The Last Equation of Isaac Severy

by Nova Jacobs

  When enveloped by such unflagging attention—love, really—it had been easy to get over her hurt, or at least to mostly forget. Had Gregory done the same? Or is that why he had joined the LAPD? Perhaps it had been on that night, as she and her brother witnessed Tom’s arrest, that Gregory had resolved to become a police officer. Though he had tried in college to push his brain through the latticework of mathematics, maybe he had always known he was meant for another line of work.

  Hazel pulled out Isaac’s keys and turned the ignition. It was ten before the hour. She would have to hurry if she was to keep her appointment with the dead man.

  * * *

  The thick odor of tar rose from the ground as Hazel hurried across the park to the museum. Here and there, patches of crude oozed to the surface of the grass, betraying the vast stew of petroleum and animal bones that lay beneath. She stepped in an inky puddle and had to drag her shoe along the grass for several yards. It was ten past the hour. She was late.

  After paying admission, and passing a sign whose sole purpose, it seemed, was to disappoint children—“No Dinosaurs Were Found in the Tar Pits”—Hazel grabbed a map. There were, in fact, two theaters in the building. Richardson’s message had not specified which. The first was screening a documentary with slick production values, while the second featured an educational film that looked to have been produced during the Carter administration. Hazel chose the latter, taking a seat near the door. Her heart was still beating fast from her dash across the park. Or maybe it was anticipation.

  On-screen, a panicked cartoon horse fought back against the tar’s vacuum grip while a pack of wolves watched from nearby. The narrator was unmoved: “Tar deaths often occurred in clusters . . . A single animal’s cries might attract predators, such as these dire wolves.” She remembered the film from early trips to the museum. It had been a heady time for her and her brother, when the dream of stable childhoods had, at last, come true. In fact, wasn’t it here, at this very museum, that their new parents had asked Hazel and Gregory to think of them as grandparents, even though they were officially adopting them as their own? Isaac had said, “We’re too old to be new parents. ‘Grandma and Grandpa,’ it just feels right.” Later, Hazel wondered if this decision hadn’t been a kind of nod to Tom as their onetime father of sorts. Whatever his misdeeds, Isaac and Lily’s addict son had brought the four of them together.

  The wolves on-screen were in trouble. “These predators are walking into the same trap that befell the horse . . .” Despite the relative happiness of those museum outings with Isaac and Lily, the idea that these prehistoric animals just sat in a pool of tar waiting to die had always terrified her. She’d become familiar on those trips with the phrase “dying of exposure,” which sounded to her like the worst fate imaginable. It had also brought to mind her brother in that closet and the sickening question: Can one die of exposure, trapped not in tar but inside a house?

  The drama on-screen was doing nothing to quell her anxiety. She turned and studied the room. In the glow of the projection, Hazel could see a group of well-behaved schoolchildren seated in the back, an alert teacher posted beside them. A young couple in the row behind her couldn’t contain their giggling, presumably at the film’s mossy animation. A family of five was seated in her own row, all looking unimpressed. She didn’t spot anyone who looked like an enigmatic professor with an appointment.

  The soundtrack swelled to distortion: “And this process, over thousands of years, preserved the bones in excellent condition, allowing visitors of the George C. Page Museum to marvel at these fascinating creatures. Enjoy your visit.”

  As the house lights came up and the theater emptied, Hazel remained in her seat. She studied the museum map, keeping her body angled toward the entrance. When the last of the children had filed out, she heard a voice behind her. His accent was thick, Spanish or Italian.

  “May I compliment you on your scarf?”

  She glanced over to find a spectacled man of late middle age seated in her row—the father of that family. Or had he only been sitting next to them? In his brown windbreaker and leather sandals, he looked like a European on vacation.

  Hazel looked around to see if the man wasn’t addressing someone else, but they were alone.

  “It really is a nice scarf,” he tried again.

  “I’m not wearing a scarf.” Her hand went to her neck for confirmation.

  “Herringbone, isn’t it? My favorite.”

  Herringbone.

  She looked at him sharply. “Mr. Richardson?”

  “Ms. Severy?”

  The lights cut out, and his face vanished. Music swelled as the opening credits for the next show began.

  “Or is it Raspanti?” she asked over the soundtrack.

  “Yes, I hope the late Mr. Richardson doesn’t mind my borrowing his name. I’m trying to keep a low profile while I’m in the States.”

  “Are you even a professor?”

  “I prefer mathematician. But, yes, I teach at the Polytechnic University in Milan.”

  “So why are you here?”

  The screen cut to black, and the film’s narration started: “Imagine Los Angeles thousands of years ago . . .”

  His voice called from the dark. “Meet me near the sloths.”

  When the screen lit up again, the doors were gently swinging, and Raspanti was gone.

  Hazel left the theater and walked deeper into the museum. She hesitated in front of the long-limbed skeleton of Nothrotheriops shastensis: the giant prehistoric sloth. There was a large illustration of the beast on the wall, its lummox face staring out in a plea for its own extinction.

  Just as Hazel was wondering if all this subterfuge was necessary, she turned to find Raspanti standing on the other side of the skeleton, peering into the blind cavities of its skull. He was quite tall, with a sharp Roman profile, like something straight off an ancient bas-relief. She understood at once that this was the man she had seen lurking that day at Isaac’s gravesite.

  “Unfortunate-looking animal,” he said, pulling up the collar of his jacket, as if he believed himself to be wearing a trench coat and not a windbreaker.

  In sympathy of the chill, she wrapped her cardigan more snugly around her, unsure where to begin with her line of questioning.

  Raspanti leaned in a little, smelling faintly of tobacco and foreign hygiene products. “Isaac said you would make contact, but I was becoming impatient. He also said you would have something for me.”

  Hazel hesitated. “An equation, you mean?”

  He smiled tightly and glanced over one shoulder. “Quiet, please, Ms. Severy.”

  “Even if I did have it,” she said, dropping her voice, “how do I know you’re the one I’m supposed to give it to?”

  “You think I’m an impostor?” He let the accusation hang in the air for a moment. “If the watchword isn’t enough for you, it shouldn’t be too difficult for you to confirm who I am.”

  As he started to turn away, she stopped him. “I searched John Raspanti. No mathematics professors came up.”

  He nodded in understanding. “Your grandfather doesn’t like to make things easy, does he? He liked to call me John, but it’s Gian with a G. Giancarlo.”

  Raspanti walked off, stopping a few yards away at the diorama of a Columbian mammoth, one of Hazel’s favorite exhibits. The animatronics beneath its matted fur would jerk to attention every few minutes, accompanied by a faraway roar.

  She pulled out her phone and entered his full Italian name into a search engine. Up popped a portrait of Raspanti on the Milan Polytechnic site. There was also a group photo from a mathematics summit—men and women arranged Solvay Conference–style—with Raspanti towering next to her grandfather, an arm thrown around his shoulders. These were younger Raspantis, but clearly the same man who stood in front of her now.

  She stepped over to the diorama.

  “Why didn’t Isaac just give you the equation himself?”

  Raspanti blinked rapidly. “You think I
don’t ask this same question? You think I had any idea he was going to do that to himself? What I know is I get a letter in the mail one day telling me he is leaving his life’s work to me, so that ‘they’ won’t get their hands on it. He told me you would be the courier.”

  “Well, he could have sent you an email attachment and saved me the trouble.”

  The man frowned. “They would be looking for that. Phones are equally unsecure.”

  “Who’s they?”

  The mammoth rattled to life. “They are always the same: one of two groups who enjoy exploiting science for their own ends. The first group uses scientific advancement as a tool for war. The other wants to make more money than they already have. One kills, the other steals. If either group gets ahold of Isaac’s work, it would be, well, regrettable.” Raspanti dropped his voice to a near whisper. “The equation is just the beginning—a seed—for chaotic prediction. Can you imagine if the government had a formula to predict anything it wanted? Or Wall Street? You think they are going to share this formula with people like you and me?”

  “So it is a predictor.”

  “Of a very specific kind.”

  “Then why not destroy the whole thing and be done with it?”

  “Should we scrap particle physics because it produced the H-bomb?” His voice dropped again. “There is value in the equation, even if we don’t use it to forecast the future. All brilliant math has jewels locked inside that can be harnessed. When Andrew Wiles proved Fermat’s Last Theorem in 1994, he did so on the backs of other great theorems. I have a German colleague who coined a term for the phenomenon—genieschultern—‘on the shoulders of genius.’ And so it goes, on and on.”

  “That’s fine, Mr. Raspanti. But it doesn’t really matter because I don’t have the equation.”

  “Or you have it and don’t know where to look.”

  She wondered if she should just hand over the contents of the hotel room to him—Here, you figure it out—even though Isaac had expressly asked her to destroy everything. But then, where was this alleged equation if not on the computer or the map?

  The map. She pulled out her phone and swiped through the images she had snapped on her trip: a wide shot of the Beachwood house, her old bedroom, Drew smelling a flower, Gregory frowning at her. But the photos she was looking for were not there. She searched the trash. Gone. Feeling suddenly unsteady, she leaned on a nearby panel display for support.

  “Is something wrong?” Raspanti asked.

  “I took photos of his map—four of them—but they’re gone.”

  “A map!” Raspanti said in a loud whisper. “With specific points, predicting events down to the day and minute?”

  She looked up. “How did you know?”

  “He showed me a similar map for Milan, a kind of test run. He was anticipating events there like a seismologist predicts earthquakes.” Raspanti shook his head. “No, like a seismologist wishes he could predict earthquakes.”

  “And by events, you mean . . . ?”

  Raspanti didn’t answer. He was staring at the mammoth again.

  “Isaac’s own death was on the map,” she continued. “And my cousin’s, who died in a recent accident.”

  He turned sharply. “Isaac’s death was on the map?”

  “Yes. It is a death map, isn’t it?”

  Raspanti grabbed his head, as if reevaluating everything. “No, no. Your grandfather wasn’t predicting just any kind of death. That would have been too broad. Pointless, even. People die every day in the most unremarkable ways.”

  “Then what?”

  “Can’t you guess?”

  She could, but she didn’t want to say it out loud because it was too heavy, too terrifying. She wanted this all to be over so she could go home.

  The joints of the ancient elephant began to grind and shift, and when the animal thundered to life again, she said, “I have something to show you.”

  * * *

  Thirty minutes later, with Raspanti right behind her, Hazel unlocked room 137. As she pushed open the door and led him down the hall, she knew something was off. She took one step into the living room and stopped. The computer was gone, the map was gone. Otherwise the room appeared untouched. There were no overturned tables or tossed sofa cushions, just the quiet absence of her grandfather’s work. Raspanti glanced around, unsure of what he was supposed to be looking for.

  Hazel stared at the now-blank wall and swallowed hard, not wanting to see what she was seeing. “It was all here,” she said finally. “No one else had the key.”

  The Italian ran a hand through his hair, suddenly understanding. He moved to the window leading to the roof. “How difficult would it be to break in?”

  Hazel flushed. There was only one other person who knew about the room. She couldn’t bring herself to admit what a moron she’d been that night. Drunk, giddy, and foolish.

  Raspanti instinctively moved to the spot where the computer had been. “What’s this?”

  She joined him at the desk and looked down. In the center of the glass-topped oak sat a shaggy white wig and mustache. They appeared not to have been carelessly left behind, but to have been placed there deliberately. The mustache was turned upside down in the shape of a smile.

  “Looks like Einstein left his calling card,” Raspanti said sourly.

  “Twain,” she corrected him. “Mark Twain.”

  – 19 –

  The Offer

  On Saturday morning, Philip drove Silas and Sidney to their tennis lesson and forced himself to sit courtside through the entire instruction. Though he had found excuses to slip away to Anitka’s cottage every day for the past week, he had recently made a point to be more present for his sons.

  Philip tried to concentrate on the boys’ practice, but he had taken two of his emergency Vicodin at breakfast, on top of his migraine medication, and was now feeling a bit high. So while he appeared to be studying the twins and their sylphlike instructor, he was really seeing Anitka’s figure spring about the court, dark hair catching auburn highlights in the sun. Anitka didn’t even play tennis, but he actually clapped after watching his lovely phantom slice a drop shot that Silas couldn’t return.

  He stopped clapping when he looked across the court and swore he saw Nellie Stone in the bleachers. She was sitting next to a large man whose face, masked in shadow, Philip couldn’t quite make out. When he blinked and they both disappeared, he promised himself he’d cut back on the pills.

  Afterward, Philip treated his sons to their favorite ice cream parlor. Between bites of banana split, Philip realized Silas and Sidney were staring at him.

  “What?”

  “You’re being kind of weird, Dad.”

  “Just tired,” he said, trying his best not to sound drug addled. “How do you like your new instructor?”

  “She’s fine,” they replied together.

  Philip almost said, “Well, she’s certainly fit,” but realized that this would sound creepy. Besides, his sons didn’t appear to notice female beauty, and Philip was imagining the day when they would announce in unison that they preferred men. He had already prepared himself for the expression of unfaltering acceptance he would wear on his face. And at that moment, watching them scoop mint-chip ice cream into their mouths, he felt that he wanted nothing more than their happiness, whatever their preferences—academic or otherwise. He wondered if this feeling would last.

  The family reconvened for a late lunch at home, where Philip’s medicated high turned to anxiety. Anitka texted him several times that afternoon, and he had to repeatedly excuse himself in order to peck out a reply. After Jane commented on his multiple trips to the bathroom, he mumbled something about indigestion and retreated upstairs to delete both ends of the exchange.

  Around four thirty, the house phone rang. It was Kimiko Kato calling with an arcane question about a certain five-dimensional manifold Philip used in his work. Her query didn’t have an easy answer, thereby giving him the perfect cover to step out for a couple o
f hours. After he hung up, he had to suppress a smile as he told his family that he needed to catch up with “the group.”

  Faye, detecting his eagerness to leave, questioned him.

  “The group, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All men?”

  “One woman. Japanese. One of the best physicists in the world.”

  She sniffed. “You’re not just saying that, in the way men like to pat women on the back?”

  “We do allow women to be great scientists now and then.”

  Faye asked if he could drop her off at the grocery store on the way. Philip agreed, though had some difficulty concealing his irritation. As they headed out the door, he cast a final glance back into the house and saw Jane watching him from the staircase, a thin smile on her face. He tossed her a mock salute before pulling the door shut, and for the next fifteen minutes, her smile seemed tethered to him. He was so distracted by it, and by the idea that the smile had meant something, that he could barely maintain his end of the conversation with Faye in the car.

  “So where is this group going?”

  “Just a lounge on campus.”

  “So you’re like beer buddies, but instead of sports and girls, you talk about the meaning of the universe?”

  “Well, I don’t know about meaning.” He turned into the Ralphs grocery store parking lot. “If you were to eavesdrop, it wouldn’t sound as important as all that.”

  “Please, it’s called the theory of everything, isn’t it?”

  “A slight exaggeration.”

  A self-satisfied smile spread across her face. “You know what I think?”

  He was so unnerved by how much she looked like Jane in that moment that he found himself unable to respond.