor. I’m grateful.”
“Comport yourself with dignity there, will you? Do what you’re capable of. It will reflect nicely on both of us.”
“I will.”
“Are you carrying the briefcase?”
Down the hall he could see it, overturned beside his bed, a sheaf of student assignments spilling from the pocket. “I have it right next to me,” he said.
“And you’re managing your affairs as we discussed?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a professor, now. Not a graduate student. People notice.”
“I’m an assistant professor.”
“Well, yes. For the time being.”
Borland coughed then, rather harshly, and covered the mouthpiece. When he came back on, he cleared his throat again. “The Malosz theorem,” he began. “If I’m not mistaken, Andret, you believe it was a fluke. You consider yourself undeserving.”
Andret felt the truth of the words.
“Perhaps you feel like a fraud,” the old man went on. “This is entirely natural. Believe me, I’ve seen it plenty of times before. Lars Hongren was a fraud.” He paused. “You, Milo Andret, are not a fraud.”
Outside the window, the girl in the shorts disappeared around the corner, and at that moment exactly, the evening turned into night. Andret became aware of his own figure in the glass, of the twisted white catenary of the phone cord bridging the darkness from his cluttered desk, crossing the bookshelves, and arriving at the pale moon of his face.