This Sunday, nearly 7:00 P.M., Tal was in his small library, which was packed with books but was as ordered and neat as his office at work. He’d spent the weekend running errands, cleaning the house, washing the car, making the obligatory — and ever awkward — call to his father in Chicago, dining with a couple up the road who’d made good their threat to set him up with a cousin (e-mail addresses had been unenthusiastically exchanged over empty mousse dishes). Now, classical music playing on the radio, Tal had put the rest of the world aside and was working on a proof.
This is the gold ring that mathematicians constantly seek. One might have a brilliant insight about numbers but without completing the proof — the formal argument that verifies the premise — that insight remains merely a theorem; it’s pure speculation.
The proof that had obsessed him for months involved perfect numbers. These are positive numbers whose divisors (excluding the number itself) add up to that number. The number 6, for instance, is perfect because it’s divisible only by 1, 2, and 3 (not counting 6), and 1, 2, and 3 also add up to 6.
The questions Tal had been trying to answer: How many even perfect numbers are there? And, more intriguing, are there any odd perfect numbers? In the entire history of mathematics no one has been able to offer a proof that an odd perfect number exists (or that it can’t exist).
Perfect numbers have always intrigued mathematicians — theologians too. St. Augustine felt that God intentionally chose a perfect number of days — six — to create the world. Rabbis attach great mystical significance to the number 28, the days in the moon’s cycle. Tal didn’t consider perfect numbers in such a spiritual or philosophical way. For him they were simply a curious mathematical construct. But this didn’t minimize their importance to him; proving theorems about perfect numbers (or any other mathematical enigmas) might lead other insights about math and science... and perhaps life in general.
He now hunched over his pages of neat calculations, wondering if the odd perfect number was merely a myth or if it was real and waiting to be discovered, hiding somewhere in the dim distance of numbers approaching infinity.
Something about this thought troubled him and he leaned back in his chair. It took a moment to realize why. Thinking of infinity reminded him of the suicide note Don and Sy Benson had left.
Together forever...
He pictured the room where they’d died, the blood, the chilling sight of the grim how-to guide they’d bought. Making the Final Journey.
Tal stood and paced. Something definitely wasn’t right. For the first time in years he decided to return to the office on a Sunday night. He wanted to look up some background on suicides of this sort.
A half hour later he was walking past the surprised desk sergeant who had to think for a moment or two before he recognized him.
“Officer...”
“Detective Simms.”
“Right. Yessir.”
Ten minutes later he was in his office, tapping on the keyboard, perusing information about suicides in Westbrook County. At first irritated that the curious events of today had taken him away from his mathematical evening, he soon found himself lost in a very different world of numbers — those that defined the loss of life by one’s own hand in Westbrook County.
Sam Whitley emerged from the kitchen with a bottle of old Armagnac and joined his wife in the den.
It had been her husband arriving fifteen minutes ago, after all, driving up the back driveway for reasons he still hadn’t explained.
Elizabeth now pulled her cashmere sweater around her shoulders and lit a vanilla-scented candle, which sat on the table in front of her. She glanced at the bottle in his hand and laughed.
“What?” her husband asked.
“I was reading some of the printouts your doctor gave you.”
He nodded.
“And it said that some wine is good for you.”
“I read that too.” He wiped dust off the bottle, examined the label.
“That you should have a glass or two every day. But cognac wasn’t on the list. I don’t know how good that is for your health.”
Sam laughed too. “I feel like living dangerously.”
He expertly opened the bottle, whose cork stopper was close to disintegrating.
“You were always good at that,” his wife said.
“I never had many talents — only the important skills.” He handed her a glass of the honey-colored liquor and then he filled his. They downed the drink. He poured more.
“So what’ve you got there?” she asked, feeling even warmer now, giddier, happier. She was nodding toward a bulge in the side pocket of his camel-hair sport coat, the jacket he always wore on Sundays.
“A surprise.”
“Really? What?”
He tapped her glass and they drank again. He said, “Close your eyes.”
She did. “You’re a tease, Samuel.” She felt him sit next to her, sensed his body close. There was a click of metal.
“You know I love you.” His tone overflowed with emotion. Sam occasionally got quite maudlin. Elizabeth had long ago learned, though, that among the long list of offenses in the catalog of masculine sins sentiment was the least troublesome.
“And I love you, dear,” she said.
“Ready?”
“Yes, I’m ready.”
“Okay... Here.”
Another click of metal...
Then Elizabeth felt something in her hand. She opened her eyes and laughed again.
“What... Oh, my God, is this—?” She examined the key ring he’d placed in her palm. It held two keys and bore the distinctive logo of a British MG sports car. “You... you found one?” she stammered. “Where?”
“That import dealer up the road, believe it or not. Two miles from here! It’s a nineteen-fifty-four. He called a month ago but it needed some work to get in shape.”
“So that’s what those mysterious calls were about. I was beginning to suspect another woman,” she joked.
“It’s not the same color. It’s more burgundy.”
“As if that matters, honey.”
The first car they’d bought as a married couple had been a red MG, which they’d driven for ten years until the poor thing had finally given out. While Liz’s friends were buying Lexuses or Mercedes she refused to join the pack and continued to drive her ancient Cadillac, holding out for an old MG like their original car.
She flung her arms around his shoulders and leaned up to kiss him.
Lights from an approaching car flashed into the window, startling them.
“Caught,” she whispered, “just like when my father came home early on our first date. Remember?” She laughed flirtatiously, feeling just like a carefree, rebellious Sarah Lawrence sophomore in a pleated skirt and Peter-Pan collared blouse — exactly who she’d been forty-two years ago when she met this man, the one she would share her life with.
Tal Simms was hunched forward, jotting notes, when the dispatcher’s voice clattered thought the audio monitor, which was linked to the 911 system, in the darkened detective pen. “All units in the vicinity of Hamilton. Reports of a possible suicide in progress.”
Tal froze. He pushed back from his computer monitor and rose to his feet, staring at the speaker, as the electronic voice continued. “Neighbor reports a car engine running in the closed garage at two-oh-five Montgomery Way. Any units in the vicinity, respond.”
Tal Simms looked up at the speaker and hesitated only a moment. Soon, he was sprinting out of the building. He was halfway out of the parking lot, doing seventy in his Toyota, when he realized that he’d neglected to put his seat belt on. He reached for it but lost the car to a skid and gave up and sped toward the suburb of Hamilton on the Hudson, five miles away from the office.