There’s a prize too: $500,000 to the first person to prove or disprove the Pentti-Stone. Not as much as mathematics’ Millennium Prize—that’s the big one, at $1,000,000—but not small change, either.
I stood up to close the door, even though the room felt airless. “You want to talk me through it?”
He did, animatedly, chaotically and yet beautifully. He hadn’t come up with a complete solution yet, but the work he’d done on his thesis to date had accidentally nudged him in the right direction.
“I think I can do it,” he said, breathless.
I paused, willing my heart to slow down. “It’s harder than you think.”
“I know. I need your help, Anna. Will you help me?”
Would I help him? My first thought was no. Absolutely not. But how could I say no? What if he found another supervisor? Someone at MIT maybe? Could I bear it? And if I said yes, I could think of it as closing a circle. The end of the work I’d started so very long ago.
“And I want to change my PhD topic to this,” he continued. “Can I do that?”
I thought about it. The ramifications were negligible; people changed their topic all the time.
“And it has to remain secret,” he added. “For obvious reasons.”
“Obviously.” If it became known at this point, even just within the university, that Alex was close to solving the Pentti-Stone, and especially what his approach was, there was no doubt someone else would jump on it and quite possibly snatch the prize before he did. Us academics might look mild-mannered and geeky on the surface, but underneath we’re a bunch of hyenas who’d do anything for a scrap of recognition.
“Not even your husband,” he said.
“Honestly, Alex, Luis wouldn’t know the Pentti-Stone from the Rosetta Stone.”
“I don’t care. Nobody can know, you have to swear. Nobody.”
I did. I swore. I’m good at keeping secrets, I said. I was already thinking of what it might mean for the university, the research funding we’d be able to attract. This would be a game changer for our faculty. We would join the ranks of the most prestigious academic institutions in America.
After that, the conjecture was all he could think about, but passion has its consequences: he lost weight, lost sleep, grew dark circles under his eyes.
We spent months on it, which is not very long in the scheme of things. People spend years, decades, trying to solve a conjecture. He went down rabbit holes a few times. He’d think he was so close, then one detail would make the whole thing crash and he’d have to start again.
Then he became paranoid that people were spying on his work. He wouldn’t put anything at all in a computer in case we got hacked. He wrote everything by hand and kept it in a locked drawer in my desk, even though he had his own locked cabinet in an office he shared with other students.
“I don’t trust them,” he said.
“So, lock it in your cabinet then.”
“Anna, they’re on wheels!”
In the end we agreed he could work in my office, which I would lock whenever I was out. I also had a small desk brought in especially for him. It was kind of exhilarating because we made progress so quickly. But when his health deteriorated, when he couldn’t cope with the pressure, he was awful to be around. I dreaded coming to work. He was always angry, sad, desperate. Manic. Then he became resentful of me because he thought I wasn’t doing enough to help him. As if somehow it was my fault he hadn’t solved it yet. Like it was simple multiplication and I hadn’t explained to him how to do it.
Then he stopped coming altogether. I knew he wasn’t working on it at home because all his notes were in my office. Then one night I woke up in the middle of a dream with an idea. I tiptoed downstairs and called him. I told him my theory. What if…? What do you think? Would that work? Two days later he’d cracked it.
A PhD thesis can only be authored by the student in question. But we agreed to write a paper together about the Pentti-Stone conjecture and its proof. We’d be co-authors, which was not that unusual between the student and his or her adviser, but to co-author a paper on such groundbreaking work is worth its weight in gold for any academic. His name would be first, there was no question about that. But we would have to be quick. Even though I wasn’t paranoid like he was, ideas have been known to hop from head to head until they find a willing host.
Often they find more than one, and whoever gets there first, wins.
Three
“You look nice today,” Geoff says. The others have gone and it’s just him and me left. He’s packing up his laptop and I’m tidying up the meeting room, making sure to leave it the way I’d like to find it.
“Do I?” I give a little laugh, turning to wipe the whiteboard so I don’t have to look at him. “That’s nice. Luis thought I looked conservative.”
He comes up right next to me and takes the block eraser from my hand, puts it down in the tray.
“What?” I ask.
He takes my shoulders so that I’m facing him, then reaches for the top of my shirt and swiftly undoes the button.
“There.” He smiles. “Fixed it.”
I feel myself redden. The top edge of my plain white bra is visible now, and my first thought is, I wish I’d worn a nicer one.
Geoff walks away, stops at the door. “See you around,” he says, with a wink.
I finish tidying the room, a little embarrassed, a little shocked even, yet unable to suppress the small smile playing on my lips.
Last year, when Geoff and I were away at some conference in Chicago, something almost happened between us. He’d been looking at me like a ravenous wolf all evening and I was flattered, probably more than I should have been. Somehow, I ended up drinking too much, certainly more than I’d intended, and next thing I knew, we were in his room and he’d gone down to his boxer shorts. But I checked out at the last minute. It was as if I’d woken up from a dream, and an image of Carla and Mateo’s cute little faces looking up at me popped into my mind. I excused myself and ran out of the room, and I thank my lucky stars every day that I came to my senses before anything actually happened.
I was embarrassed the next day, my memory blurry from all the alcohol I’d consumed. I rushed to apologize, although for which part I’m not sure. The part where I almost went through with it? Or the part where I didn’t?
He laughed. “Don’t worry about it, Anna.” Then he made a show of checking no one was around before leaning forward and in a low voice he said, “Next time.”
And I laughed. “I don’t think so,” I said, even though I was kind of flattered he still wanted to.
He made a sad face and put both hands over his heart. “You’re killing me!”
I chuckled, lightly punched his shoulder. I was so grateful we could laugh about it. I shudder to think what might have happened, but now it’s like a secret joke between us: one time, someone mentioned Chicago in a meeting, and we immediately looked at each other and cracked up behind our hands.
I make a short detour to see June on the way back from the meeting so I can tell her about the alumni dinner. And I’ll make sure to tell her that it was Mila’s initiative, not mine. I don’t want her to think I’m assigning extra work to her. I’ve almost reached her when Clyde, the associate dean of the college, slaps a sheaf of papers on her desk.