The Last Equation of Isaac Severy(90)

“I’m sad to see the store go, Hazel, but then, I got what I came for.” He produced a small cardboard box from his messenger bag.

“What’s this?”

“Open it.”

She pulled off the top to find a manuscript: Amazon Warriors. By Chet Hu.

“Is this real?”

“I told you I had big plans for that article.” He laughed. “What did you think I was doing that whole time?”

In the back of her store that night, she read Chet’s manuscript, a dystopian tale—half truth, half fiction—about a near future that no longer valued ink and paper. At its center, a doomed shopkeeper waged battle against bad plumbing and other natural disasters in order to preserve the world’s last cache of hardcover books. At least the spirit of her store, Hazel told herself, would live on in the pages of a book.

As she set down the last page and looked around the tiny back room, she was suddenly gripped by sadness. She imagined her brother sitting in his cell at that very moment, scribbling in his diary. She wondered if he would get along with his bunkmate or have the temperament to weather prison life. How odd that Gregory’s basement confinement so many years ago had eventually led him to another kind of confinement. Lying back on her mattress, she looked up at the ceiling and recalled the imperfect constellations they had so cheerfully created together in their bedrooms. She hoped that as he lay on his prison bunk, her brother might glance up one night and remember that amid the disorder of their childhoods, there had been glimpses of real happiness.

*

It was early morning when Hazel stepped off the plane at Milan’s Malpensa Airport. She made her way down a shiny white hall toward the arrivals gate, anticipating that the car Raspanti hired would be waiting. As she pushed through a revolving door and into a crush of drivers, she hunted for her name among the signage. After a minute, she spotted a familiar word: Herringbone.

She held up a hand.

“You are Miss Herringbone, yes?” he asked.

“That must be me.”

She turned, and that’s when she saw him, standing a few yards away in a slightly ill-fitting suit, looking directly at her. His hair was wild, but his face recently shaven, and he held a to-go coffee cup in each hand. He grinned at her, though a trace of fear passed over his features.

For several long seconds she didn’t move, wanting to be absolutely sure she was seeing this right. She turned to the driver: “Hold on.”

She walked toward Alex, who met her halfway.

“Cappuccino?” he offered. “They really know how to make them.”

“I can’t begin to imagine what you’re doing here.”

“What I’m doing here?” he said. “I live here.”

“Italy or the airport?”

“Well, neither, but I do live in Paris, a mere train’s distance away. I have a photo gig at the CERN particle accelerator later today, which happens to be down the road.”

“So you really are a photographer.”

Alex smiled somewhat self-consciously. “It should be fun—you know, lots of wide-angle shots of nerds puffing themselves up in front of billion-dollar machinery, arms crossed, that kind of thing. Anyway, thought I’d swing by, welcome you to the Continent.”

She took one of the cappuccinos, still marveling at his being there in front of her. “What about your other job? You were working for someone, weren’t you?”

He nodded gravely. “I quit.”

She couldn’t be sure if this was true, though she desperately wanted it to be. “How did you find me?”

He scratched his chin. “Well, not to seem too pleased with myself, but many years ago, as you may recall, I solved one of Hilbert’s twenty-three problems. Someone else crossed the finish line first, but I solved it nonetheless. In comparison to that, do you think locating one woman is all that difficult?” When Hazel didn’t appear impressed, he added, “I found an article about your bookstore online and called the guy who wrote it. Chet? Nice guy, though I really had to charm him for your whereabouts.”

She nodded, inhaling the aroma from her cup. “You’re good at that.”

“The far more interesting question,” he continued, “is why you’re in Milan.”

“I’m taking a trip.”

“Not for math-related reasons, I hope.”

“I’m visiting a friend.”

“Good,” he said, with a wink in his voice that reminded her of Isaac. “Because there are other things in life besides mathematics—” He suddenly looked in the direction of the baggage carousel, then held up a finger, and disappeared.

He reappeared a moment later with her luggage, the bag that had been stamped with an oversized H. S.

“I put two and two together,” he said. “Unless this belongs to the German physicist Horst St?rmer. That guy would monogram his Nobel if he could.”

Suppressing a laugh, she said, “It was a gift.”

Alex set down her bag and frowned. “I lied to you just now. I mean, before.”

“About there being more to life than mathematics?”

“No, about having a photo shoot at CERN. That’s next week. I came all the way here just to see you.”

She looked down briefly, trying to hide the extent of her delight. “So, tell me,” she said, looking up. “What are these other things besides mathematics?”