Numbers Don't Lie (8 page)

“They're back in Brooklyn. Couldn't take the weather.”

“In Hawaii?!?”

“I'm at the Mauna Kea Observatory,” Wu said. “We're at twelve-thousand feet. It's like Tibet.”

“Whatever,” I said. “Well, how's business? Observe any meteors lately?”

“Remember what I told you, Irving?” Wu hardly ever calls me Irving; it usually means he's irritated. “Meteorology is not about meteors. It's about weather. My job is scheduling the observatory's viewings, which depend on the weather.”

“So—how's the weather, Wu?”

“Great!” Wu dropped his voice. “Which is how come we found what I told you about.” He dropped his voice further. “The Edge of the Universe.”

“Congratulations,” I said. I didn't know it had been lost. “But why is it such a big secret?”

“Because of the implications. Unexpected, to say the least. Turns out we've had it in our sights for almost a month but didn't realize it because it was the wrong color.”

“The wrong color?”

“The wrong color,” said Wu. “You know about Hubble's constant, the red shift, the expanding Universe, right?” Wu asked with such confidence that I couldn't bear to let him down.

“Sure,” I said.

“Well, the Universe has stopped expanding.” After a pause, he added in a whisper: “In fact, according to my calculations, it's starting to shrink. What's your fax number? I'll shoot you the figures.”

Whipper Will had Huntsville's—maybe even Alabama's—first fax machine. About the size of an upright piano, and not entirely electrical, it sat in the far corner of the office, against a wall where it was vented to the alley through a system of stovepipe and flex hose. I had always been reluctant to look behind its plywood sides, or under its duralumin hood, but I understood from Hoppy (who had been called in once to fix it) that its various components were powered by an intricate and never since duplicated combination of batteries and 110, clockwork, gravity, water pressure, propane, and charcoal (for the thermal printer). No one knew who had made it, or when. I didn't even know it worked until, seconds after I gave Wu the number, I heard a relay click, and the upright fax began to groan; it began to whine. It clanked and clattered, it sputtered and roared, it spat cold steam and warm gases, and a paper fell out of the wicker
IN
bin, onto the floor.

It was smeared with purple stains, which I recognized from grade school as mimeo ink, and it bore a formula in Wu's hand:

 

 

“What's this?” I asked.

“Just what it looks like. Hubble's constant inconstant: reversed, confused, confounded,” Wu said. “You'll note that the red shift has turned to blue, just like in the Elvis song.”

“That's blue to gold,” I said. “ ‘When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again.' ”

“Irving, this is more important than any Elvis song!” he said (rather self-righteously, I thought, since it was he who had brought up Elvis in the first place). “It means that the Universe has stopped expanding and started to collapse in on itself.”

“I see,” I lied. “Is that—good or bad?”

“Not good,” Wu said. “It's the beginning of the end. Or at least the end of the beginning. The period of expansion that began with the Big Bang is over, and we're on our way to the Big Crunch. It means the end of life as we know it; Hell, of existence as we know it. Everything in the Universe, all the stars, all the planets, all the galaxies—the Earth and everything on it from the Himalayas to the Empire State Building to the Musée d'Orsay—will be squashed into a lump about the size of a tennis ball.”

“That does sound bad,” I said. “When's this Crunch thing going to happen?”

“It will take a while.”

“What's ‘a while'?” I couldn't help thinking of Candy, and our plans to get married (even though I hadn't yet officially proposed).

“Eleven to fifteen billion years,” said Wu. “By the way, how's Candy? Are you two engaged yet?”

“Almost,” I said. “We're going ‘grazing' tonight. As soon her father's settled in the nursing home, I get to pop the question.”

“Congratulations,” Wu said. “Or maybe I should say pre-congratula— Whoooops! Here comes my boss. I'm not supposed to be using this line. Give my best to Candy. What's ‘grazing' anyway . . . ?”

But before I could answer, he was gone. Everybody should have a friend like Wilson Wu. He grew up in Queens and studied physics at Bronx Science, pastry in Paris, math at Princeton, herbal medicine in Hong Kong, and law at either Harvard or Yale (I get them confused). He worked for NASA (Grumman, anyway), then Legal Aid. Did I mention that he's six-foot two and plays guitar? We lived on the same block in Brooklyn where we both owned Volvos and went to the Moon. Then I met Candy and moved to Alabama, and Wu quit Legal Aid and got a degree in meteorology.

Which is
not
about meteors.

 

* * *

 

The Saturn Five SixPlex, in the Apollo Shopping Center on the Huntsville Bypass, with its half-dozen identical theaters half-guarded by bored teens, is perfect for “grazing,” an activity invented by Candy and her friends some fifteen years ago, when the multiplexes first started hitting the suburbs of the bigger Southern towns. The idea, initially, was to make dating more flexible, since teen girls and boys rarely liked the same movies. Later, as Candy and her friends matured and movies continued their decline, the idea was to combine several features into one full-featured (if you will) film. When you go “grazing” you wear several sweaters and hats, using them to stake out seats and to change your appearance as you duck from theater to theater. Dates always sit together when in the same theater, but “grazing” protocol demands that you never pressure your date into staying—or leaving. Boys and girls come and go as they wish, sometimes together, sometimes apart. That Wednesday night there was a teen sex comedy, a tough-love ladies' weeper, a lawyer-in-jeopardy thriller, a buddy cop romance, a singing animal musical cartoon, and a terror thug “blow-'em-up.” The films didn't run in the same time continuum, of course, and Candy and I liked to “graze” backward; we began with the car bombs and angled back across the hall (and across Time) for the courtroom confession, then split up for the singing badgers (me) and Whoopi's teary wisecracks (Candy) before coming together for teens' nervous first kiss. “Grazing” always reminds me of the old days before movies became an art, when “the picture show” in Brooklyn ran in a continuous loop and no one ever worried about Beginnings or Ends. You stayed till you got to the part where you came in, then it was over. “ ‘Grazing' is a lot like marriage, don't you think?” I whispered.

“Marriage?” Candy asked, alarmed. We were together, watching the cops question a landlady. “Are you pressuring me?”

“I'm not proposing,” I said. “I'm making a comment.”

“Comments about movies are allowed. Comments about marriage are considered pressuring.”

“My comment is about ‘grazing,' ” I said. “It's about . . .”

“Sssshhhh!” said the people behind us.

I lowered my voice. “ . . . about being together some of the time and apart some of the time. About entering together and leaving together. About being free to follow your own tastes yet always conscious that there is a seat saved for you beside the other.”

I was crazy about her. “I'm crazy about you,” I whispered.

“Sssshhhh!” said the couple behind us.

“Tomorrow night,” Candy whispered, taking my hand. Then she held it up so that it was illuminated by the headlights of a car chase. “What's this?” She was looking at the number on the back of my hand.

“That's there to—remind me of how much I love you,” I lied. I didn't want to tell her what it really was; I didn't want her to think I was crazy.

“Only six?”

“You're holding it upside down.”

“That's better!”

“Ow!”

“Ssssshhhhhh!” said the couple behind us.

We skipped all the titles and credits but caught all the previews. Candy dropped me off at midnight at the Good Gulf men's room. Walking “home” to Whipper Will's office across the corner lot, I looked up at the almost-full Moon and thought of Wu on his Hawaiian mountaintop. There were only a few stars; maybe the Universe
was
shrinking. Wu's figures, though I could never understand them, were usually right. What did I care, though? A few billion years can seem like eternity when you're young, and forty-one isn't old. A second marriage can be like a second youth. I stepped carefully over my old friend, the beaded seat cushion, who looked better than ever in the moonlight; but then, don't we all?

 

* * *

 

It was almost ten o'clock before I awoke the next morning. I made my way to Hoppy's Good Gulf, staggering a little in the sunshine. “Whipper Will's Yank,” Hoppy said from the repair bay where he was replacing the front brake pads on another Taurus.

“Right,” I muttered.

He replied “ 'Nuff said” behind me, as I made my way back outside and started across the corner lot.

I stopped at the beaded seat cushion. It definitely looked better. There seemed to be fewer loose beads scattered in the weeds and on the path. There seemed to be fewer naked, broken neoprene strings and bare spots on the seat cushion.

But I didn't have to guess. I had evidence.

I checked the number on the back of my hand:
9
.

I counted the beads four rows down from the top: eleven.

I checked both again, and again it came out the same.

It was creepy. I looked around in the bushes, half expecting to see giggling boys playing a joke on me. Or even Hoppy. But the bushes were empty. This was downtown on a school day. No kids played in this corner lot anyway.

I spit on my thumb and rubbed out the
9
, and walked on back to the office. I was hoping to find another message from Wu, but there was nothing on the machine.

It was only ten-thirty, and I wasn't going to see Candy until lunch at the Bonny Bag, so I opened a can of Caffeine-Free Diet Cherry Coke and spread out my
Corcoran's
. I was just starting to doze off when Whipper Will's ancient upright fax machine clicked twice and wheezed into life; it sputtered and shuddered, it creaked and it clanked, it hissed and whistled, and then spat a smeared-purple mimeo sheet on the floor, covered with figures:

 

 

As soon as it cooled, I picked it up and smoothed it out. I was just about to put it with the other one when the phone rang.

“Well?” It was Wu.

“More Big Crunch?” I was guessing, of course.

“You must be holding it upside down,” Wu said. “The figures I just sent are for the Anti-Entropic Reversal.”

“So I see,” I lied. “Does this reversal mean there won't be a Big Crunch after all?” I wasn't surprised; it had always sounded more like a breakfast cereal than a disaster.

“Irving!” Wu said. “Look at the figures more closely. The AER leads up to the Big Crunch; it
makes
it happen. The Universe doesn't just shrink, it rewinds. It goes backwards. According to my calculations, everything will be running in reverse for the next eleven to fifteen billion years, from now until the Big Crunch. Trees will grow from ashes to firewood to oak to seed. Broken glass will fly together into windowpanes. Tea will get hot in the cup.”

“Sounds interesting,” I said. “Could even be handy. When does all this happen?”

“It's already started,” said Wu. “The Anti-Entropic Reversal is going on right now.”

“Are you sure?” I felt my Caffeine-Free Diet Cherry Coke. It was getting warmer, but shouldn't it be getting colder? Then I looked at the clock. It was almost eleven. “Things aren't going backward here,” I said.