The Last Equation of Isaac Severy(36)



Hazel couldn’t help but smile at the scene. Why was it that the entire world now seemed reflected through Isaac? He had loved shell games, specifically the kind that forced a player to consider the probability of a ball being under this or that cup. The Monty Hall problem had been a favorite, named after the famous game-show host who made contestants pick prizes from behind one of three doors on Let’s Make a Deal. One evening in the kitchen, while helping to crack nuts for one of Lily’s pies, Isaac had posed a variation of this problem to eleven-year-old Hazel. He hid a bean under one of three walnut shells and asked her to locate it, and when she took a guess—“the middle one?”—he told her she wasn’t necessarily wrong, but that he’d give her one more chance to change her answer if she wished. He then revealed the last walnut to be empty, leaving two nuts still overturned.

“Would you like to change your answer or keep it?” he asked. She thought about it for a long moment and said, “Keep my answer,” because why should it matter? She still had a fifty-fifty chance, regardless. But after playing the game twentysome times in a row, she noticed that she’d lost roughly two out of every three games. At last, she said, “I want to change my answer.” When her grandfather asked her why, Hazel looked down at the shells and said, “Because, Grandpa Isaac, when you lift one of the empty shells, you change the game.”

He looked at her, startled. “Do you know how many very smart people can’t grasp this concept?” he said. “And you, eleven years old, figured it out in ten minutes. Math may be your least favorite subject, but you have a logician’s mind, kiddo.”

She hadn’t believed him, of course, not really. He was just being supportive, trying to boost her interest in algebra or whatever irritating subject she happened to be studying in math class. It had been kind of him then, but it was one thing to play shell games with her in the kitchen and another to construct some kind of mad, life-sized version of the game.

Suddenly someone shouted very close to Hazel’s ear, “Look, Sherlock Holmes!”

Hazel turned and, seeing the source of the shouting, groaned. The blonde bee had materialized one couch over, Alex at her side. A wall sconce cast an orb of light on the pair, lending the scene a sickeningly romantic cast, one that Hazel promptly sabotaged with images of exploded glass, screams, and blood. But the usual comic absurdity she gave to such fantasies was absent. There was a weight in her chest that felt uncomfortably close to jealousy. Alex murmured something in the bee’s ear, which made the bee laugh hard and loud. When her laughter subsided, she announced, “I have to go to the little girls’ room,” and skipped away.

The instant his companion was gone, Alex set down a hardcover book he had been carrying, the title of which Hazel couldn’t make out, and pulled from his floppy suit a notebook. He flipped through it methodically and, every now and then, made a notation in pen. Hazel just sat there with a drink to her lips, thinking she should probably reveal herself but not wanting to spoil her one chance at invisibility.

Just as she tried to see what Alex was writing, he slipped the notebook into his jacket, grabbed his book, and hurried off.

Hazel looked hard in the direction he had fled. Following some strange instinct, she stood up and pushed her way through warm bodies until she spotted Alex’s furry white head descending the staircase. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she caught sight of him striding toward the exit. There he goes, the White Rabbit, always running off. Hazel imagined a poor, distressed bee upstairs, returning from the little girls’ room, searching the couches for a man who had made her laugh.

Out on the street, past the stanchions and red carpet, Hazel looked for a blaze of white, though she didn’t exactly know what she’d do once she caught up with him. She moved closer to the curb and, on tiptoe, scanned the horde of gruesome characters lining the sidewalk. These were the drunk agitators, their costumes graphic and bloody. She was already unsteady on her heels, and after getting jostled by a pack of Salem witches—faces white, stiff nooses leading to imaginary gibbets—Hazel shoved back but was immediately knocked into a lamppost. Regaining her balance, she spied Alex halfway down the block, pant cuffs trailing along the Walk of Fame. Where could he be rushing off to? He didn’t even live here.

Hazel realized now that a different impulse had overtaken her completely. She no longer desired to be seen by him but instead only wanted to understand this odd relative. She was still slightly drunk and not entirely confident in her abilities to tail somebody. But the streets that night were abundant with distractions, so she stepped out of her heels and started down the pavement, remembering something her brother had once said about following people: “Stay on the opposite side of the street. Try not to cross when your target does. Don’t get cocky.” Hazel ignored these rules, though she tried to keep a good half block behind Alex.

As she approached the corner of Hollywood and Vine, she was forced to negotiate an unruly group of revelers. It took her a few seconds to figure out that they were a collective silent movie: a ghostly Harold Lloyd and Mary Pickford, a dancing title card warning “Look out!” and a long-limbed piano slapping out a tune on himself. Had she paused to acknowledge Harold Lloyd turning to her with a mute scream, she might have missed seeing Alex disappear into the historic Taft Building.

She hurried through the crosswalk and up to the Taft entrance. The lobby looked empty, and as she tugged open the heavy door, she could just make out the sound of an elevator door closing. Before a security guard could stop her, she bolted across the lobby. She might at least catch the floor number.

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