The Last Equation of Isaac Severy(5)
Forcing his attention back to his surroundings, Philip noticed that the twins were gone from their seats. He looked to Jane for explanation, but she was focused on yet another STEMy dweeb addressing the crowd. These were his people, of course, but for some reason, Philip could no longer stand it. He stood up and started walking, with no particular destination, just away over the gently rolling grounds.
He spotted his sons in an open expanse of grass, hitting a make-believe ball with make-believe racquets. From this distance, he couldn’t tell which son was which. That was, of course, what made their matches so captivating: the two were so similar that it was either boy’s victory. His father had tried to impart to the twins the roles of probability and statistics in their game. Tennis, after all, was so temptingly mathematical.
tennis match ? c + ! = tennis math!
Because they were physically identical, his father would say, in the heat of a game, it probably came down to the angle of the sun, an eddy of air, the tensility of a racquet string, or whether the memory of a girl’s smile skipped across one of their minds. “We don’t think of girls while we’re playing, Grandpa,” they would groan. (Or at all?)
It occurred to Philip that tennis and theoretical physics had at least one thing in common: both favored the young. As he sat down in a cool spot of grass, taking in their imaginary game, he wished desperately to be his sons’ age again. Oh, to have a teenage brain—hell, a twenty-five-year-old brain—neurons igniting like rods in a lightning field! Philip leaned back against a headstone and wondered if, in those final minutes before the power from a tiny seven-watt bulb shot through the saltwater to stop his heart, his father had wished for the same thing.
–?3?–
The Mathematician
The man with the beard was still at the podium when Hazel extracted the letter from her pocket and unfolded it. She glanced around quickly for fear of being observed, but the people near her were either focused on the speaker or involved in their own thoughts. The letter was typewritten, which wasn’t exactly surprising—Isaac had often saved his penmanship for his math—but he had used his IBM Selectric, an ancient typewriter that duplicated letters and punctuation arbitrarily if one didn’t hit the keys in just the right way. He clearly had never bothered to get the machine fixed or to use correction tape.
My Dear Haze,,,
My time is over. This fact has become as clear to me as theeee crescent moon setting outside my study window as I write this. I wish I could dodge my assassin, I wish I could flee to the Cottte d’Azurrr or somewhere equally beautiful. But our killers find us all, so why flail so desperately?
Hazel, I am counting onn you to carry out an un pleassantt request. I would do it myself were I not being followed. Know that I am offf sound mind when I ask that you destroy my work in Room 137. Burn. Smash. Reformat the hard drives. I cannot get into why, only that you must do this quickly. Before others find it.
The equation itself you must keep. (I leave it with the family member they would least suspect.) Deliver the equation to one man only: John Raspanti. His favorite pattern is herringbone.
Important:
1. Do not stay in or visit the house past ttthe end of October. Three will die. I am the first.
2. Do not share this with anyone. Do not contact police, even those related to you. Nothing can be done about the above.
3. Once you have committed this letter to memory, destroy it.
SSShore up your courage, my dear.
Eternally,
Isaac
Hazel’s neck grew warm, and her hands began to tremble. She shut her eyes, and as the words assassin, destroy, equation, Do not share this with anyone impressed upon her mind, a swarm of dread invaded her chest. But the dread was followed by something else: something subtler, an almost hideous thrill. She drew in a sharp breath, tucked the paper back in her pocket, and tried to return her attention to the service, but fragments of the letter scrolled across her mind. Was her grandfather really suggesting that he had been murdered? Who the hell was John Raspanti? And what did herringbone have to do with anything?
Mathematics continued to pour from the bearded man’s mouth, accompanied by sharp hand gestures to emphasize certain symbols. Hazel scanned the crowd, which looked increasingly agitated. She had completely lost track of time but guessed that the speaker had kept them captive for at least a quarter of an hour.
When the man finished and stepped back from the mic, the entire gathering stood at once. Even Lily sprang to her feet. Only Hazel was slow to stand. Her insides had tightened, and her grandmother’s earlier words, ghoulish parade, echoed in her ears.
*
For the mourners who managed the twenty-mile drive to the Severy home in the Hollywood Hills of Beachwood Canyon, up switchbacks to the house on the bluff, lunch awaited. Hazel again caught a ride with her brother and his wife. As she stepped from the back seat, she opened her eyes wide and inhaled deeply, hoping to ground herself in sense memory. The two-story Victorian, distinctly out of character in a canyon of Spanish and Normandy Revival, had always carried a whiff of bygone imperialism. Its aerie perch looked out on Hollywood and the Deco domes of the Griffith Observatory, but Hazel thought the decaying clapboard, combined with a healthy population of tropical flora, gave the house an almost colonial feel, like some faded British outpost.
Inside, she surveyed the now fatherless objects littering the house: broken conch shells, moldy campaign buttons, a cast-iron apple corer, a carved piece of bone. A dinner guest had once likened the house to a Joseph Cornell box, each room with its own codified charm, subdivided again by a recessed nook or secret cabinet. And within those niches were still more chambers of discovery, if one knew where to look. Now, as Hazel examined Isaac’s curios, they seemed laden with hidden meaning, each one a potential hazard or clue.