Page 41 of Middlegame

“People who are no longer nocturnal, and resent the fact that they need sleep,” says Candace. Her tone is light but her eyes are sharp, narrowing as she looks at Dodger.

Not for the first time, Dodger thinks she may have made a tactical error in agreeing to room with someone whose discipline includes developmental psychology. She smiles as brightly as she can, trying to force the memory of Roger’s startled face even further toward the back of her mind. He’s the reason she messed up her math, because she can’t focus.

She was never supposed to see him again. She’s never really seen him before. He’s not real. He’s not real, because if he were real, she would have hurt him, by slamming the door between them. He can’t be real, because if he’s real, she’s a monster for what she did to him.

He can’t be real.

“I guess I just wasn’t up for it,” she says finally.

Candace’s eyes dart to the scar on Dodger’s left arm, and Dodger has to swallow the urge to put her hand over it. Candace is one of the people who knew what it was the first time she saw it, and knew the newspaper articles for a childish—if eagerly accepted—attempt at a cover-up.

“You want some tea?” Candace asks. “It might make you feel better. I know it always helps me when I’m not feeling good.”

“That would be great,” says Dodger, and smiles, and Candace smiles back before she turns and disappears, leaving Dodger alone in her room of flawed equations, numbers that don’t add up, marching ever onward into the future, never finding their solution, never really being solved.

REUNION

Timeline: 14:12 PST, August 18, 2008 (three days later).

Roger never knew there were so many ways to be a math major. The field is enormously divided and subdivided, a fractal web of specializations chasing its own tail into the depths of the course catalog. It’s like peering through the gates of hell. Infinite math classes packed with infinite mathematicians, all of whom would be delighted to explain in great and painful detail exactly why the fact that he gave up as soon as he fulfilled his general math credit requirements was a mistake.

But Dodger Cheswich is famous in mathematical circles: Dodger Cheswich is the girl who solved the Monroe Equation. (The memory of her shyly showing him her work, written in gel pen on wide-lined paper, hurts less than it used to, because he’s going to see her again, he’s going to see her and tell her he was wrong to run away but so was she, and she’s the mathematician—can’t she see that this makes them equal? Can’t she see that the time for running is over?) Getting her to come to Berkeley for grad school was an accomplishment. Not a big accomplishment, like netting a real celebrity or someone whose parents could afford to endow a new library, but an accomplishment all the same. Someone has to have bragged about getting her for their specific specialty.

Someone has. He finds a reference buried in one of the chess club newsletters to “incoming student D. Cheswich, joining our esteemed Mathematics department as she pursues her degree in game theory.” Armed with a name, description, birth date, and area of study, it was a small thing to find her advisor, and an even smaller thing to present himself as her brother hoping to surprise her. It’s a lie, but a believable one: they look alike enough to pass as siblings. They have the same eyes. They were born on the same day and adopted by families on opposite sides of the continent. And once upon a time, impossible as it is to believe when nothing like it has ever happened again, they were able to talk to each other by closing their eyes.

People usually give him what he asks, when he takes the time to do his research and understand his own requests. It’s been three days since the campus tour that went off-campus after she ran out on it, and now here he is, standing on her doorstep with a chessboard tucked under his arm, trying to find the courage to knock.

“Hey.”

He looks up. There’s a woman on the balcony above him. Short, curvy, pretty in an all-American way: she’d look perfectly at home at a baseball game, or wearing cut-off shorts and sitting in the bed of a pickup truck. His romantic life has been a succession of Norman Rockwell paintings, and this girl would slot into place without disrupting the line. Her hair is ashen and her eyes are pale and she’s looking at him like he’s an interesting new species of insect, something meant to be placed in a jar and studied for as long as possible.

“Hello,” he says.

Her gaze sharpens. “You’re not here for me, because I don’t know you. You’re not here for Candy, because she has a boyfriend, and he’s built like a Sherman tank. There’s no way you could be here for Dodger. She doesn’t date. I’m not sure she understands why humans have anything other than a waste exhaust port in their pants.”

He lifts his eyebrows. “How long have you been living here?”

“A week, but I pay attention. I know stuff.” The woman leans further out over the rail, taking a drag off her cigarette and blowing the smoke in his direction. When she taps the ash over the rail it falls perfectly into the bushes below her, practice making perfect. “That a chessboard?”

“Yes,” he says, trying not to sniff the air like a starving dog. His last cigarette was eight days ago. A personal best, which is something to be proud of, but doesn’t currently feel like it. It feels like he’s torturing himself for no good reason.

“So you’re here for Dodger, then.”

“Yes.”

“Why?” The woman’s gaze is sharp enough to nail his feet to the porch. “She’s not interested in making friends. She says she is, but she’s lying. She’s a good liar.”

“So how do you know she’s not just nervous?”

“Because I pay attention.” The woman takes another drag on her cigarette, still watching him closely. “What’s your name?”

“Roger.”

“Your names rhyme. That’s cute. If you were related, you’d have grounds to sue your parents.” She blows smoke out through her nose. “Last chance, Roger. If you don’t knock, you could walk away clean. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t want to see you. She’s been acting spooked for days. You could get out of here and probably never see her again.”

“Thanks for the advice . . . ?” He leaves the question dangling, waiting.

Her lips twist in what might charitably be called a smile. “Erin,” she says. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She drops her cigarette, grinds it under her heel, and goes inside.