by Nova Jacobs
Out on the street, past the stanchions and red carpet, Hazel looked for a blaze of white, though she didn’t exactly know what she’d do once she caught up with him. She moved closer to the curb and, on tiptoe, scanned the horde of gruesome characters lining the sidewalk. These were the drunk agitators, their costumes graphic and bloody. She was already unsteady on her heels, and after getting jostled by a pack of Salem witches—faces white, stiff nooses leading to imaginary gibbets—Hazel shoved back but was immediately knocked into a lamppost. Regaining her balance, she spied Alex halfway down the block, pant cuffs trailing along the Walk of Fame. Where could he be rushing off to? He didn’t even live here.
Hazel realized now that a different impulse had overtaken her completely. She no longer desired to be seen by him but instead only wanted to understand this odd relative. She was still slightly drunk and not entirely confident in her abilities to tail somebody. But the streets that night were abundant with distractions, so she stepped out of her heels and started down the pavement, remembering something her brother had once said about following people: “Stay on the opposite side of the street. Try not to cross when your target does. Don’t get cocky.” Hazel ignored these rules, though she tried to keep a good half block behind Alex.
As she approached the corner of Hollywood and Vine, she was forced to negotiate an unruly group of revelers. It took her a few seconds to figure out that they were a collective silent movie: a ghostly Harold Lloyd and Mary Pickford, a dancing title card warning “Look out!” and a long-limbed piano slapping out a tune on himself. Had she paused to acknowledge Harold Lloyd turning to her with a mute scream, she might have missed seeing Alex disappear into the historic Taft Building.
She hurried through the crosswalk and up to the Taft entrance. The lobby looked empty, and as she tugged open the heavy door, she could just make out the sound of an elevator door closing. Before a security guard could stop her, she bolted across the lobby. She might at least catch the floor number.
“Excuse me, you can’t just—”
“Hold on a second.”
“You’ll have to sign in—”
Hazel watched the brass-plated elevator dial move—something she’d always wanted to do—and when it swung from M to 1 and stopped, she walked back across the lobby, proud of herself, though now really feeling that last drink. A female security guard in animal ears called to her from the front desk.
“Who you here to see?”
“Um, would it be possible to see the first floor? If I wanted to rent a space?”
The guard sighed and slid a card across the desk. “Call this number during the week.”
Hazel pocketed the card and looked around, wondering if there was a way to give the guard the slip, make a dash for the elevators.
“Anything else, ma’am?”
Hazel snatched a mini Reese’s from a pumpkin-shaped bowl. “No, thanks.”
Outside, she rounded the corner of the building and scanned the floor above the street for any lighted windows. Finding none, she sat down on a bus bench and slipped on her heels. What was she doing? Was she really going to stake out this guy? She felt the first spits of rain, and just as she was thinking of calling an Uber, a strange thing happened: a small fleet of Checker cabs appeared in the intersection. She wondered if she would see such a thing ever again, let alone in Los Angeles. Ever a sucker for the increasingly obsolete, she hailed one and asked the driver to take her back to Beachwood Canyon.
“Actually,” she said, shutting the door, “could you make it the Hotel d’Antibes on Foothill Drive?”
* * *
By the time they pulled up to the hotel, rain was lashing at the cab’s windows. Peering through the weeping glass, Hazel saw that the place had acquired a certain charm in the hours since she’d left it. The rooms glowed red from behind gossamer curtains, and the grounds were sculpted in arabesque shadow. She imagined that she saw a warm light coming from the direction of Isaac’s room, but she knew this was an illusion, as the eighth floor was set back from the street. She paid the driver and made a run for the entrance.
The lobby was empty and the concierge desk abandoned. She stepped across the acrid carpet and called the elevator, which took an entire minute to arrive. When the doors opened, she stepped in the car and felt inside a pocket of her purse to make sure the key card was still there. Then she hit the blank button.
“Hold the elevator, please,” a voice called from the lobby.
No, don’t think I will. She jabbed at Close Door, that placebo of buttons. Finally, the doors started to move, but it was too late because a man slipped through the narrowing gap—all soggy hair and sloppy Southern gentleman. Alex.
“Is there a room 137, by chance?” he asked breathlessly.
Hazel stepped back into a corner of the elevator, her neck growing prickly hot. Alex was trying his best not to smile, but the effort only made him look more satisfied with himself.
“Oh, and I’ve been wondering all night,” he said, leaning back against a mirrored wall. “Are you Tippi Hedren from The Birds or Kim Novak from Vertigo?”
“Why are you following me?”
“Well, Hazel,” he said, as the elevator began to move, “usually it’s the person behind the other person who’s doing the following.”
She started to respond but realized she had nothing to say.
“It’s fine, actually,” he continued. “I was hoping to draw somebody out. Tired of searching alone.”
Tired of searching alone? She wasn’t sure what he meant by this, but it did make her consider for a second that he, too, had received a message from Isaac. She wanted to ask him, but that would require a level of trust in Alex she wasn’t sure she had. Instead, her neck and ears still burning, she looked down at the book he had been carrying all night: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
Eager to deflect some of her discomfort, she said, “Do you really think Twain would be caught dead carrying around his own book?”
Hazel detected a smile growing from behind his woolly mustache.
“Good point.”
It was at that moment she knew what was different about him. His beard was gone. His structured jaw, shiny with rain, was completely clean-shaven. She wondered how she had been able to recognize him at all.
“You’d make a disastrous detective,” he said, producing a miniature KitKat bar from his pocket. “I tailed you pretty easily after you left the Taft.”
“I thought you’d gotten in the elevator.”
“What, to room 137?” He shook his head. “I hid behind a planter after asking to use the bathroom. Anyway, I don’t think the Taft room numbers go up that high. I should know because for the past week, I’ve been scouring the entire city for that bleeding number.” He flashed the notebook tucked inside his jacket, as if this were ample evidence.
“Can I ask how you even knew to look for room 137?”
He waved his hand vaguely, as if the question were unimportant. “Isaac mentioned it once. He said it was his unofficial office or something.”
So Alex hadn’t gotten a letter. Or was he merely covering? The elevator stopped and opened onto the eighth floor.
“But I’m hoping that tonight,” he said, stepping out and registering the hall’s single door, “my search is done.”
Alex fed the KitKat into his mustache and munched his way down the hall, stopping several paces before the door to stare at the number scribbled there. “This was one of the first hotels I tried. Never thought to look above the first floor.”
Hazel struggled to think clearly, but that last cocktail was still impairing her brain.
He turned and examined her face. “I should have known Isaac would entrust his work to someone like you.”
Hazel wasn’t sure how to respond to this, but she tried her best to adopt a poker face. “Is that what you think? That he left his work to someone ludicrous like me?”
“Yes, not a number person. Makes sense, actually.”
&nbs
p; “What’s the big attraction to his work, anyway?” she asked.
He crumpled the candy wrapper. “Why do you buy a new album from your favorite band? Or book by your favorite author? I’m a fan, and I can’t just leave it sitting in a room.”
“I can’t let you in there. I sort of promised.”
“Do you even know what’s in there, Hazel?”
“Do you?”
“I know the language.”
“Well, I may be a not-number person,” she said icily, “but I’ll figure it out.”
Alex looked back at the penciled numerals and closed his eyes for several seconds, as if 137 were the solution for which he was inventing an equation. When he opened his eyes again, he said, “I’ll leave, if that’s what you want. Last wishes of my grandfather and all. Sorry, our grandfather—almost forgot.” His cheeks colored, which on someone so outwardly proud struck Hazel as poignant. Was there ever a truer sign of emotion than blood hurrying to the surface of the skin?
She pushed her hand into her suit pocket, where the uneaten Reese’s was becoming pliant. “It’s probably best you go,” she forced herself to say. “You can’t tell anyone about this, either.”
“Of course.” He nodded gravely and backed away. “So what’ll you do with it? Oh, never mind. Tell me years from now, when I no longer care.” He turned and headed toward the elevator. “I’ll see you around, then.”
Doubtful. Didn’t he live in Europe?
As the distance between them grew, Hazel realized she didn’t want him to go; she was, in fact, desperate for an ally. She’d never crack that password alone. But it wasn’t just that she needed help—there was something about Alex that felt safe, like having a part of Isaac with her again. Hazel turned and touched the card to the reader until it blinked green. When she stepped inside, she didn’t close the door. Instead, she threw it wide open and looked back into the hall.
Alex spun around and smiled. She wondered how many things he got people to do for him because of that smile.
“You’re brilliant, Hazel. Truly.” He walked back down the carpet and stopped just short of the threshold. He held her gaze for a second. Then, eyes moving past her into the dark beyond, he stepped trancelike into the room.
– 13 –
The Old Spot
Gregory had abandoned his surveillance of Tom early that night so that he and Goldie could take their son trick-or-treating. But as much as he adored his time with Lewis—and nearly cried when he saw the little bear suit Goldie had sewn for him, complete with furry brown ears and a tail—he struggled to be present with his family. Whenever Gregory’s mind wandered to Tom or to his other preoccupation (the woman he very much wanted to see), he would bring his focus back to his son, who shyly held out a plastic pumpkin at every door, accepting with renewed surprise the treats that were dropped into it. Hazel’s rubber fish had turned out to be a fitting present, and Lewis would growl like a grizzly and tear into it every time a door opened.
Goldie had wanted Hazel to join the festive chaos of the evening, but when she didn’t answer her phone, Gregory suggested that she’d likely gone to Fritz’s party and to leave her be. But privately he wondered why his sister was still in town. Her lingering presence made him nervous, and he couldn’t be entirely confident in his plans for Tom until she was safely away. He would call her tomorrow, he decided. He would escort her to the airport again if he had to.
When it began to drizzle, he and Goldie took their son home. Lewis’s sugar high kept him up way past his bedtime, but when he was finally asleep, Gregory began to plot the rest of his evening. He took one last look at his sleeping son, who still clutched the hide of his bear costume, and felt a stab of self-hatred at the idea of what he was about to do. As he shut the bedroom door, the feeling diminished. It was lucky that his wife was turning in early—she had run around most of the day making last-minute adjustments to Lewis’s costume, and was now complaining how exhausted she was. He wouldn’t have to make some stock excuse about a work emergency; he could slip quietly out of the house and be back before morning.
As he lingered in the hallway, waiting for Goldie to switch off their bedroom light, his phone vibrated with a text:
Can we do another night?
Gregory closed his eyes, fighting back the urge to call her right then. Instead, he replied that he needed to see her now, that this was not negotiable, that they had waited long enough. Wasn’t she the one who had said “I need to see you,” not three days before? He’d come to her if necessary, disrupt her entire evening. But as soon as he resorted to this threat, he regretted it: I’m sorry, my love. I’m just desperate to see you. Can you get away for an hour?
After an agonizing eight minutes, she responded, Our old spot. 45 min.
Gregory immediately erased the conversation (one couldn’t get nostalgic with digital exchanges) and began to gather items for a romantic evening. He bagged a bottle of wine, two glasses, some crackers and cheese, an old blanket from the linen closet, and—in case the rain returned—two umbrellas. He stole out of the house, buoyed by desire. Her reference to their old spot made him smile, and he felt that familiar surge of momentum, not like the rolling steel ball but like an unstoppable wave moving farther and farther from land. As with his stakeouts of Tom, he could feel an inevitability about their meetings—a force that had been set in motion long ago, and there was a thrill in letting it take him over.
He might have suggested a hotel that night, but meeting out of doors carried an undeniable charm. It was also cleaner, with less risk of a data trail. But soon they wouldn’t have to worry about any of that. She had made him a promise last week, a promise he held folded in his pocket. He would have hardly believed it had she not written it down. But as he parked his car on the hill he knew so well, high above Los Angeles, and made his way to a secluded spot beneath a sprawling sycamore tree, surrounded by a carpet of grass and city lights, he knew that he needed her to say it. He needed to hear the promise from her own lips tonight.
After fifteen minutes, he saw her approaching, winding her way toward him across the moonlit grass as if it were a stage. When she was a few yards away, he couldn’t stand it anymore. He rushed to meet her, drawing her graceful body to his, slipping his hands under her coat to feel the satiny fabric beneath. He kissed her face, but she looked around suddenly, as if fearing discovery, and moved to the tree.
She laughed at her own paranoia and tried to smile, but he could see that she was more nervous than usual. He pulled her to the blanket, and they fell onto the soft wool, where they would soon play out a familiar scene under the branches. Still, Gregory couldn’t dismiss the sadness and fear he had just seen in her face. So he told her that he agreed with her, that they should leave their spouses, that they should start the process now so that in the new year they could finally be together. When he had finished, she nodded slowly and sat up. But what she said next, he could hardly believe. As she turned her eyes to the ground and said what she had to say, he shut his eyes tight, as if to block out the words. He tried instead to focus on the crickets, listening for the beat of insect wings in the background. He wanted to isolate everything that was not her voice and turn up its volume, so that he didn’t have to listen to the thing he feared more than anything in the world.
– 14 –
The Map
For the past hour, Alex’s password attempts had come in rhythmic bursts, as if he were composing music instead of trying to hack into a computer. From her place in the kitchenette, where she was preparing a pot of coffee, Hazel could almost imagine the modulations of the keyboard as a sonata for the tone deaf, with Alex’s singsongy muttering as harmonic counterpoint.
As she returned to the living room and set a cup of coffee next to him on the desk, she thought of how Alex’s fingertips had grazed hers briefly after they’d entered the room. But when he spied the computer, he had pulled away and rushed to the desk. Now, shirtsleeves stuffed up past his elbows and his Twain wig and mustache di
scarded, he hummed and muttered to himself, oblivious to her presence.
She took a seat on the couch behind him and stared at the back of his head, wanting him to crack the password, yet fearing he would—fearing she had made a serious mistake letting him in.
Then, loud enough for her to hear, he said, “It has to be numeric.”
“How do you know?”
“It just has to be.”
“You’re forgetting. He left this to me.”
He frowned at her, as if entertaining this. “We do have one thing going for us,” he said. “The computer doesn’t lock us out after too many failed attempts, which means he wanted someone to crack it.”
“Can you tell me at least what your strategy is?”
“No strategy, just every number combination I can summon.” He began to list aloud the mathematical series and constants he was trying, most named after people Hazel had never heard of.
Euler’s constant (.57721 . . .)
Planck’s constant (6.626 x 10-34)
Fermat numbers (3, 5, 17, 257, 65537 . . .)
Ramanujan’s number (1729)
Mersenne primes (2, 3, 5, 7, 13, 17, 19, 31 . . .)
The largest prime known to man (257,885,161–1)
Natural base of logarithms: e (2.71828 . . .)
The golden ratio (1.61803398 . . .)
As midnight approached, Hazel had a second cup of coffee and scrutinized the giant map of LA. She peered at the cryptically numbered dots, sitting in fertile clumps in various neighborhoods—Atwater Village, Lincoln Heights, Inglewood—in plots of irregularly shaped land defined by this or that freeway. Hazel didn’t find maps of Los Angeles particularly compelling, because a map of LA wasn’t really about place. When Angelenos looked at a rendering of their city, it wasn’t to trace the shape of the land or to locate one’s favorite park or body of water. Seattleites did that. San Franciscans and New Yorkers did that. Hazel would bet that if you picked a random woman living in Manhattan and handed her a sketch pad, she could draw her little island by heart, affectionately dropping in Central Park, the Met, the West Village, that fountain she likes. But Los Angeles residents didn’t care where the Getty Museum was in relation to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, Dodger Stadium, or their apartment. A Los Angeles map wasn’t there to reveal how the places you loved were arranged in two-dimensional space. It was there to tell you which one-dimensional arteries you were going to take to get there.
