An Abundance of Katherines (18 page)

Hassan sniffled and his eyes shot open and he looked around. “Fug, are we still hunting? Big Daddy needs some lunch.” Hassan stood up, reached into the cargo pockets of his pants, and pulled out two badly smushed sandwiches in Ziploc bags. “Sorry, dude. I fell asleep on lunch.” Colin opened the canteen hooked to his belt buckle, and they sat down for turkey sandwiches and water. “How long did I sleep?”

“Almost two hours,” Colin said between bites.

“What the fug d’you do?”

“I should have brought a book. I just tried to finish the Theorem. The only problem left is Katherine III.”

“Oo vat?” Hassan asked, his mouth full of a too-mayonnaisy sandwich.

“Summer after fourth grade. From Chicago, but she was homeschooled. Katherine Mutsensberger. One brother. Lived in Lincoln Square on Leavitt just south of Lawrence, but I never visited her there because she dumped me on the third-to-last day of smart kid camp in Michigan. She had dirty blond hair that was a little curly and she bit her nails and her favorite song when she was ten was ‘Stuck with You’ by Huey Lewis and the News and her mother was a curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art and when she grew up she wanted to be a veterinarian.”

“How long d’you know her?” asked Hassan. His sandwich was finished, and he wiped the remnants of it on his pants.

“Twelve days.”

“Huh. You know what’s funny? I knew that girl.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Mutsensberger. We went to all these lame-o homeschooling events together. Like, bring your homeschooled kid to the park so she learns how to be less nerdy. And, take your homeschooled kid for a homeschool picnic so the Muslim kid can get his ass kicked by all the evangelical Christians.”

“Wait, you know her?”

“Well, I mean, we don’t keep in touch or anything. But yeah. I could pick her out of a lineup.”

“Well, was she quite introverted and a little dorky and she’d had one boyfriend when she was seven who dumped her?”

“Yup,” said Hassan. “Well, I don’t know about the boyfriend. She had a brother. He was a first-rate nutcase, actually. He was into spelling bees. Went to Nationals, I think.”

“Weird. Well, the formula doesn’t work for her.”

“Maybe you’re forgetting something. There can’t be that many goddamned Mutsensbergers in Chicago. Why don’t you call her and ask?” And the answer to that question—“because it literally has never occurred to me”—was so outrageously dumb that Colin just picked up the phone without another word and dialed 773.555.1212.

“What city?”

“Chicago,” he said.

“What listing?”

“Mutsensberger. MUTSENSBERGER.”

“Hold.”

The computer voice recited the number, and Colin pressed 1 to be connected immediately free of charge, and on the third ring, a girl picked up.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hi. This is Colin Singleton. Is—is, uh, Katherine there?”

“Speaking. What did you say your name was?”

“Colin Singleton.”

“That’s so familiar,” she said. “Do I know you?”

“When you were in fourth grade, I may have been your boyfriend for about two weeks at a summer program for gifted children.”

“Colin Singleton! Oh yeah! Wow. Of all people . . .”

“Um, this is going to sound weird, but on a scale of one to five, how popular were you in fourth grade?”

“Uh, what?” she asked.

“And also do you have a brother who was into spelling bees?”

“Um, yeah, I do. Who is this?” she asked, suddenly sounding upset.

“This is Colin Singleton, I swear. I know it sounds weird.”

“I was, I don’t know. I mean, I had a few friends. We were kinda nerdy, I guess.”

“Okay. Thanks, Katherine.”

“Are you, like, writing a book?”

“No, I’m writing a mathematical formula that predicts which of two people will end a romantic relationship and when,” he said.

“Um,” she answered. “Where are you, anyway? Whatever happened to you?”

“What happened, indeed,” he answered, and hung up.

 
“Well,” said Hassan. “Boy. She must think that you’re STARK RAVING BONKERS!”

But Colin was lost in thought. If Katherine III was who she claimed to be, and whom he remembered her to be, then what if. What if the formula—was right? He called her again.

“Katherine Mutsensberger,” he said.

“Yes?”

“It’s Colin Singleton again.”

“Oh. Um, hi.”

“This is the last question I’ll ever ask you that sounds completely crazy, but did I by chance break up with you?”

“Um, uh-huh.”

“I did?”

“Yeah. We were at a campfire sing-along and you came over to me in front of all my friends and said you’d never done this before, but you had to break up with me because you just didn’t think it was going to work long-term. That’s what you said. Long-term. God, I was devastated, too. I thought you hung the moon.”

“I’m really sorry. I’m sorry I broke up with you,” Colin said.

She laughed. “Well, we were ten. I’ve dealt with it.”

“Yeah, but still. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.”

“Well, thank you, Colin Singleton.”

“No problem.”

“Is there anything else?” she asked.

“I think that’s it.”

“Okay, well, you take care of yourself,” she said, the way you might say it to a schizophrenic homeless person to whom you’ve just given a dollar.

“You too, Katherine Mutsensberger.”

 
Hassan stared at Colin unblinkingly. “Well, dress me up in a tutu, put me on a unicycle, and call me Caroline the Dancing Bear. You’re a fugging Dumper.”

Colin leaned back against the rotten tree, his back arching over it until he was staring at the cloudy sky. Betrayed by his vaunted memory! He had, indeed, remarked eighteen and snubbed the rest. How could he remember everything about her and not remember that
he
dumped
her
? And for that matter, what kind of asshole was he to have dumped a perfectly nice girl like Katherine Mutsensberger? “I feel like I’ve only ever been two things,” he said softly. “I’m a child prodigy, and I’m dumped by Katherines. But now I’m—”

“Neither,” Hassan said. “And be grateful. You’re a Dumper and I’m making out with a ridiculously hot girl. The whole world is turned upside down. I love it. It’s like we’re in a snow globe and God decided he wanted to see a blizzard so he shook us all the fug up.”

Just as almost no true sentence beginning with
I
could be spoken by Lindsey, Colin was watching all the things he’d thought were true about himself, all his
I
sentences, fall away. Suddenly, there was not just one missing piece, but thousands of them.

Colin had to figure out what had gone wrong inside his brain, and fix it. He returned to the central question: how could he have completely forgotten dumping her? Or, almost completely, because Colin
had
experienced a dim flash of recognition when Katherine told him the story of his dumping her in front of her friends, a feeling vaguely like when a word is on the tip of your tongue and then someone says it.

Above him, the interweaving branches seemed to split the sky into a million little pieces. He felt like he had vertigo. The one facility he’d always trusted—memory—was a fraud. And he might have gone on thinking about it for hours, or at least until Mr. Lyford returned, except at that very moment he heard a weird grunting noise and simultaneously felt Hassan’s hand tap his knee.

“Dude,” said Hassan softly. “
Khanzeer
.”
⁶⁹

Colin shot up. Perhaps fifty yards in front of them, a brown-gray creature was pushing his long snout into the ground and snorting like he had a sinus infection. It looked like a cross between a vampire pig and a black bear—an absolutely massive animal with thick, matted fur and teeth that extended below its mouth.

“
Matha, al-khanazeer la yatakalamoon araby
?”
⁷⁰
Colin asked.

“That’s no pig,” answered Hassan in English. “That’s a goddamned monster.” The pig stopped its rooting and looked up at them. “I mean, Wilbur is a fugging pig. Babe is a fugging pig. That thing was birthed from the loins of
Iblis
.”
⁷¹
It was clear now the pig could see them. Colin could see the black in its eyes.

“Stop cursing. The feral hog shows a remarkable understanding of human speech, especially profane speech,” he mumbled, quoting from the book.

“That’s a bunch of bullshit,” Hassan said, and then the pig took two lumbering steps toward them, and Hassan said, “Okay. Or not. Fine. No cursing. Listen, Satan Pig. We’re cool. We don’t want to shoot you. The guns are for show, dude.”

“Stand up so he knows we’re bigger than he is,” Colin said.

“Did you read that in the book?” Hassan asked as he stood.

“No, I read it in a book about grizzly bears.”

“We’re gonna get gored to death by a feral fugging hog and your best strategy is to pretend it’s a grizzly bear?”

Together, they stepped carefully backward, kicking their legs high to get over the fallen tree, which now offered their best protection against the hog. But Satan Pig didn’t seem to think much of their strategy, because right then it took off running at them. For a squat-legged beast that couldn’t have weighed less than four hundred pounds, the thing could run.

“Shoot it,” Colin said, quite calmly.

“I don’t know
how
,” Hassan pointed out.

“Fug,” said Colin. He leveled the gun, planted it tight against his exceedingly sore shoulder, turned off the safety, and took aim at the running pig. It was perhaps fifty feet away. He inhaled deeply and then slowly exhaled. And then he pointed the gun up and to the right, because he just couldn’t bring himself to shoot at the pig. Calmly, he squeezed the trigger, just as Lindsey had taught him. The kick of the gun against his well-bruised shoulder hurt so badly that tears welled up in his eyes, and in the shock of the pain he couldn’t tell what had happened at first. But, amazingly, the pig stopped dead in its tracks, turned ninety degrees, and ran.

“You sure shot the living hell out of that gray thing,” Hassan said.

“What gray thing?” asked Colin. Hassan pointed, and Colin followed the trajectory of his finger to an oak tree about fifteen feet away. Crooked between the trunk and a branch, a sort of gray paper cyclone contained a circular hole about an inch in diameter.

“What is that?” asked Hassan.

“Something’s coming out of it,” Colin said.

It doesn’t take long for a thought to get from your brain to your vocal cords and out of your mouth, but it does take a moment. And in that moment, between when Colin thought
Hornets
! and when he would have said “Hornets,” he felt a searing sting on the side of his neck. “Oh FUG!” shouted Colin, and then Hassan said, “AIEE! AH! AH! FU—FOOT—SHIT—HAND!” They took off running like a couple of spastic marathoners. Colin kicked his legs to the side with each step, like a heel-clicking leprechaun, trying to discourage the blood-thirsty hornets from attacking his legs. Simultaneously, he swatted around his face, which, as it happened, only indicated to the hornets that besides stinging his head and neck, they could also sting his hands. Waving his hands above his head crazily, Hassan ran considerably faster and with more agility than Colin had ever thought possible, weaving around trees and hurdling bushes in a vain attempt to discourage the hornets. They ran downhill, because that was easiest, but the hornets kept their pace, and Colin could hear their buzzing. For minutes, as they ran in random directions, the buzzing continued, Colin always following behind Hassan, because the only thing worse than getting stung to death in south-central Tennessee when your parents don’t even know you’re on a hog hunt is dying
alone
.

“
KAFIR
(breath) I’M (breath) FADING.”

“THEY’RE STILL ON ME. GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO,” Colin answered. But just after that, the buzzing stopped. Having chased them for the better part of ten minutes, the hornets began the winding journey back to their decimated nest.

Hassan fell face-first into a brambly bush and then slowly rolled over onto the forest floor. Colin bent over, hands on knees, sucking air. Hassan was hyperventilating. “Real (breath) fat (breath) kid (breath) asthma (breath) attack,” he finally said.

Colin pushed aside his fatigue and rushed up to his best friend. “No. No. Tell me you’re not allergic to bees. Oh, shit.” Colin pulled out his cell phone. He had reception, but what could he tell the 911 operator? “I’m somewhere in the woods. My friend’s trachea is closing. I don’t even have a knife to perform an emergency tracheotomy because stupid Mr.
Lyford
ran off with it into the woods to chase the same goddamned pig that started the whole fugging mess.” He desperately wished Lindsey were there; she could deal with this. She’d have her first-aid kit. But before he could even register the consequences of such thoughts, Hassan said, “I’m not allergic to (breath) bees,
sitzpinkler
. I’m just (breath) out of (breath) breath.”

“Ohhhhh. Thank God.”

“You don’t believe in God.”

“Thank luck and DNA,” Colin corrected himself quickly, and only then, with Hassan not-dying, did Colin begin to feel the stings. There were eight in all, each of them like a little fire burning just inside his skin. Four on his neck, three on his hands, and one on his left earlobe. “How many do you have?” he asked Hassan.

Hassan sat up and looked himself over. His hands were cut up from landing in the briar bush. He touched his stings, each in turn. “Three,” said Hassan.

“T h ree?! I really took one for the team by staying behind you,” he noted.

“Don’t give me that martyr shit,” said Hassan. “You shot the bees’ nest.”

“Hornets’ nest,” Colin corrected. “They were hornets, not bees. That’s the kind of stuff you learn in college, you know.”

“Dingleberries. Also, not interesting.”
⁷²
Hassan paused for a moment, then started talking. “God, these stings HURT. You know what I hate? The outdoors. I mean, generally. I don’t like outside. I’m an inside person. I’m all about refrigeration and indoor plumbing and
Judge Judy
.”