The Last Equation of Isaac Severy(8)

Her search of the kitchen cupboards turned up a precious half bottle of Isaac’s rye, perhaps the last of his stores. She took a quick swallow from the bottle before pouring herself a proper glass.

In the living room, she noticed a young foursome gathered in a recess, a bronze bust of Copernicus peering out from their animated orbit. From the unconcealed arrogance in their voices she guessed they were grad students, and from the volume of their conversation, that they were happily intoxicated. The bearded man who’d spoken at the funeral stood among them. She saw up close that his hair was a bit of a nest and that his suit—not herringbone, she noted, but a faint checked pattern—was probably a size too big. His anxious look from that morning had gone and he was now engaged in confident conversation with a cute brunette. But Hazel sensed his eyes following her, and as she took a seat in a nearby club chair, she could feel a lingering heat from his gaze.

The four had moved on from reminiscing about Isaac to complaining about relationships. The brunette grumbled about her computer-scientist ex, who was a dead ringer for Albert Camus but whose broodingly handsome braincase had been empty.

“No joke,” she said. “I had to explain Riemann’s zeta to him, like, zeta of s times.” Laughs all around.

“I bet he was fun, at least,” a redhead broke in. “Try dating a number theorist who thinks it’s the height of hilarity to celebrate only prime-numbered birthdays. Oh, ha-ha!”

The beard was still focused on the brunette. “So you dumped him.”

“Afraid so.”

“Hey, I hear you,” said the fourth member of the group, a man with unfortunate acne scars. “People who don’t get mathematics can be shockingly dull—”

“Now, wait a second,” Beard interrupted. “Take this book on the shelf here: Numbers: How the History of Mathematics Is the History of Civilization. I mean, sure, the history of math is tied to human progress and all that, but the title is meaningless. There are other things to life.”

“Like what?” demanded the brunette.

“Oh, I don’t know, nature, long naps, a dog chasing a ball, food—”

“You don’t think nature is packed with mathematics? Or that the advent of agriculture was totally dependent on rudimentary geometry?”

“Sure, but it was also dependent on people being hungry.”

The brunette tutted. Hazel couldn’t see her face, but she imagined it sucking a cigarette.

“Look,” continued Beard. “You can plug in anything—Architecture: How the History of Building Shit Is the History of Civilization—literally anything.”

“Booze?”

“How the History of Fermentation—”

“Mustard.”

“How the History of the Spice Trade—”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is that I’m sick to death of all the pretension, of insisting that the abstract science we call mathematics is more vital than anything else, because if God forbid someone doesn’t memorize the zeta function for his girlfriend, he’s some straw-munching rube.”

This wasn’t the first time Hazel had heard a heated discussion like this in the Severy house, but it suddenly struck her as hilarious that people actually talked like this.

“You know,” the brunette broke in, “speaking of pretentious mathematicians, I wasn’t the one who got up at a funeral and made a hundred people listen to number garbage for twenty minutes.”

“Number garbage?”

“That’s right.”

“Whatever you say,” said Beard, but the brunette was already stalking off to the kitchen, her friends right behind her.

Beard glowered at his drink as if rebuking his own reflection. When he reoriented himself, his eyes alighted on Hazel.

She shifted uncomfortably on her cushion and cleared her throat. “Big Comfy Chair: How the History of Sitting Down . . .”

He laughed. It was a boozy cackle that lasted several seconds and brought an involuntary smile to Hazel’s face for the first time in days.

“You heard all that?” he asked.

Feeling self-conscious, she cracked open a book sitting on an end table. “Oh, no. I was just reading up on”—she flipped back the cover—“An Extended Treatise on Mathematical Modeling, by Hermann Henck . . .?”

He tried not to smile.

“I actually know him. The man is deadly.” Beard suddenly frowned in the direction of the kitchen. “Christ, I seriously don’t know what’s wrong with me lately. I’ve been such a prick.”

“You mean to that girl? I wouldn’t worry about it.”

He planted a hand on Copernicus’s bronze face.

“Yeah, I don’t really know them, anyway. And I’m not apologizing to a mathematician who can’t recognize decent math when she hears it.”

“It’s funny,” Hazel said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard an equation read out loud like that. Definitely not at a funeral.” At this, she was surprised to see him glance away, the skin above his beard reddening.

“I guess it was a bit much.”

“Not that I would’ve understood it had it been written out.”

He smiled. “If you had an hour or two, and a basic understanding of differential equations, I could—”