He drew a simple diagram on his napkin. A right triangle-“The vertical axis is y. The horizontal axis is x, the number line. Where they intersect is zero”-then added another line starting from the zero point and extending out with an arrow at about a forty-five-degree angle.
“That’s the li line, which predicts how many primes there should be up to any point. But it only works approximately. Each prime is located at some random distance below the li line.” He drew a jagged stepped line which ran under the li line like a narrow staircase. “See where the actual number of primes are located? It’s as though the primes got pulled away from their line and have sunk at different rates.” He spread his hands. “To find out how and why this force acts to distort the prime distribution, I would sell my soul. Now I’m getting romantic. It’s because of those brown eyes of yours.”
Lights were winking on all across the forest now, leaving the mountains and the lake in their mysterious darkness.
“Then Riemann found another pattern, somehow related to the li line, by working with a function called the Zeta Function. And his work still seems like the best approach to finding this force or differential or whatever you might call it. So prime theoreticians went looking in that direction. But so far, the Riemann Hypothesis hasn’t been proved.”
“I’ve been reading about that.”
“I have a really good book about it at home I could lend you. So this is connected to your case?”
“I told you, one of the witnesses is very interested in prime number theory.”
“Maybe he works for an Internet-security company,” Mick said.
“What?”
“Well, really big numbers can’t be factored-nobody can find the primes they’re made of-even with today’s computers. So a company called XYC invented a method of encoding financial and other information using that fact, so information couldn’t be hacked as it traveled from one Web site to another. The code lets you type in your credit-card number for certain eyes only. Ever buy anything on eBay?”
“No.”
“You will soon. Everybody will. Local markets can’t really compete. Where was I? Oh, yes. Internet codes. I have a good book about that at home as well. Want to borrow it? We could stop by there.”
Nina had been lulled into such a scholarly daze by Mick’s disquisition that she almost didn’t notice that he had made his move. Maybe she didn’t want to notice, erect defenses, analyze, think it through. “I would,” she said. “I could take it to read on the plane.”
“Let’s go, then. Maybe you should call your son and say you’ll be a little late.”
“Good idea.” Nina called Bob and said she’d be a little late. She wasn’t hungry. The B & B warmed in her stomach. She was on the trail of something intellectually challenging. Mick was a fount, a real fount. He was holding her hand as they emerged into the parking lot.
Okay, be honest, she was on a trail all right, but the trail had just forked, and his hand was confident.
He went on talking during the short trip to his place in the Tahoe Keys, and Nina leaned back in the passenger seat, allowing herself to be fed information as if he were spooning ice cream into her mouth. Up the stairs they went into his dark cabin. He didn’t turn on the lights. He opened the door to his stove-fireplace and a blast of heat came out and flames flickered into action.
“Let me show you something,” he said. He drew her to the window. Outside sparkled one of the canals that led to the lake. The stars shone down.
It didn’t surprise her when he began to undress her. “Ssh, ssh,” he said. “Let’s get comfortable and I’ll show you the books. It’s getting hot in here.”
She had heard that line in a bad rap song, but somehow she was in her slip, and his hands caressed her. “Right in here,” he said, drawing her over the threshold into his bedroom, where a large bookcase took up half the wall. The bed took up the rest of the room, though, and hardly had they entered when Mick engineered her to the bed and said, “Relax, I’ll get it in a second.”
She sat on the bed, tired all of a sudden and acutely aware of Mick kneeling in front of her, sliding his hand up her thigh. In the dark she only sensed his head below her. She took a handful of his hair, ready for the ride.
“This’ll only take a minute,” he said. “You’re really going to like this book, sweetheart. It’s full of details about logs that make you want to be close to somebody who understands. Like I’m close to you right now, touching you. Mmm, you are absolutely luscious. You’re hot, baby. And now I’m going to show you a log, a natural log, you’re gonna get this right away…”
He went on like that, and he did have some books, though she didn’t get back home with them for another hour and a half.
As for the sheets being in a grid pattern, she didn’t have time to look.
22
HER SILVER-TONGUED MATHEMATICIAN DUMPED HER the next day, via a cell-phone call Nina missed on her way to the Reno airport. While she and Bob waited for the hop to San Francisco to be called, she found it after a last-minute message from Sandy.
Hi. Maybe it’s better this way. You know that job offer in L.A.? They need me right away, so I won’t be here when you get back. I loved every minute and I think you’re sweet. And please don’t be mad-remember, I never lied to you. Bye, and good luck cracking the primes.
She didn’t return the call-what would she say? Another watershed of single life spread before her-the hookup followed by the cheerful phone message. Apparently he hadn’t “caught feelings,” as the alternateens say. She glanced over at Bob, who read Rolling Stone magazine in the seat beside her, and realized he was the wrong person to confide in.
She examined herself. Emotional trauma?
She felt ruffled, yes.
Damage to her vanity, then?
Some. Mick should have found her so irresistible that he changed his plans, changed his circumstances, changed his very personality now that she had lit up his life. Then she would have decided at her leisure what to do with him.
Regret? Some. Mick had been fun, but then again, the fun wouldn’t have lasted. The main regret was that she had lost her math expert.
She hadn’t caught feelings either, then. It seemed that she would survive handily. Mick would go on his way, a very lonely way, finding women at every stop, staying with none of them. He hadn’t harmed her, and she was a big girl.
Well, then, could she just enjoy the memory, and not analyze it into smithereens?
No way; analysis was always necessary, at least after the fact.
What lesson had she learned?
Math is sexy, she thought. Who knew? Then she thought, like giving herself a slap, You’re starting to sleep around. She would have to think about that.
The loudspeaker blared and she shrugged, slung her bag onto her shoulder, and said, “That’s us, bud.”
They flew to Frankfurt on a crowded Lufthansa flight from San Francisco.
On long flights, a devolution occurs in the passengers. They begin polite, tidy, and optimistic. Toward the end of the flight, it’s like an aerial Animal House. Debris slops all over the cabin, the kids jump around, the bathrooms are not to be trusted, and the adults sprawl in their seats trying to achieve blottohood with liquor or sleep.
Bob slept all night, his head on her shoulder or parked at a strange angle against the seat, drooling a little, shifting, muttering incoherently. He woke up cranky but pulled the bags down from the overhead compartment with the energy of the well-rested.