Then I remember I am supposed to go and see Alex. Good. This is what I need to focus on: Alex and the Pentti-Stone conjecture. It sounds like a children’s book title: Alex and the Pentti-Stone Conjecture. I blow my nose, picturing Geoff’s face—and Mila’s—when they find out our paper got published. I imagine Geoff realizing he backed the wrong applicant. Mila’s words echo in my mind: It should have been you.
Damn right it should.
I think back to the phone call from Alex. What is he up to? He sounded… upset? Not exactly. Intense? Yes. Definitely. Should I brace myself for more bad news? Has he found an error? Will he say we can’t submit yet? It would be a setback, certainly, but we’d had those before. Maybe this one is much more serious. But I know the work and I know the paper, and I know it’s ready. Unless I’ve missed something, and considering it was only this morning that I was quietly confident I’d find out any day now that I got the professorship, and I didn’t even twig that Mila was in the running, let alone that she’d beat me to it, maybe I shouldn’t trust my own judgment.
But I need this paper. This is my opportunity to prove them wrong, to laugh in their face, to quit the job and get a better one elsewhere—maybe move the family to Boston so I could teach at MIT.
I grab my bag and snatch my jacket from the back of my chair. I don’t care what Alex’s problem is right now, I’ll sort it out. I don’t care what it takes, either. I just want to see the look on Mila’s face when our paper gets published. I want to get to tap her on the shoulder and say, I think they did make a mistake after all, Mila.
Four
I’ve been to Alex’s apartment a few times before and I park around the corner, turn off the ignition and take a moment. I need to be calm and reassuring. Alex has a tendency to over-react and god knows he can get himself into a state of despair over the smallest thing. He’s twenty-seven years old but sometimes he may as well be twelve. But, he is the genius behind our work and my future depends on how well I can manage him, as I remind myself as I make my way up the stairs.
His apartment is very nice, certainly not what you’d expect a student to live in. It’s roomy, with a big flat screen on one wall of the living room and beige, glass and chrome furnishing that would look great in an office, or a showroom. He shares it with another student who from memory is studying journalism. But Alex doesn’t need the rent his roommate brings in. His parents are paying, and he joked once he’d only got someone to move in so he’d have someone to talk to.
I knock and he opens the door immediately, shirtless, his pupils dilated, and it occurs to me suddenly that he could be on something, some kind of amphetamines. By the looks of him he must have been abusing them for a while and I chide myself for not checking in with him sooner.
“Where’s your roommate?” I ask, taking my jacket off and laying it on the arm of the sofa. “What’s his name again?”
“Vernon. He’s out. Do you have the notebooks?”
“Oh, shit! Sorry.”
“Anna! Did you forget?”
“Sorry, I did. Lots going on this morning.”
He breathes out loudly through his nose, but then seems to relax again. “You want a coffee? I’m about to have one.”
“Sure.”
He does a double take. “You’ve been crying?”
“No.”
“Your eyes are all puffy.”
“I said no.”
He shrugs and I follow him to the kitchen and watch him spoon ground coffee into the machine. I’m about to ask what the problem is when he blurts it out.
“I’ve changed my mind.”
I wait for the rest but he’s silent; just keeps making the coffee and won’t meet my eye as he fusses with the cups and the sugar bowl.
“Okay, about what?” I’m already exhausted as I brace myself for his inevitable self-doubt, for the speech about how he thinks he has it wrong. The submission committee at the Journal of Applied Number Theory won’t accept it if there is any doubt about the validity of the solution. He knows that. And I have friends at MIT who could take a look now if he doesn’t want to wait that long. They’d sign a confidentiality agreement. This kind of thing happens all the time. He knows that, too.
“Talk to me, Alex. Don’t you want to publish it yet? Is that it?”
He snaps his head around. “My thesis? Of course I’m publishing it. Are you nuts?”
“Okay, good to hear. So what are we talking about?”
He’s smiling as he thinks about it, then his features harden until his mouth is so taut that when he speaks again, he can barely move his lips. “You’re not gonna like it.”
Jesus. He really looks bad. When did I see him last? Two weeks at least.
He pulls out a letter from his back pocket and hands it to me. I hesitate, then take the envelope from him between two fingers, trying not to stare at his filthy fingernails. “What’s this?” I’m about to pull out the single sheet of paper from it when he speaks.
“I’m going to publish it alone. The thesis, of course, but also the research paper.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I don’t want you to co-author it anymore.”
I almost laugh. “This is a joke, right?”
His hand shakes as he handles the coffee, and some of it spills onto the table. My first instinct is to grab a kitchen cloth and clean it up, but I don’t.
“I’ve thought long and hard about it,” he says. “It’s mine.”
A wave of outrage flares through me and I grip the envelope tighter in my fist but then tell myself to calm down. I take a breath and let it slip from my fingers. He doesn’t mean it. He’s panicking about something. There’s no need for me to do the same.
He leans against the window ledge stirring his coffee with a spoon, a breeze from the partly open sash window behind him ruffling his hair.
“Come on, Alex, I helped you, you know that. You couldn’t have done it without me.”
He smirks, rudely. “Are you listening to yourself? I did do it without you, Anna. You were there, in the room, and that’s about the extent of your contribution.”
“You know that’s not true.” I think of all the hours I spent with him, poring over his work, trying to grab hold of the slimmest gossamer thread that we could tug and unspool into the light. I think of all the times he despaired and wanted me to hold him until it passed, the times he would sob on my shoulder like a child while I whispered soothing words to him. He told me once that I was much nicer than his own mother.
Thinking back on it in this moment, I realize something I didn’t want to confront then, but I may have to now. Alex is unhinged.
I think of that night when I called him at almost midnight. I woke him up and he was annoyed because it was the first time in weeks that he’d had a few hours’ uninterrupted sleep. Until I called, that is. But I’d had that sliver of an idea and it was enough for him to get unstuck. It was the final, missing piece of the puzzle. We had the solution.
I put all this to him now, through clenched teeth. “You don’t remember that? Really, Alex?”
He smiles from one side of his mouth. The arrogance dripping from his sneer makes me want to slap him.