Love by the Numbers

by Karin Kallmaker

  Lily giggled. “Indeed I am. Next stop Frankfurt.” Once they were clear of the office she said in a low voice, “There were three more minutes left.”

  “I’m sure he has more to say. He has accepted the sound of his voice as an ersatz acolyte.”

  “What is Godwin’s Law?”

  “Most simply, the first person to invoke Nazis loses the point and the discussion is closed.”

  “Given the way commentators bandy it about, Godwin’s Law isn’t universal.”

  “Invoking a specter of genocide in any situation not involving genocide means logic no longer applies to subsequent debate points.” Nicole shifted her satchel from her left to her right hand and winced.

  “Is that still bothering you?”

  “It’s getting better.”

  “No it’s not.” Lily watched the indicator lights on the elevator panel. “Here’s the car keys. I’ll join you in a minute.”

  “Do we have time to waste?”

  “You saved us three minutes already, Phileas Fogg.”

  With a shake of her head Nicole turned left out of the building onto the still quiet side street. Lily jaywalked to the chemist on the corner.

  A few minutes later, Lily leaned across the driver’s seat to hand Nicole a white paper bag imprinted with the name of a ubiquitous Swiss pharmacy. “All you have to do is fasten the Velcro. I also got you some Nurofen—ibuprofen—and at night you should ice it. I’m concerned that it’s your writing hand.”

  Nicole rustled in the bag as Lily settled into the driver’s seat and started the car. “I could have picked it out myself.”

  “I put it on Insignis’s tab. You’ve gotten carpal tunnel by relentlessly signing books. Not to mention the smackdown you just delivered on that jerk of a talking head. ”

  After peering at the picture of the wrist brace, Nicole opened the package. “This will help. But it didn’t happen signing books and I took him down with words. I slipped getting out of the shower.”

  “They don’t have to know that. Let’s keep it simple. Sometimes, simple is better.” She glanced at the GPS and made a quick right turn out of the parking lot. Traffic in Geneva wasn’t crowded, but Swiss drivers seemed to have two speeds: stopped and accelerator on the floor. She who hesitated could sit all day trying to make a turn.

  She was pleased they were a little ahead of schedule. Switzerland was a beautiful country to drive through and she was glad not to be frazzled for the long drive to Frankfurt. Lake Geneva came into view repeatedly from the A1 until they left Lausanne. After that it seemed as if around every corner was another snow-dusted peak.

  They’d agreed on a radio station that played “the best of classic rock and oldies.” The selection had been varied and she contentedly hummed along to Seal’s “Kiss from a Rose.”

  When it segued into Cher’s “Believe” Nicole said, “I refuse to accept the definition of this song as an oldie. I was in college when it was popular, and that wasn’t that long ago.”

  “I was in high school. It was the theme of the freshman prom.”

  Nicole made a dismissive noise that reminded Lily vividly of Indira Hathaway. “I’m only thirty-two.”

  “I’m only twenty-six and ‘Poker Face’ is an oldie to somebody.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a comforting thought.” Nicole wrote something on a paper and underlined it. “I am going to simplify my life and reject this one. The authors have forgotten I also teach and therefore can figure out when someone is trying to get me to do their work for them.”

  “I never tried that on my profs.” She stole a glance at another mountain, capped with snow that sparkled under the bright sunlight—majestic was the only word for it.

  “You have a brain and you use it. Not all students meet both of those standards.” She tied up the papers and slipped them back into the folder.

  “I did try it out on a librarian once and got big demerits.”

  Nicole laughed as she pushed the folder into the satchel at her feet. “Librarians are not to be trifled with. By the way, I have about five inches of papers I could send home, if we can fit a postal service stop in somewhere soon.”

  “Sure. There’s probably time tomorrow morning.”

  Nicole was looking out the window. “What a beautiful country. I hate to say it, but the Granite State is a little outclassed.”

  “You might not want to admit to that when you get home.”

  “Can I ask you a personal question?” At Lily’s nod, she went on, “Will you ever let your hair go back to its natural color?”

  Lily’s hand clenched on the wheel. After their discussion at the restaurant in Dijon she had expected Nicole to figure out who she was—she was a researcher after all. But when Nicole had said nothing for the rest of their time in France or their two days in Geneva, she’d wondered. But it was good they weren’t face-to-face because she didn’t want Nicole to see her fighting tears again. “I don’t know. That depends on other people.”

  Nicole seemed to be choosing her words with care. “I can’t imagine letting other people decide the color of my hair.”

  She wasn’t about to let Nicole pass judgment on her. She retorted, “You haven’t had the kinds of people I’ve been dealing with on your case twenty-five-eight.”

  “You’re quite right. I meant—”

  “You let your mother determine some of the things you will and won’t do.”

  “Also true.”

  “Why do you live with your mother?”

  “Is this about me?”

  Lily kept her gaze on the rapidly moving expressway. It was going to be a long drive back to Frankfurt. Her anger was close to the surface, she realized. Was she entering a new, clichéd stage of grief? “I’m just—”

  “I don’t live with my mother. I live in the home that is half mine, according to my stepfather’s will. He was afraid that after he died his family—who weren’t exactly welcoming of his foreign bride and ‘ethnic’ child—would try to take the house back. It’s been in the family a long, long time. He left half to me and half to my mother. Her half passes to Kate, creating equal inheritances in the end.”

  “He was a very fair-minded man.”

  “He was. So I view it as my home, not my mother’s house that I continue to live in. Neither of us is a guest of the other. As long as I make no attempt to influence how she keeps the gardens and I have my office at the university to go to, we are successful housemates.”

  “But all of that is now destabilized.”

  “Indeed. Kate will be with us for…some time.” Nicole sounded nonchalant, a tone so rare for her Lily suspected she felt anything but nonchalant.

  “My parents…” Lily swallowed. “If they were alive I don’t know that I could live with them. Even if none of that…None of that had happened. I always planned to branch out on my own. Maybe because I was fairly independent growing up. My first complete sentence, according to my mother was, ‘I can do it myself.’”

  “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  “My parents made sure I went to school, had clothes, food, and that’s more than some kids get. But the rest of the time I was an afterthought.” She couldn’t help the bitter twist in her voice.

  “I surmised that due to their treatment of you.”

  Lily had thought she’d read everything a person could find on the Internet about her, and nothing suggested her parents had been distant—Merrill Boone’s narrative went exactly the opposite of that. She was supposedly a much loved and pampered child for whom they had desperately wanted to buy entry into elite society. As that spoiled brat, she had turned a blind eye to her parents’ source of income, and/or she was a participant in the whole scheme, groomed to take over the family business. Never mind that a basic robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul Ponzi scheme couldn’t live long enough to become a family business. “Where did you read about this?”

  “I didn’t read it. You are an intelligent, talented person, and you got those genes from them. Regardless
of their innate intelligence they launched a criminal enterprise, the discovery of which was inevitable. Every criminal act they undertook for their greed was a sentence on your head, at a minimum the loss of the family name. I was adopted into the Hathaway family, and I understand what an asset a family name can be. Even crime bosses and serial criminals usually take steps to separate their family from their businesses to preserve value in the family name much the way a corporation seeks to protect its brand.”

  Nicole’s tone was the even, measured delivery of facts that she used in her lectures. “Your parents escaped the inevitable sentence for their crimes and left you to face their consequences. Their fall from grace, loss of assets, property, good name, it was all foreseeable and they didn’t protect you from any of it. Unless they were given to vast self-deception that belies their intelligence, they could not have loved you to have left you to such a fate.”

  Lily was aware of feeling very cold, then her stomach churned with a burning heat.

  Nicole made a sound of regret, then from far away, Lily heard her say, “Pull over to the side of the road.” A moment later, more forcefully, “Pull over, Lily.”

  She did as Nicole said and watched Nicole’s fingers press the emergency blinker and turn the key. The car went silent except for the sound of traffic zooming past them and the high whine of someone trying to hold in the sound of her heart breaking.

  Some minutes later she was aware of something wet against her eyes, but it was at least another minute before she realized that it was the fabric that covered Nicole’s shoulder, soaked with her tears.

  In spite of the center console, Nicole had one arm around her in an awkward embrace, holding her.

  She knew what Nicole said was true, but had never allowed that truth—that her parents had simply not loved her—to form in her mind. She’d been able to describe the relationship as aloof, distant, and even that they loved her “in their own way.”

  Pushing Nicole away, she said, “We’re on a tight schedule. We don’t have time for this.” She realized then that her face was a mess and she gratefully accepted the tissue Nicole proffered.

  “Let me drive for a while.”

  Looking at the narrow shoulder where they were parked, she shook her head. “There’s no room to open the door—and this is a really unsafe place to be. I can drive.” She proved her words by starting the car and increasing speed until a considerate driver slowed enough to let her move into the lane.

  But her hands began to shake almost immediately so she took the next exit and made a right turn into a petrol station. “You take over and I’ll have a snack.”

  “No problem.”

  The bracing, cool air cleared her head somewhat. As she passed Nicole at the rear of the car, she was surprised when Nicole pulled her into her arms. She wanted to melt to nothing, lose herself completely in the warmth.

  “I’m very sorry.” Nicole’s words were warm in her ear. “I didn’t think I would trigger such an enormous emotional response.”

  Don’t go limp, she told herself. She had thought that if Nicole held her like this she would be overcome with lust, but there wasn’t even a hello from Libido. She felt something else and it was as bad—possibly worse. She tried for a joke. “Were you thinking I’d be blasé about the subject?”

  Nicole sighed, squeezed her one last time and then let her go. “I wasn’t thinking. I was…being curious. I thought you had already sorted out your parents’ behavior.”

  “Sometimes situations aren’t ready for science…yet.”

  Going onward to the driver’s door, Nicole said, “We’ll debate that another time.”

  Finally letting herself go limp in the passenger seat, Lily fumbled with the seat belt as Nicole turned them back toward the expressway. “Crying is exhausting.”

  Nicole touched her lightly on the leg before returning her focus to driving. The feeling of relief and letting go was intense, but it was the gentle warmth of Nicole’s touch that was the last thing Lily remembered before she slept.

  * * *

  With a long sigh, Lily pulled back into traffic. She glanced in the rearview mirror as much to watch Nicole disappear through the huge doors as to make sure she wasn’t going to get ticketed for her brief stop in a clearly marked no parking zone outside the massive convention hall.

  Even though they had left Geneva almost an hour ahead of schedule, Nicole was barely on time for her signing slot on the last day of the Frankfurt Book Festival. Sobbing on Nicole’s shoulder had turned out to be very ill-timed—she’d woken up a short time later to find Nicole caught in the mother of all traffic jams caused by an overturned vehicle. It had happened just a few minutes before they arrived on the scene. But for her weep-fest they would have been ahead of the crash and on their way.

  She quickly stashed the car in a nearby car park and ran back to the venue. Their first stop in Frankfurt, exactly a week ago, seemed more like last year, and her mind was reeling with everything they’d experienced since, from the quiet walled cities of Belgium to the soft countryside of France to the cacophony of the traffic jam that had closed the highway. Though Lily had felt like screaming, Nicole had remained resigned and calm.

  Using the gigantic Hammering Man as a landmark, she found the closest side entrance to the exposition building and showed her floor pass. The signing venue was in the far end of the hall and if today’s crowd was anything like that on the first day of the festival Nicole was going to be swamped.

  Hurrying past row after row of publishers of everything from autobiographies to political treatises to cookbooks to science-fiction epics, she wished she’d worn her exercise shoes. By the time she skirted the long queues of book enthusiasts waiting for signatures from their favorite authors she was in a dead sweat. Not feeling her freshest, she tried to compose her expression and approach Nicole’s table with some kind of decorum.

  There were four women at the table, all talking at once. A line of seventy to eighty more waited within the stanchions that led to “3:00-4:30—Dr. Nicole Hathaway, Love by the Numbers.”

  “You made it,” Nicole said in a low voice.

  “Wait until I turn in the invoice for the parking lot. It’s going to cost more than the hotel in Geneva did.” She pushed her handbag under the table and then inserted herself into the line to create a break. While Nicole finished signing and a brief chat with one woman, Lily spoke to the next in line, asked her to open her book to the title page and when the table cleared, to step forward and tell Dr. Hathaway how she’d like the book signed. With a little delaying chitchat she got the bodies at the table down to one so that Nicole could hear more clearly. A little order went a long way and the line moved more predictably for the next forty-five minutes. It cleared further when the four p.m. scheduled appearance by a megastar horror writer began.

  Nicole slumped in her chair and rubbed her wrist. “I think you can sit down now. We’ve been outshone.”

  “Do you want some ice for that? I’m sure I can find some.”

  “No, but if you have some water, I’d be glad of that.”

  “I’ll go get some.”

  Nicole briefly grasped her arm. “No, don’t go—it’s okay.” She smiled at the next woman, who said something eager in German.

  Lily thanked the woman and translated the praise as, “She says that you made her realize she might be happy again. Please sign the book for Elise, spelled like the Beethoven.”

  “I’m pleased to hear that,” Nicole said automatically. Lily translated it back and the woman departed, smiling and nodding.

  “None of your predecessors spoke multiple languages. It’s been a great help.”

  “Thank you. I think you could have managed, however.”

  “Yes, but not easily.”

  Maybe Nicole was not quite the “moody shit” that Kate had described after all. Her moods were for the most part consistent—steady and stable like oatmeal. To Kate, who was more like a platter of fruit ranging from sweet to sour, Nicole w
ould seem bland. But after the scene in the car, and the insightful, unsparing analysis of her parents’ actions, Lily realized that Nicole not only knew more about love as a science, her devotion to truth was a kind of love in itself. Truth was the backbone of justice, she mused. On that basis alone, compared to her parents, Nicole was the grand suzerain of all things love.

  She had to grant that Nicole now made more of an effort to talk with people rather than at them, and she’d adapted to Lily acting as a translator, not questioning when Lily had pointed out that Nicole should continue eye contact with the speaker while Lily translated. That way it didn’t become a three-way conversation. In English, Nicole had also adapted to “nonoptional social banter.” Lily wondered if it was still calculated as an obligation or if that little bit of warmth in her expression was actually real. Had the trip changed Nicole at all? She simply could not tell what the woman was thinking. Red, sore eyes and swollen sinuses didn’t help her focus either.

  After a stretch of several minutes with no additional readers in line, leaving Nicole to have a prolonged chat with the last reader, Lily realized she’d spent the time staring at Nicole’s hands and listening to the rise and fall of her voice. Earlier, with Nicole’s arms around her, Libido had been blessedly silent. Now Libido was wide awake and ogling Nicole’s fingers, but, Lily informed Libido firmly, she wasn’t going to act like one of Nicole’s case studies. All that mattered to her was the eventual good reference down the line in some new profession where no one cared that her full name was Lillian Linden-Smith. Certain she’d initially been graded as an academic featherweight, it was a relief to know that Nicole saw her in a more favorable light. No doubt her emotional breakdown had taken away some points, though.

  All she wanted was to be “that assistant” in future years. Good driver. Spoke several languages. End of story.

  Libido continued to watch Nicole’s hands move. Lily crossly reminded herself of the To Do list. Navigate to hotel. Check in. Get good night’s sleep. Arrive airport seven a.m. for flight to Madrid. Libido suggested they find the well-documented Frankfurt gayborhood and plan to sleep on the plane.