Millard Salter's Last Day by Jacob M. Appel

Author:Jacob M. Appel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books

10

Konnie was waiting with the cab where he’d left her. A gust of cold air hit Millard’s face as he entered—and he welcomed it—although it came with another dose of the girl’s noxious music. His watch read 2:58. According to the meter, he was in the red for $140.50. She turned down the volume on the radio and said, “It took you long enough.”

“I thought it was my dime,” said Millard.

“Whatever. I was just afraid you’d gotten buried alive.”

Millard considered revealing his switcheroo with Myron Slater, but he suspected the girl wouldn’t care. “Not exactly,” he said. “I’m sorry I kept you waiting.”

“No worries. It gave me time to work on the Riemann hypothesis.”

“The what?”

“The Riemann hypothesis. It’s one of the six unsolved Millennium Prize Problems in mathematics. If you figure it out, you win $1,000,000.”

“Bullshit,” said Millard. “Whatever you’re talking about doesn’t exist.”

“Excuse me?”

“Once bitten, twice shy,” he said. “I’m done being a guinea pig in your experiment.”

“It’s not an experiment. It’s an art project.”

The girl retrieved her phone from the dashboard and her thumbs whirled like eggbeaters over the tiny keys. An instant later, she handed the device across the divider. On the homepage of the Clay Mathematics Institute, the Riemann hypothesis was listed as an unsolved conundrum, immediately between the Yang-Mills mass gap problem and the Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture. “You win,” he said, returning the phone. “Did you solve it?”

“No. I wasn’t trying.”

“But I thought you said—”

“I lied. I’m terrible at math. I can hardly balance my checkbook.”

That was too much for Millard. He folded his arms across his chest—determined not to speak to the girl unless absolutely necessary. But the cab remained stationed in park, idling, beads of sweat forming on the windows. “Well? What are we waiting for?” demanded Millard.

“We’re waiting,” replied Konnie, “for you to tell me where to go.”

“Back to the hospital,” he ordered. Wasn’t that obvious? But the girl hadn’t even shifted into drive when another idea hijacked his thoughts. It was only three o’clock. He wouldn’t be meeting Delilah until five. “Change of plans,” he said, satisfied with the calculations in his head. “Do you know how to get to the Grand Concourse?”

“Not really,” replied the girl. “But the magic lady does.”

A moment passed before Millard realized she meant the GPS navigator.

“Can this magic lady get us to the Grand Concourse and One hundred and Seventy-Seventh Street?”

“She can get us anywhere.”

Konnie activated the device and soon their guide was serving up commands: Turn right on Bergen Avenue. Then take your second left onto Parkland Drive. Millard remembered Maia telling him all about the corporeal form behind “the magic lady,” who was actually in her late twenties and had lived in the same residential dorm with his daughter at Yale. Apparently, the previous voice—of a didactic middle-aged woman from Dayton, Ohio—reminded male drivers too much of their wives, so they ignored her directions.

Konnie turned on the music again, its volume low but menacing.

Millard cleared his throat. “Would it be all right if we kept the radio off?”

The girl responded with an exaggerated groan.

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