The Last Equation of Isaac Severy(35)



Wearing a gray wool suit and a champagne wig that she’d unearthed from the attic, she took a city bus to the crush of trendy nightspots near Hollywood Boulevard. In Fritz’s spare-no-expense hunt for a wife, he had rented out a two-story club for the evening, stocked with doormen and red carpets. To those who assumed Fritz to be nothing more than a dull middle-aged lawyer-accountant, it was on such evenings that the ribald man beneath the suit emerged. Even if Fritz didn’t find the love of his life that night, the party was a timely move because on Halloween, despite the weather’s slide into autumn, the women of Los Angeles shrugged off their cardigans to reveal vast expanses of skin and a limitless capacity for affection.

Hazel gave her name at the door and ten minutes later was seated on a second-floor banquette, eagerly downing a stiff cocktail that had been handed to her by Fritz before he’d left to pursue a leggy pair of dragonfly wings. Hazel watched the undersized attorney trudging off in his King Louis XIV getup, which ostensibly allowed him to wear heels without being called out on it. The comedy of this image had no effect on her sullen mood.

As she waited for the cocktail to do its work, she made conversation with a tuxedoed realtor named Jim. He gulped a martini from an oversized glass and every now and then, in case anyone doubted his identity, he would call up the James Bond theme from a chip on his bowtie. But mostly Jim talked about how people he didn’t know should behave and about how lucky he had been in life. “It’s true,” he said, “I pull nice things toward me, like a magnet.” Hazel nodded along but wondered how these promotional sorts always seemed to find her.

“So, who are you shupposed to be, anyway?” he asked in a splintered Sean Connery lisp.

“Oh, a vague Hitchcock blonde. I was going for Kim Novak, but the suit isn’t quite—”

“So what are you doing later, Mish Hitchcock?”

Suddenly, the drink hit her, and she didn’t know whether Jim was really asking what she was doing later or they were merely role-playing. The alcohol was, in fact, magnifying her misery, and as a wave of tears pressed at the back of her eyes, she found herself telling Jim about her broken heart. It all came out in a clump of disconnected thoughts and run-on grammar, and at the end of it, she took a long drink.

“That’s tough,” he said, rattling the ice in his glass. “Another cocktail?”

“I really shouldn’t. But don’t you think there’s this idea out there in the world,” she rambled on, “that men are always the obsessive ones pining away, as if women aren’t just as consumed and humiliated by the whole thing? I don’t know, am I making any sense?”

Jim nodded emphatically, then turned his response into an opportunity to describe a lucrative land deal he had recently brokered. He was still talking when Hazel spied someone vaguely familiar entering the club in a turbulent white wig, floppy suit, and fake mustache. She squinted, trying to place the man behind the costume. He crossed the room, and as he drew nearer, she craned her neck to keep him in view. It was the way he moved, the long-legged stride, that tipped her off. It was Alex.

He glanced over at her briefly, but his face showed no sign of recognition. He walked past her to the bar, where a blonde in a tiny bee costume wriggled for the bartender’s attention.

“You know that guy?” Jim asked.

“Sort of.” She looked back at the bar. Alex was frowning at the bee, who had turned to show off her wings.

Jim took a water gun from his pocket. “Bond can kick Einstein’s assh any day.”

“Twain.”

“What?”

“I think he’s supposed to be Mark Twain. It’s the linen suit.”

Though Hazel was annoyed that Alex hadn’t recognized her—after all, she had identified him, and his costume was arguably more ridiculous—she was also surprised at the intensity of her own annoyance. Her cousin was still frowning at the bee, though his frown was now of the attentive, interested kind. Hazel knocked back a piece of ice and stood up. She wasn’t in the mood to have the spectacle of romance played out in front of her. “It was nice chatting with you, Mr. Bond, but I have to go adjust my wig.”

“No. Please. Don’t,” he said while simultaneously turning to a woman behind him.

As Hazel walked away, she heard the Bond theme erupt, followed by high-pitched laughter. Both were quickly drowned out by a DJ who had begun spinning a deafening beat from a nearby booth. Hazel plugged her ears and, halfway to the bathroom, ran into Fritz. She was suddenly very glad to see him and wondered if he might not be able to help her in some way, though she was feeling too buzzed to pinpoint how.

“Fritz!” she shouted. “Do you think we could talk?”

He smiled, but was clearly distracted by something behind her.

“I need to ask you something important.” What was Isaac working on when he died?

“Does it have to be now, hmm?” He twitched in the direction of his pretty dragonfly.

“No, no. I’ll find you later.”

“Please do, my dear.” Fritz adjusted a curl and stomped off, leaving Hazel to assume it would be the last she’d see of him that night.

After a slight tilt of her wig in a gilded mirror, she found an empty couch in a dark corner, far from her former location. The idea of lazy conversation with strangers had struck her as appealing earlier, but now all she wanted to do was sit and watch pretty people grasp for one another and let her recent troubles dilute with drink. She waved down one of the darkly feathered blackbird waitresses and pointed to a random cocktail on a menu tent. She then sank into the sofa to watch a gathering at a table several feet away, where a man in a tuxedo was conducting a shell game with three overturned bowler hats and a foam ball. A female Sherlock Holmes edged her way to the table—houndstooth dress, haughty air—and began pointing to the hats. When the bowler came up empty every time, she stamped her stilettoed foot and demanded another turn.

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