Life After Genius

by M. Ann Jacoby

  Mead is about to knock when he hears two people talking on the other side of the door. His hand freezes in midair. But Mead could have sworn he heard only one set of feet on the steps, not two. Now he isn’t so sure. The voices continue talking. Arguing, really. Two males voices. “I can no longer tolerate this kind of behavior,” one of them says. “Calm down and let me explain,” the other answers back. More heated words are exchanged but Mead cannot make them out. Then the voices stop.

  Mead drops his hand and retreats to the stairwell. He shouldn’t have come up here. It was a bad idea. He thought he had something to say to Herman. He thought he finally understood what had taken place in the bathroom stall that day. Thought he would tell Herman what he saw before going to the dean. In case the guy wants to come along. But now Mead isn’t so sure. Maybe he got it wrong. Again. Because apparently he got it wrong with Cynthia.

  Mead has just started back down the stairs when Herman’s door opens. He steps out into the hall and says, “Hey, Fegley, where you going? Why didn’t you knock?”

  Mead stops and looks back, wondering how Herman knew he was there.

  “I saw your feet,” Herman says. “Under the door.”

  “It’s not important,” Mead says. “You’re busy. I’ll come back later.” And continues down the stairs. But Herman comes after him. He leans over the railing like a prince over the ledge of a balcony and says, “I was just watching the TV, Fegley. But I’m not anymore. Come back up and tell me what’s on your mind.”

  “DO YOU PREFER COKE OR PEPSI?” Herman asks and digs a can of each out of the miniature refrigerator that sits like a nightstand between his two beds.

  “Coke,” Mead says and Herman tosses him the can. Mead then perches on the edge of the spare bed, pops the tab off, and glances at the closet door. Herman usually leaves it hanging open but now it’s closed. Watching TV, my foot. That wasn’t the TV Mead heard; someone is in that closet. Hiding. Someone by the name of Dr. Kustrup. Shit. Mead wishes he had never come up here, wishes he had never told Dr. Alexander about what he thinks he saw that day, wishes he could just forget about the whole thing.

  Herman sprawls across the other bed —his bed —and says, “So? What’s up?”

  Mead has to think of something else to say, make up some other reason for this unexpected visit. He sips his soda and glances at the closet door again. “Are you?” He clears his throat. “Are you and Cynthia still dating?”

  Herman appears to give the question a lot of thought. And the longer it takes him to answer, the more idiotic Mead feels for having asked. He should just get up and leave. Walk out of here before he embarrasses himself any further. In front of Herman. In front of Dr. Kustrup. And he is about to do just that when Herman says, “If you mean have we been sleeping together, the answer is yes.”

  “And by sleeping together,” Mead says, “you don’t actually mean sleep, correct?”

  Herman smiles, a cocky smile that further underscores the lack of good judgment that brought Mead to his room in the first place. “What’s this all about, Fegley?” he says. “Why the sudden interest in my love life?”

  Mead glances at the closed closet door. “Never mind. It’s none of my business. I shouldn’t have come up here.” Mead puts down the soda can and stands up. “I’m sorry to have bothered you. I’ll leave.”

  Herman grabs his wrist. “Did Cynthia say something to you?”

  Shit. Why did Mead have to go and mention her? That’s not even why he came up here. What is wrong with him? “No,” he says. “I … I met a girl.”

  Herman looks surprised. He lets go of Mead’s wrist and says, “Who is she?”

  “Her name is Shirley Tanapat.”

  “Tanapat. Can’t say I’m familiar with that name. Is she in one of your classes?”

  “No, she’s a librarian. Over at the library.”

  Herman smiles, all cocky again. “An older woman. I’m impressed, Fegley.”

  “They’re all older women to me, Weinstein. I’m eighteen.” Then he grabs his Coke off the top of the fridge and knocks back a slug. Belches. Decides that since they are on the subject anyway he might as well go ahead and ask. Realizes that he has, in fact, been wanting to ask Herman this question for a while now. One friend to another. “So when did you first know? About Cynthia, I mean.”

  “Know what?”

  “Come on, Weinstein, don’t make me spell it out, you know perfectly well what I’m asking.”

  “When did I first know that Cynthia wanted me to fuck her?”

  “Jesus,” Mead says. “Do you have to be so crude?”

  “No, but I love the reaction it gets out of you.”

  Mead feels like a total idiot for having come up here. For bringing up Shirley. But, well, since he has gotten himself in this deep, he might as well keep going. After all, he can use all the advice he can get. And if he can’t ask his best friend these kinds of questions, then whom can he ask? And that’s when it dawns on Mead that he actually has one. A best friend. The first best friend Mead has ever had. “So, what’re the signs?”

  “Signs? You mean aside from hard nipples and wet cunts?”

  Mead sets down his Coke and stands up. “That’s it, Weinstein. I’m leaving.”

  “All right. I’m sorry. Cool your heels, Fegley. You want another soda?” And Herman rolls across the bed to the fridge and removes another can, holding it out to Mead as a peace offering. And it suddenly dawns on Mead that he might also be Herman’s first best friend. That neither of them are very good at this. And so he forgives Herman for his crude behavior, knowing that he himself has a lot to learn when it comes to extending kindness to his fellow man.

  Mead accepts the proffered soda can, even though the one he is holding is still half full, and sits back down. Herman smiles and pulls another can out of the fridge, pops off the tab, and slurps the foam that bubbles up out of it. He licks the lid with his tongue all suggestive-like and says, “I’m gonna tell you the biggest secret there is to know about love, Fegley. You ready?” Then he leans forward, as if what he is about to say is really important and highly confidential, and says, “If someone really likes you, there isn’t a whole lot you can do to fuck it up.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “You can’t make someone love you, Fegley; they either do or they don’t. But if they do, you can be the biggest scumbag in the world and they’ll bend over backwards to explain away your behavior just so they can keep on loving you.”

  “So what you’re trying to tell me, in your own crude manner, is that if a girl likes me that eventually she’s going to want to sleep with me?”

  Herman flops back on the bed. “Have you asked this Shirley Tanapat out yet?”

  “We’ve had coffee four times.”

  “But you don’t drink coffee.”

  “I know.”

  “Does she know?”

  “She does now.”

  Herman smiles.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know why you’re wasting my time with all these questions, Fegley. It’s obvious to me that you’ve already won her over.”

  Mead smiles; it’s just the answer he was hoping to hear.

  “Did you have something else you wanted to ask me, Fegley?”

  Yes, Mead thinks, and looks over at the closet. No longer able to bear the thought that Dr. Kustrup might be hiding inside of it, he sets down the two cans of soda, gets up off the bed, and, heart pumping wildly, throws open the closet door.

  “I think I’m probably a couple of sizes bigger than you,” Herman says. “But sure, go ahead. Borrow whatever you want. The girls love anything Armani.”

  Clothes. The closet is stuffed full of clothes, but Dr. Kustrup is nowhere in sight. Mead thinks again to ask Herman about that day in the men’s bathroom. To tell his best friend what he saw. To tell Herman that he is prepared to go to the dean and offer himself up as a witness. He is about to open his mouth and say just that when Herman says, “The Beaumont Theater.”
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  Mead turns around. “Excuse me?”

  “It’s this old movie house off campus with velvet seats and chandeliers. It’s a great place to make out. You should take Shirley there. They show only year-old movies but the tickets are half-price.”

  “Won’t that make me look cheap?”

  “Nah. A girl likes it when a guy takes her someplace she’s never been before. Someplace he discovered on his own that he wants to share with her. Besides, you’ll seem more mature taking her to a theater off campus rather than to the student center. And that’s what you want, right? To appear as mature as possible?”

  Mead decides to bring up the Dr. Kustrup thing another time.

  MONDAY IS SHIRLEY’S NIGHT OFF, so that is the night Mead takes her to the movie house. They meet in front of the library and walk over to the theater Herman suggested. Only he neglected to mention one minor detail: It plays adult movies only. The XXX-kind. Which is a little more “mature” than what Mead had in mind. Four months ago, he wouldn’t have even been able to get inside the place. Not legally, that is.

  Needless to say, it makes Shirley uncomfortable. As if she just discovered she is out on a date with a pervert. As if she wishes she had worn sweatpants and a pair of running shoes instead of a skirt and high heels. “I’m sorry,” Mead says. “I didn’t know.”

  “I’ll bet your roommate recommended this place, didn’t he?”

  “Do you know Forsbeck?”

  “No, but I know boys. I have three brothers. Listen, it’s okay, Mead. An honest mistake. We’ll just go someplace else.” And she suggests this bookshop she knows that is a couple of blocks down and a few blocks over from the theater. A store that stocks rare periodicals in areas of special interest, including mathematics.

  “Sounds like my kind of bookstore,” Mead says. And it is. The shop is small. Taller than it is wide. It resembles a library in a private home, its bookshelves extending all the way from the floor to the ceiling with no way to get to them except by ladder and catwalk.

  “The owner’s a retired professor,” Shirley says. “I don’t think he cares as much about selling books as he does about just being surrounded by them.”

  “Wait a minute,” Mead says. “I know about this place. Dr. Alexander told me about it. The retired professor is a physicist, right?”

  “Yes,” Shirley says. “That’s right.”

  Despite the small square footage of the store, the retired physicist has managed to squeeze a table up front. By the window. And installed a coffee machine next to the register. Shirley orders a double espresso and sits. Mead inquires about mathematical periodicals and is sent up the ladder to the ceiling.

  Dozens of back issues of American Mathematical Monthly and the Mathematical Intelligencer crowd each other for space on the shelf. A cornucopia of knowledge, just like Dr. Alexander’s basement. Mead also finds a copy of The Theory of the Riemann Zeta-Function and An Introduction to the Theory of the Riemann Zeta-Function, both of which Dr. Alexander introduced to Mead a couple years ago. He even finds a few periodicals he hasn’t read before. He selects one or two to take home, and is tucking them under his arm, when he comes across a periodical that appears to be mis-shelved. A paper written by a physicist. Mead pulls it out with the intention of placing it in the correct section but something about the title —Dynamical Systems: A Model for Theoretical Chaos —grabs his attention and he flips it open, skims through a few pages, and comes across an expression that is familiar to him.1 - (sin (π u)/πu)2. It’s the distribution function for the spacings between zeta zeros. Only in this periodical it’s called the form factor for the pair correlation of eigenvalues of random matrices. Pair correlation is a term Mead has never heard before, one that makes his heart start beating faster and his face grow flush. It’s warm all of a sudden, and Mead begins to sweat inside his double-breasted vest.

  Discarding the other periodicals, he backs down the ladder and buys the physics paper, then realizes that he has no money left to pay for Shirley’s espresso. She doesn’t seem to mind, though, and graciously pays for it herself, saying, “I’m just glad you found something you like.”

  Mead pores through the periodical on the way back to campus, is so absorbed by it, in fact, that he would have walked straight past the dorms and on into the park, where he probably would’ve gotten mugged or worse if Shirley wasn’t here to stop him.

  “Well, I guess I should be heading home,” she says and Mead realizes that he has barely spoken two words to her all night.

  “Come up to my room,” he says.

  “Excuse me?” Shirley says.

  “I want you to hear something.”

  She glances at her watch. “I don’t know. It’s getting pretty late and I have to be at the library when it opens first thing in the morning.”

  “This won’t take long. I mean, you introduced me to your favorite bookshop so now I’d like to introduce you to my favorite musician.”

  Shirley stares at the sidewalk, as if the answer to her dilemma might be found in the cracks of cement. “All right,” she says, “but just for a few minutes.”

  Mead cannot believe his luck when he opens his door and Forsbeck isn’t there. He clears away the zeta zero papers strewn across his bed —to make room for Shirley to sit —and fetches the CD player off his roommate’s desk. Removing Forsbeck’s Pink Floyd disc, Mead replaces it with Bach’s Suite No. 3 in D Major, slips the headphones over Shirley’s ears, and presses PLAY. When the first few notes touch her ears, she smiles, then lifts her hands and begins to play the air as if it were a piano. She looks at Mead and yells, “I performed this for my final recital in school,” because the music is loud and she cannot hear her own voice.

  “You play the piano?” Mead yells back.

  Shirley nods. “I’m pretty good at it too.”

  SHIRLEY TANAPAT STAYS for more than a few minutes. She kicks off her shoes, crosses her legs yoga-style, and listens to Bach with her eyes closed. When Suite No. 3 ends, she doesn’t get up to leave but continues listening to Suite No. 4. Mead sits at his desk and reads. Every once in a while he sets aside the periodical to riffle through his own papers, looking for a specific function or expression or number field. At one point, he looks over and sees that Shirley has rolled onto her side, her head cradled in his bed pillow, her stocking feet tucked up under her skirt. When he looks again, she has fallen asleep, her breathing slow and even. And he doesn’t know what to do about it: wake her up and send her home or let her sleep. Then he notices the time. It’s after midnight. And Shirley has to be at the library at nine. But he can hardly send her home now. Send her out into the streets of Chicago in the middle of the night. What if she got mugged? He should probably walk her home. But what if he got mugged coming back? Besides, Mead has no idea where she lives. Whether it is nearby or far away. So he decides to leave her be.

  It is close to two when Mead finishes the periodical. He can hardly wait for the sun to come up so he can tell Dr. Alexander about it. Math and physics. Bernhard Riemann would have made no distinction between the two areas of study. Not in his time. So neither should Mead.

  Forsbeck still isn’t back. Which is highly unusual for a weeknight. Perhaps he is spending it with his new girlfriend. Which frees up his bed. But Mead does not much relish the idea of sleeping in it. Especially since Forsbeck hasn’t changed the sheets since the girlfriend last stayed over. So Mead considers his other options —sleeping in his chair or on the floor —but dismisses them both as too uncomfortable. He could go upstairs and crash on Herman’s spare bed —again —but Mead does not feel comfortable with that option either. Which leaves him with no other choice but to get into bed with Shirley.

  Mead takes off his shoes and crawls in beside her, trying to jiggle the mattress as little as possible, but Shirley stirs and rolls over. Mead freezes, afraid to take a breath until she settles back into sleep. She looks lovely lying on his bed. Like a nymph in a Shakespeare play. Mead removes the headphones from her ears and lies dow
n behind her, tucking his knees into the crook of her legs. Her hair smells like shampoo. He pictures her in the shower washing it, soap suds cascading down her neck and over her breasts, and grows hard. He wraps his arm around Shirley and cups one of her breasts in his hand. His dick begs for attention and he obliges, reaching down into his pants with his other hand to give it some relief. Moans when he comes. Shirley stirs and he drops both her breast and his dick. Embarrassed. Ashamed of his hedonist behavior. He starts to remove his arm from around her body when she grasps his hand, intertwining her fingers with his. Mead holds his breath in an attempt to make time stand still. There are no words to describe what he is feeling at the moment. It is beyond anything he has ever experienced before. All he knows is that he wants it to last forever —this moment —even though he knows it cannot. But still he holds his breath. Holds it in as long as he can. Until Shirley, half-wake, says, “Hold me tighter, Kevin.”

  MEAD PACES BACK AND FORTH. Glances at his watch. Paces some more. Finally, the door to the classroom opens and students begin to file out. But Mead cannot wait a moment longer and pushes his way inside, pushes against the flow of departing students like a salmon swimming upstream against the current. “Hey, buddy,” someone says, “watch where you’re going.” But Mead knows exactly where he is going.

  Dr. Alexander is standing at the chalkboard, eraser in hand, a crutch tucked under one arm. He looks up at Mead and says, “Are you here to help me? Because it isn’t necessary. As I have told all my other students, I can get around just fine on my own.”

  “I found it, Dr. Alexander. You were right.”

  “Right about what, Mead?”

  “Physics,” Mead says and waves the periodical in the air. “I found this in that bookstore off campus. The one you told me about. The one the retired professor opened. It’s all about quantum-scale dynamical systems. About the periodic orbits that underlie a classical chaotic system. The Riemann Hypothesis models itself after one of these systems. A chaotic system. I’m sure of it. They have the same characteristic polynomials. The same eigenvalues.”