Numbers Don't Lie (13 page)

“A week? Wu, that's impossible. Cindy has already commissioned the ice sculpture.”

Wu's wife, Cindy, was catering the wedding.

“The hurricane season is almost upon us,” said Wu, “and my figures are coming out wrong. I need more time.”

“What do the hurricanes have to do with your figure?” I asked. “Or with meteors or bugs, for that matter?”

“Irving—” Wu always called me by my full name when he was explaining something he felt he shouldn't have to explain. “Meteorology is
weather
, not meteors. And the bugs have to do with the Butterfly Effect. We've been over this before.”

“Oh yes, of course, I remember,” I said, and I did, sort of. But Wu went over it again anyway: how the flap of a butterfly's wing in the rain forest could cause a storm two-thousand miles away. “It was only a matter of time,” he said, “before someone located that patch of rain forest, which is where we are, and cloned the butterfly. It's a moth, actually. We have twenty-two of them, enough for the entire hurricane season. We can't stop the hurricanes, but we can delay, direct, and divert them a little, which is why ABC flew us down here.”

“ABC?”

“They bought the television rights to the hurricane season, Irv. Don't you read the trades? CBS got the NBA and NBC got the Super Bowl. ABC beat out Ted Turner, which is fine with me. Who needs a Hurricane Jane, even upgraded from a tropical storm? The network hired us to edge the 'canes toward the weekends as much as possible, when the news is slow. And State Farm is chipping in, since any damage we can moderate is money in their pocket. They are footing the bill for this little Hanging Hilton, in fact. ‘Footing,' so to speak. My feet haven't touched the ground in three weeks.”

“I built a tree house once,” I said. “Me and Studs Blitz, back in the old neighborhood.”

“A tree house in Brooklyn?” interjected a strangely accented voice.

“Who's that?” I asked.

“Dmitri, stay off the line!” barked Wu. “I'll explain later,” he said to me. “But I'm losing my signal. Which way are you two lovebirds heading?”

 

* * *

 

We were heading downtown. Our first stop was Sweet Nothings, the bridal boutique in New York's historic lingerie district. Candy made me wait outside while she shopped. Inspired, I bought a Honeymoon Bungee at the Oriental Novelty Arcade on Broadway. (“What's it for?” Candy asked apprehensively. I promised to show her later.) Feeling romantic, I took her little hand in mine and led her back over to Sixth and presented her with the world's largest interactive bouquet—a three-block stroll through the flower market. We were just emerging from a tunnel of flowering ferns at Twenty-Sixth, when the payphone on the corner rang. On a hunch, I picked it up.

When you get hunches as rarely as I do, you follow them.

“Irving, why do you take so long to answer?”

“I picked up on the first ring, Wu. How'd you manage that phone thing, anyway?”

“Software,” Wu said. “I swiped the algos for handwriting recognition out of an Apple Newton and interlaced them into a GPS (Global Positioning System) satellite feed program. Then I ran your mail order consumer profile (pirated from J. Crew) through a fuzzilogical bulk mail collator macro lifted off a ZIP code CD-ROM, and adjusted for the fact that you've spent the past six months in Alabama. A friend in the Mir shunts the search feeds through the communications satellite LAN until the “IRV” probability field collapses and the phone nearest you rings. And you pick it up.
Voilá!
”

“I don't mean that,” I said. “I mean, how'd you get Aunt Minnie to answer the phone?”

“I changed the ring!” Wu said, sounding pleased with himself. “It took a little doing, but I was able to tweak a caller ID macro enough to toggle her ringer. Made it sound like a doorbell chime. Somehow that gets her to answer. I'll send you the figures.”

“Never mind,” I said. “The only figure I want to see is you-know-who's in her Sweet Nothings” (Candy, who was pretending not to listen, blushed) “and yours in a white tux at noon on Thursday! There's no way we can change the wedding date.”

“Can't you put it off at least a couple of days, Irv? I'm having trouble with my formula.”

“Impossible!” I said. “The ice sculpture won't wait. Let the butterflies go and get on back to Huntsville. One hurricane more or less can't make all that much difference.”

“Moths,” said Wu. “And it's not just hurricanes. What if it rains on your wedding?”

“It won't,” I said. “It can't. Cindy guarantees clear skies. It's included in the catering bill.”

“Of course it is, but how do you think that works, Irving? Cindy buys weather insurance from Ido Ido, the Japanese wedding conglomerate, which contracts with Entomological Meteorological Solutions—that's us—to schedule outdoor ceremonies around the world. It's just a sideline for EMS, of course. A little tweaking. But I can't release the first moth until the coordinates are right, and my numbers are coming out slippery.”

“Slippery?”

“The math doesn't work, Irv. The Time axis doesn't line up. In a system as chaotic as weather, you only have one constant, Time, and when it isn't . . .”

But we were losing our signal, and Candy was looking at me suspiciously. I hung up.

“What are all these phone calls from Wu?” she asked, as we headed downtown. “Is something wrong with the wedding plans?”

“Absolutely not,” I lied. There was no reason to spoil her Honeymoon (and mine!). “He just wants me to help him with a—a math problem.”

“I thought he was the math whiz. I didn't know you even took math.”

 

* * *

 

I didn't, not after my sophomore year in high school. I was totally absorbed by history, inspired by my favorite teacher, Citizen Tipograph (she wanted us to call her Comrade, but the principal put his foot down), who took us on field trips as far afield as Gettysburg and Harper's Ferry. Every course C.T. taught, whether it was Women's Labor History, Black Labor History, Jewish Labor History, or just plain old American Labor History, included at least one trip to Union Square, and I grew to love the seedy old park, where I can still hear the clatter of the horses and the cries of the Cossacks (which is what C.T. called the cops) and the stirring strains of the
Internationale
. I tried to share some of this drama with Candy, but even though she listened politely, I could see that to her Union Square was just scrawny grass, dozing bums, and overweening squirrels.

Candy couldn't wait to get out of the park. She was far more interested in the stacked TVs in the display window at Nutty Ned's Home Electronics, on the corner of University and Fourteenth, where dozens of Rosie O'Donnells were chatting silently with science fiction writer Paul Park. There's nothing better than a talk show without sound. We both stopped to watch for a moment, when all of the screens started scrolling numbers. Over Rosie and her guest!

On a hunch, I went into the store. Candy followed.

Nutty Ned's clerks were firing wildly with remotes, trying to tune the runaway TVs. The displays all changed colors but stayed the same. It was strange, but strangely familiar:

 

 

I figured I knew what it was. And I was right. At precisely that moment, an entire
FINAL SALE
table of portable phones started to ring. It made a terrible noise, like a nursery filled with children who decide to cry all at once.

I picked up one and they all quit.

“Wu? Is that you?”

“Irv, did you see my figures? I'm shunting them through the midmorning talk net COMSAT feed. See what I mean? I'm getting totally unlikely dates and places for these hurricanes, all down the line. Not to mention rainy weddings. And it's definitely the T.”

“The T?”

“The Time axis, the constant that makes the Butterfly Effect predictable. It's become a maverick variable, too long here, too short there. Speaking of which, I wish you wouldn't make me ring you twenty times. It's annoying, and I have other things to do here, living in a tree house, like feed the flying—”

“I picked up on the first ring.”

“The Hell you did! The phone rang twenty-six times.”

I did a quick count of the phones on the
FINAL SALE
table. “Twenty-six phones rang, Wu, but they each rang only once. And all at once.”

“Whoa!” said Wu. “I'm coming through in parallel? That could mean there's a twist.”

“A twist?”

“A twist in local space-time. It's never happened but it's theoretically possible, of course. And it just
might
explain my slippery T axes. Have you noticed any other temporal anomalies?”

“Temporary comedies?”

“Weird time stuff, Irving! Any other weird time stuff happening there in New York? Overturned schedules! Unexpected delays!”

“Well, New York's all about delays,” I said, “but as a matter of fact—” I told Wu about never having to wait for the subway. Or the bus. “Even the Fifth Avenue bus comes right away!”

“The Fifth Avenue bus! I'm beginning to think there may be more than a temporal anomaly here. We may be looking at a full-fledged chronological singularity. But I need more than your subjective impressions, Irv; I need hard numbers. Which way are you two lovebirds going?”

“Downtown,” I said. “It's almost lunchtime.”

“Perfect!” he said. “How about Carlo's?”

When Wu and I had worked at Legal Aid, on Centre Street, we had often eaten at Carlo's Calamari in Little Italy. But only when we had time to take a
loooong
lunch.

“No way!” I said. “It takes forever to get waited on at Carlo's.”

“Exactly!” said Wu.

I felt a tap on my shoulder. “You plan to buy this phone?” It was Nutty Ned himself. I recognized his nose from the TV ads.

“No way,” I said.

“Than hang it the fuck up, please.”

 

* * *

 

“We got a menu as soon as we sat down,” I said. I was speaking on the model Camaro phone at Carlo's, while Candy poked through her cold seafood salad, setting aside everything that had legs or arms or eyes, which was most of the dish.

“Impossible!” said Wu.

“We ordered and my primavera pesto pasta came right away. Maybe they have it already cooked and they just microwave it.” I said this low so the waiter wouldn't hear. He had brought me the phone on a tray shaped like Sicily. It was beige, flecked with red. Dried blood? Carlo's is a mob joint. Allegedly.

“What's right away?”

“I don't know, Wu. I didn't time it.”

“I need numbers, Irv! What about breadsticks. Do they still have those skinny hard breadsticks? How many did you eat between the time you ordered and the time the food came?”

“Three.”

“Three apiece?”

“Three between us. Does knowing that really help?”

“Sure. I can use it either as one and one-half, or as three over two. Numbers don't lie, Irv. Parallel or serial, I'm beginning to think my T-axis problem is centered in New York. Everything there seems to be speeded up slightly. Compressed.”

“Compressed,” I said. When Wu is talking he expects you to respond. I always try and pick a fairly innocuous world and just repeat it.

“You've got it, Irv. It's like those interviews on TV that are a little jumpy, because they edit out all the connective time—the uhs, the ahs, the waits, the pauses. Something's happened to the connective time in New York. That's why the phone rings ten times for me here—actually an average of 8.411—and only once for you.”

“How can the phone ring more times for you than for me?”

“Ever heard of Relativity, Irving?”

“Yes, but . . .”

“No buts about it!” Wu said. “Theoretically, a ninety-degree twist could cause a leakage of Connective Time. But what is causing the twist? That's the . . .”

His voice was starting to fade. Truthfully, I was glad. I was ready to concentrate on my primavera pesto pasta.

“Pepper?” asked the waiter.

“Absolutely,” I said. I don't really care for pepper, but I admire the way they operate those big wrist-powered wooden machines.

 

* * *

 

Candy loves to shop (who doesn't?) so we headed across Grand Street to Soho, looking for jeans on lower Broadway. Since there was no waiting for the dressing rooms (maybe Wu was on to something!), Candy decided to try on one pair of each brand in each style and each color. We were about a third of the way through the stack, when the salesgirl began to beep; rather, her beeper did.

“Your name Irv?” she asked, studying the readout. “You can use the sales phone.” It was under the counter, by the shopping bags.