Life After Genius (46 page)

“You’re right,” Herman says. “I don’t.” And pulls away from the curb, winding his way through the streets of High Grove as if he’s been living here his whole life. He’s not in a big rush the way he was out east, the aura of tension around him gone. He’s like a farmer waiting for the corn to grow. And it makes Mead uneasy.

Herman makes a right and a left and then another right and passes by the cemetery on his way out of town. The streetlights drop away and the surrounding homes and trees fall into darkness, the headlights of the sedan carving a tunnel through the night. Then Herman makes another left.

“Where are you going?” Mead says. “The highway is straight ahead. I thought we were heading back to Chicago.”

“I never said anything about Chicago, Fegley.”

“It was implied. In our agreement.”

“Was it?”

“You know it was, Weinstein, now turn around. I thought you said you knew your way around here. This is a dead-end road. There’s nothing out this way but Snell’s Quarry.”

“I know,” Herman says and keeps driving.

A prickly sensation creeps over Mead’s scalp. This is not good. This was not part of the plan. At least it wasn’t part of Mead’s plan but maybe it’s what Herman has had in mind all along. To get Mead out on a deserted road. In the middle of the night. Alone.

The sedan rolls off the pavement, its tires crackling over gravel. Herman slows to a stop a few feet shy of the water and shifts the car into
PARK
but doesn’t turn off the engine. The headlights illuminate a path of light that dances across the surface of the lake and then stops up short against a sheer face of rock. Against Dead Man’s Leap.

Herman pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his breast pocket and shakes one free then pushes in the lighter on the dashboard and waits for the coil to heat up, as if the whole reason he drove out here was to sit by the lake, have a smoke, and look up at the full moon that is just now lifting itself over the horizon. But Mead isn’t buying it. He thinks Herman has something else in mind altogether. And unless the guy has brought with him an affidavit for Mead to sign swearing that Mr. Herman Weinstein is in fact the coauthor of Mead’s paper on the zeros of the zeta function, then Mead is in serious trouble. Panic rises up in his chest, making it hard for him to breathe. He cannot believe he did it again: suspended his better judgment and trusted Herman. He should have stayed at the house with his mother and Dr. Alexander. What the hell is wrong with him? Mead rolls down the window for fresh air but it doesn’t help. He considers bolting from the car but knows that Herman would only come after him. Running isn’t working anymore. Mead needs to try a new tactic and so he says, “Why did you pretend to be surprised that Cynthia and I knew each other?”

“What’re you talking about, Fegley?”

“The first time I came up to visit you in your room, Cynthia was there. You started to introduce us and when she said we already knew each other you acted all surprised and jealous. But you weren’t surprised, Weinstein. You were stalking me even back then. You knew I liked her and so you went after her.”

“I suppose that is what attracted me to her: the fact that she could like a guy like you. That she could see below the surface; that she could see the value of the person inside.” Herman looks over at Mead. “She liked you too, you know. I even think she would’ve gone out with you if I hadn’t come along. She couldn’t stop talking about you after you dropped by that night. I think maybe she was having second thoughts.”

“Is that why you hit her?”

Herman looks surprised. This is news to him, that Mead knows.

“And is that why you fucked Dr. Kustrup? Because he liked me better than he liked you?”

“You seem to have me all figured out, Fegley. I’m curious, if you knew all those things about me, though, why you never turned me in.”

Because I’m an idiot, Mead says to himself. Because I thought it would be easier to keep my mouth shut. Because I thought I could graduate and slip out of town without causing any waves. But obviously I was wrong. “I don’t have you figured out, Weinstein. I may know who and what you have done stupid shit to but I am utterly clueless as to why. I mean I get it: You hate your brother and you’re taking it out on me because I remind you of him. I get it. What I don’t get is how you could possibly think that forcing me to make you my coauthor or killing me or whatever other crazy shit you have in mind to do is going to change any of that. I hate to be the one to break it to you, Weinstein, but it isn’t. You’ll still be a lousy excuse for a human being and your father will probably still despise you.”

“I know.”

“You know. You know? Then what the hell are we doing out here? I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to drive to Chicago or California or Mexico or wherever the hell else it is you think I agreed to go. Take me back to the house.”

Herman places the unlit cigarette between his lips, shifts the car into reverse, and starts to turn around. Only he does not head back out to the main road, instead Herman starts driving around the lake, the sedan lurching about as its tires try to find their footing on the uneven rock, scrub brush scraping against the sides and along the undercarriage of the car. And the prickly sensation returns to Mead’s scalp.

“What are you doing, Weinstein?” he says, but Herman does not respond.

The full moon has risen completely above the treetops now, the landscape bright enough for Mead to get his bearings. And he can see where Herman is headed. Up the hill to Dead Man’s Leap. Mead’s window starts rolling up on its own. The lock on his door thunks into place. Shit, Herman
is
going to kill him.

“You can’t drive back here, Weinstein. It’s illegal.”

“The law doesn’t much concern me right now, Fegley. It’s like you just said: I can’t do anything to change who I am or what my father thinks of me so what’s the point in even trying?”

“That’s not what I meant. You
can
do something, just not something stupid. And I don’t think I have to tell you that whatever it is you have planned to do right now most definitely falls under the category of stupid.”

The headlights of the sedan light upon a sign that reads:
DANGER. DO NOT GO BEYOND THIS POINT
. Herman drives right over it.

“I’ll help you write another paper,” Mead says. “One for which you really are my coauthor. How about that?”

“I don’t want your charity, Fegley. I’m a Weinstein. We help those in need, not the other way around.”

“It’s not charity if you work for it, Weinstein.”

“But it’d feel like charity, Fegley.”

The top of the cliff is within sight now, the moon hanging directly over it. The tires of the car hit a patch of loose rock and the sedan skids sideways. Mead almost shits in his pants.

“Okay,” he says. “You win. I’ll make you coauthor of my paper.
This
paper.”

Herman brings the car to a stop and looks over at Mead. “You say that now, Fegley, but what is to stop you from changing your mind an hour from now when you’re sitting in the safety of your parents’ cozy little house. I’m afraid I can’t take the chance.”

“I won’t change my mind, I swear.”

Herman pulls the lighter out of the dashboard, holds it to the end of his cigarette, and lights up, inhaling deeply. “You know, you are the most unique person I have ever known. You don’t care about what other people think; you just care about math. I admire you, Fegley. I just want you to know how much I admire you. You were the closest thing to a friend I ever had.” The lock on Mead’s door thunks again. “Go on, Fegley, get out.”

He’s letting him go. Thank god. Mead cracks open the door then looks back at Herman. Were, he said. You
were
the closest thing to a friend I ever had. Past tense. Mead pulls the door closed again and says, “No.”

Herman smiles. “There you go again, Fegley. You say we aren’t friends but then you go and act like the best friend in the world. You’re amazing, Fegley, truly amazing. Now get out.”

“No,” Mead says and crosses his arms over his chest.

“Then I’ll get out.” And he puts the car in
PARK
and does just that: gets out and walks up to the edge of the cliff and looks down. He sucks on the cigarette and exhales a large plume of smoke then turns back toward the car and, squinting into the bright headlights, says, “Now I see why you were so hesitant to jump. It’s quite scary from up here. How many stories above the water do you think we are: Four? Five?”

Mead does not answer; instead he crawls over the gearshift into the driver’s seat. It is a new feeling for him, sitting behind the wheel. Exciting and scary at the same time.

Herman sucks on the cigarette. “You want to hear something crazy? I never learned how to swim. My father tried to teach me once but I got hysterical when he put me in the water. He thought I was acting out, he thought I was deliberately being difficult to embarrass him in front of all the other men at the yacht club.” Herman takes another puff. “What can I say? It was a lot less embarrassing to let him think that than to know the truth, than to know that his bastard son was a spineless wimp who was scared to death of drowning.”

Mead leans his head out the window. “Get back in the car, Weinstein. Now.”

“I can’t go back, Fegley. There’s nothing for me to go back to.”

Mead looks at Herman looking at the moon and remembers something Uncle Martin once told him about why men hunt. He said they are propelled by an atavistic impulse to reconnect with nature, that they are seeking a way to get back in touch with their basic instincts, to escape, even if just for a few hours, from the pressures of their day-to-day lives. So that must be why Herman has been stalking Mead —hunting him, really —for the past three years: He has been trying to get back in touch with something he lost. Or maybe never had at all. But death is the goal of the hunt, not the hunter.

“Come on, Weinstein, it’ll be fine. You’re a smart guy. If you don’t want me to help you write a paper, fine, write one on your own. Trust me, if you put as much time and energy into studying as you put into stalking me, you’ll do just fine. And don’t do it for your father, do it for yourself. Find a subject you love. Maybe it isn’t math; maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s something that’ll really piss your father off. You know, a two-birds-with-one-stone kind of thing. Think of the possibilities.”

Herman inhales on the cigarette, then drops it to the ground and stamps it out with the toe of his shoe. “That sounds great, Fegley, that sounds really great. In theory. But I’m not much interested in proving or disproving it.” And then he jumps off the cliff.

Herman doesn’t scream but Mead hears his body hit the water as he scrambles out of the car and rushes toward Dead Man’s Leap. He peers over the edge and down into the black hole that is the lake, waiting for Herman to pop back up to the surface. Only he doesn’t. Shit. A wave of nausea rolls over Mead. He thinks about the quarryman who jumped off this same cliff a hundred years ago. He thinks about Percy driving into that tree. No one could save that quarryman and Mead wasn’t there to save Percy. But the quarry is now filled with water and Mead is here.
Boys as young as eight jump off this cliff in the belief that when they hit the water they’ll be men.
Mead sure as hell hopes that’s true, closes his eyes, holds his nose, and steps into the air.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

O
NE DAY I GOT IT IN MY HEAD
to write a novel. It would be my life’s purpose. My family most likely thought me crazy: the middle kid seeking attention again. But a college friend sent me her copy of
The Artist’s Way.
I taped a couple of its inspirational passages over my desk, then sat down and wrote my heart out. The result wasn’t great but it wasn’t terrible either. I was hooked. Over the intervening years, a few special people have read and reread and reread and reread my numerous attempts to sculpt a publishable story. Without them I could never have done it. And so I want to extend thanks to my sister, Mary Jacoby, and to Meredith Reed, Mary Keane, Gary Brozek, and Jaya Miceli for their honest feedback and unflagging support. I also want to thank Barney Karpfinger for plucking my novel from the hundreds that have passed through his hands over the years and Jamie Raab for believing in me and giving me the benefit of her sharp editorial eye. I would like to extend an intellectual debit to
Meditations on Hunting
by José Ortega y Gasset and
Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics
by John Derbyshire. They taught me, respectively, the language of hunting philosophy and of math. And lastly I want to thank my college friend, Amy Muir Stevens Sternberg, who passed away before I managed to get published. I still have your book, Amy. And if it’s all right with you, I think I’ll keep it.