“No.” Arnold stepped back. “Physicists have been struggling with a unified field theory for over a generation. It doesn’t mean they’re wrong to try.”
Colin reflected on that night at the concert. “I thought I was so close.”
“Maybe you are.” He studied his younger friend. “Walk away. That’s the ticket. Leave it behind. Go do something fun.”
“Fun. I remember hearing that word somewhere.” He changed the subject then, and explained what he had in mind in regard to helping Tiana. Using his position as prefect to serve as Tiana’s examiner. Take the exams to the lady, set up the time schedule according to school rules …
Arnold barely let him finish. “It’s great. No, better than that. What’s the word I’m looking for?”
“Stuck? Frozen in place? Screaming with frustration?”
“Look at the funny man. Seriously, Sandrine has spoken several times with Tiana’s parents. They all agree she should not return yet. Between the diabetes and the chest infection …” Arnold caught sight of his expression. “You didn’t know?”
“Only about her chest thing. She is super secretive.”
“Something else you have in common. Word of advice. Let her tell you when she’s ready. But yes, the lady has some health issues. And her parents want to keep her away for the semester. Which would hold her back from graduating and entering Duke. Until now.” Arnold nodded. “You should come over, watch Sandrine do back flips. Tiana is one of her favorites.”
Colin took to walking upstairs in the middle of the night when he woke and could not go back to sleep. Tracing the cardboard tentacles, looking for the missing elements that might draw him closer to his aims. Some mornings, as dawn painted faint grey strokes on his east-facing windows, Colin began to see the calculations and words and concepts take on an entirely different form. Like lines of color and tension, binding and struggling and writhing in something that mightactually become beautiful, someday, when the frustration was not so overwhelming. As the mornings strengthened, almost mocking his weary state, he felt increasingly convinced that he was on the right track. At the deep level of bone and sinew and subconscious actions, he thought it was only a matter of time. And work. And many more mornings like this.
On the approach to the new academic year, Colin made an appointment to see Fremdt and Dean Sykes together. He struggled through an attempt to explain both the problem and his intended goal, but neither seemed to mind. They both gave their approval to his auditing the classes he had already taken for credit. Effectively losing the semester, and yet granting him the space to hear the lessons a second time, and continue searching for those hidden links. Colin left the meeting uncertain they actually understood, but grateful for the confidence they continued to show in his abilities.
And then, the third week of September, two days after his birthday, Mira called.
Their communications had grown so strained, and so one-sided, Colin had stopped phoning. He could not remember the last time they spoke. Nine weeks? Eleven? He demanded, “Why haven’t you been in touch?”
“Same reason I didn’t come home this summer. I’ve been hiding. Mostly.”
“From what?”
Mira changed the subject with, “How have you been?”
“Struggling so hard I almost stopped missing you.”
“That sounds serious.”
“It is. Was. How are you, Mira?”
“Struggling, too. Can you come? I don’t want to venture south. If I drive down, my folks …”
He understood. “When was the last time you saw your family?”
“I actually can’t remember. Two months? Fifteen years?”
“I’m happy to drive up. How does tomorrow sound?”
“I didn’t mean you had to drop everything.”
“Mira, dropping everything would be a pleasure. Especially if it means seeing you again.”
Her tone lightened immensely. “Tomorrow would be great.”
And just like that, the silence and the distance were gone.
The trip on I-95 from Wilmington to Charlottesville took five hours. Colin broke it into manageable segments, stopping for coffee and a meal and another coffee, timing it so he missed Richmond’s afternoon rush hour, then stopping at a Red Roof Inn long before dusk. The journey proved to be a mental elixir, drawing him ever farther from the intensity and frustration and barriers. Granting him a much-needed opportunity to view his objectives from a distance. Over dinner at the neighboring Denny’s, Colin liked studying the book holding his notations. In reality most of his attention remained on the cardboard octopus back in his apartment. From such a distance as now, he could see the gaps more clearly. Realize the points where the smooth flow became bumpy, then halted altogether. By the time he returned to his motel room, Colin felt as though the answers to his questions had become a trifle clearer.
Mira met him at an off-campus coffee shop. It shared an upscale strip mall with the restaurant where she worked three nights each week. Mira did not look good. She had lost weight. Her beautiful raven hair hung limply down her back, like it had become defeated by whatever shadows she now carried. “I look awful, I know.”
“What’s wrong?”
